Ken is Cowboys' Spark Plug

Smallest Player on Squad Steals Tall Boys' Thunder in Win Over Georgetown

by W. C. Heinz, New York Sun, Wednesday, March 31, 1943

It had a Sailors at the helm last night, and so Wyoming is basketball champion of the N.C.A.A. today. That's not a typographical error, either. Instead, it's a fact that must be uppermost today in the memory of those 13,206 persons who saw Kenny Sailors lead his Cowboys to their 46-34 victory over Georgetown on the Madison Square Garden floor.

"He's as good a man as ever walked out on this Garden court," said Manhattan's coach, Joe Daher. "That kid's great."

"He's one of the best I've ever seen," said Ray Meyer, of DePaul, "and I mean in play making above all. He's the boy who sets everything up."

"He's one of the best ever to show here," said Joe Lapchick, and it will be Joe Lapchick's Redmen of St. John's that will meet the lithe little blond forward and only incidentally, the rest of the Wyoming team in the Red Cross game tomorrow night. Georgetown will face Toledo in the opener.

No, it wasn't Milo Komenich, the big, free scoring center of the Westerners. It wasn't their tall boys that won this ball game. It was Kenny Sailors, smallest man on the club, who cut feinted, faked, dribbled, passed, shot and floor-played a determined, never-quit Georgetown team into defeat.

This was a good game last night; a much better game than the score would indicate. This was a good Georgetown team, too, a team that has been consistently under-rated in this N.C.A.A. tourney and a team that was in this ball game, only two baskets off the pace, until the last minute of play.

Ken Turns on the Heat

Georgetown opened well and led through nineteen minutes of the first period. During this time the score was tied four times and then, with ten seconds to go, Sailors, who had been setting them up consistently, turned on the fire and dribbled under the rim for the lay-up that made it 18-16 in Wyoming's favor.

. . . .

"That Sailors is the fastes man I've ever tried to guard," admitted Hassett later and Buddy's little brother had done all that one could ask. "I played him close when he came in but then I had to give him room because you can't tell if he's going around you or going to shoot. He's great, that's all."

Needles to say, Kenny Sailors was voted the outstanding player of the game.

. . . .

In that second period the score was tied five more times before an exhausted Hoya five finally collapsed. The second time it was two foul shots by Sailors that tied it up and the third time it was the little Cowboy captain who put in the one-hander that made it 24-24.

With the score standing at 35-31 in Wyoming's favor with slightly more than three minutes to play, Billy Hassert, the little Hoya guard, missed an easy lay-up that would have put Georgetown back in the game. And then the Cowboys, mainly Sailors, began to pour it on.

Hassett Plays Tribute to Sailors

After the teams split a basket and Lloyd Potoliccio of Georgetown netted a foul, Sailors made a free throw. Then he passed to Komenich who rang up a lay-up with forty seconds to go. . . .

A Scramble for Possession

. . . Milo Komenich, Wyoming Center, who came out with the ball in this second-period melee in the National Collegiate A.A. basketball championship tournament final in Madison Square Garden last night. Georgetown players Johnny Mahnken (No. 3) and Dan Cabbianelli (No. 15) did their utmost to relieve Komenich of the ball, but to no avail. Trying to horn in on the fracas over Cabbianelli's shoulder is Floyd Volker (No. 5) of Wyoming. The Cowboys won, 46 to 34, after a nip-and-tuck struggle.

New N.C.A.A. Champions of the Court

A trophy emblematic of the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball title being awarded to Coach Everett Shelton of Wyoming (left) by Prof. Philip U. Badger of N.Y.U., president of the N.C.A.A., following the Cowboy's victory over Georgetown in Madison Square Garden last night. Back row (left to right) - Jim Collins, Floyd Volker, Milo Komenich, Lewis Roney, Ken Sailors, and Jim Weir. Front Row (left to right) - Don Waite, Earl Ray, and Jimmy Reese. Sailors, the big gun in the title victory, was voted the outstanding player of the game.