TUESDAY, MARCH 20. 1951
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE FIVE
Oklahoma Aggies, Kentucky Seek Third NCAA Basketball Title This Year
Oklahoma A. and M. and Kentucky, the only schools ever to win N.C.A.A. basketball championship more than once, are both back In this year's tournament where each will be shooting or its third national crown.
The Aggie teams of the Kurland ra swept through the tourney two years in a row, 1945 and 1946, a feat equalled by Kentucky in 1948 and 1949. All of the eight other titles raffled off since the tournament began at the World's Fair in San Francisco thirteen years ago have been split up among eight different colleges.
The 1951 version of Hank Iba's ball-control Cowpokes, from Stillwater, Okla., will open its bid for another crown in a first-round game against Montana State at Kansas City Wednesday night, while Baronadelph Rupp's newest Wildcats will Jay their neighbors, the Louisville Cardinals, in the William N. Reynolds Coliseum at Raleigh, NC, tonight in another first-round struggle.
The Pokes and Cats are the only former champs involved in the 16-team play this season. Six of the other conference representatives—
Washington, Brigham Young, Kansas State, Columbia, Illinois and North Carolina State—have made previous appearances in the national title play, but they all met with misfortune early in the proceedings. None of them got as far as the final round in the past.
For Arizona, the Border Conference representative, Texas A&M of the Southwest and for the six member-at-large teams, this is the first N.C.A.A. tourney.
This year makes Kentucky's fifth appearance while it is Oklahoma A&M's fourth showing. In addition to taking two titles, the Lexington school bowed to Dartmouth in a semi-final game in 1942 and lost a first-round contest to Ohio State in 1945. The Aggies only non-winning try for the title was two years ago when the same Wildcats slaughtered them in the final at Seattle.
85 Grid Players Report Monday For Spring Drills
Eighty-five hopeful football players reported to Coach Jules V. Sikes Monday afternoon as the Jayhawkers opened six weeks of spring grid practice.
These players, hopeful that they would survive the first day under the old Sikes-ism conditioning program, remained on the field running through dummy scrimagem and just running for more than three hours.
Coach Sikes indicated today's practice would open heavy contact work for K.U.'s football candidates and that a full-scale scrimmage would be held Friday.
The No.1 patching problem facing Sikes and his staff this spring will be to mend interior line weaknesses and to strengthen a much sought after pass defense.
Columbia's Lions Are First Team Ever To Enter NCAA With Unbeaten Record
Columbia's 1951 varsity basketball team has the vulnerable distinction of being the first team in th e13-year history of the N.C.A.A. Championship Basketball Tournament to show up with an unbeaten record.
The Morningside Lions with their spotless record of 22 wins and no losses will be a prime target for the rest of the nation's college cage powers in the N.C.A.A. tourney.
In order to maintain their unblemished record and end the season without a defeat John Azary, Jack Molinas, Bob Reiss and their Light Blue mates must win four straight in the toughest of competition—Illinois in the first round and the likes of Kentucky, St. John's, Kansas State and Oklahoma A&M thereafter. One loss will take the Lions out of the running for the national title and also prove that the Lion team is manned by mere mortals who can be bested on occasion.
Since 1939 the best college fives in the nation have joined in the play for the annual national collegiate title, but prior to this year every team—and there have been 96 in all—has had one or more "L" on its
season report card. Best record in the past was brought into the tourney by the 1947 Texas team which had won 23 out of 24. The Longhorns headed by Slater Martin and John Hargis added one more win to that record in the first round of the 1947 tourney before losing to Oklahoma in the western Final that year.
The only previous Columbia team to grace the N.C.A.A. tourney rolls, the 1948 edition, had a 22-1 record, third best through the years. Those Lions were clawed out of contention in the first round by the Olympic-bound Kentucky Wildecats. The only other squads which walked into N.C.A.A. play with but one loss were Harvard 19-1 in 1946, Dartmouth 17-1 in 1944, Navy 16-1 in 1947 and Colorado 15-1 in 1942, and none of those clubs won the title.