Basketball 's Jitterbug Era.
Can't Stall Phog's Tactics

BY HAROLD _ CLAASSEN
Lawrence, Kan., Jan. 31.—(A.
!P.)—Atop windswept Mount
‘|Oread, the consistent capital of
‘|college basketball, is a man who

‘sticks to horse and buggy coach-
others

ing tactics—and makes
like it.

Dr. Forrest C. (Phog) Allen,
altho as modern and intense as a
1939 jitterbug, keeps his. Kansas
University Jayhawks winning
|titles with tricks used when Pa
and Ma danced the dreamy waltzes
of 1905.

Successful? Twenty-two of his
twenty-eight teams have won con-
ference championships. In twenty-
eight years his teams won 322
games and lost only 70. He is

30 good he overcame his two sons’.

natural doubts of a parent’s wis-
dom and made them playing stars.
Horse-and-Buggy Plays

The advent of the ten-second
rule and the three-second law and
its subsequent modification of the
post play sent other coaches to
athletic apothecaries for. new
“system builders.”

Not so the doctor of Mount
|Oread. His quintets kept winning
on the theory “a, team never won
\ja game in its *life—its opponents
||lost it thru errors in fundamentals
\}and poor judgment.”
|| The debonair but vitrolic coach
|} —he once labeled A. A. U._ offi-
|jclals “quadrennial oceanic hitch-
hikers who chisel their way” to
the Olympic games—hboasts of
|having only a few set plays: and
no distintuishine system.

 

“Adherence to the principles of
sound fundamentals develops con-
fidence in the individual player. If
he knows the pass is going to be
good, he can be thinking of ma-
neuvering along a path that is not
necessarily rehearsed,” is the doc-
tor’s prescription.

“This is not mechanical play,
this is versatile play. It is the
principle of education thru play.”

At every game two assistants
grade the players on fundamentals
—too many bad passes or wrong
pivots and the player flunks out of
the starting lineup.

Since elimination of the center
jump, the pivot on a Kansas team
is the “quarterback” and is sta-
tioned in the backcourt with the
guards.

He calls the signals and handles
the ball first on all offensive
drives. | ‘

Allen is a graduate of an osteo-
pathic’ college but a master of
psychology. None of his teams
has ever taken the floor but that it
knew it was the better aggrega-
tion.

Uses Chaser for Water

The coach himself isn’t always
that collected and serene. The ex-
citement and warmth of the build-
ing make for a dryness of his
throat.

Game time finds him squirming
on the bench, surrounded by water
bottles. A nonconference game is
a six-quart affair. But at a con-
ference game he needs a bracer
—and takes eight quarts.