St. John's Picked to Win U.S. Hoop Crown
by Jim Jennings
Cowboys vs. Indians always signified shooting, scalping and thrilling action and tonight's combat between Wyoming, N.C.A.A. titleholder and St. John's, National Invitation basketball potentates, for the benefit of hte Red Cross in the Garden, promises exceptional hoop hoopla.
Toledo and Georgetown, finalists in the Garden and N.C.A.A. tourneys, will meet in the opening game which will start at 8 o'clock.
House Sold Out
Of course, the shooting will be confined to baskets and the scalping deftly done by ticket speculators since all reserved seats have been sold and the charity should receive about $26,000.
The Cowboys and the Redmen are about the strongest teams in the country and the victor will be the first quintet ever to win the national intercollegiate championship since the sixteen teams which fought through both tourneys were representative of the best from all sections of the U.S.
Joe Lapchick's Apaches from Brooklyn are favored to win by five points and the bookies will permit you to make your choice between the Hoyas and Rockets so evenly are they matched and ask only a couple of points for taking the wager.
St. John's has a record of 21 triumphs to 2 setbacks and the Westerners, 26-1, losing only to Duquesne early in the season and now boast a string of 22 straight conquests.
Studded With Stars
Each aggregation has 3 of the individual aces of the game. The Indians' hatchetmen are "Boy Mountain" Harry Boykoff, 6-9 center; Capt. Andy Levene and Capt. electLarry Baxter, while the Cowboys possess one of the year's top scorers in Milo Komenich, 6-7 pivot; Jim Weir, a mere 6-5 and Capt. Kenny Sailors, who was voted the outstanding player against Georgetown Tuesday night.
The clash between Komenich, top basket rustler for the Westerners with 449 points and Boykoff, leading hoop-filler with 382 for the Redmen, who will oppose each other in the pivot slot, should be a classic. Neither is expected to amass a good number of markers, so evenly matched are they on the defence.
"Fuzzy" Levane, who accounted for the outstanding defensive job of the year when he held the celebrated Davage Minor, Toledo's sharpshooter scoreless, last Monday evening, said yesterday that the Redmen considered Salilors, the Cowboys' fleet dribble-and-dash expert, the most dangerous Wyoming operative.
Levane expected Coach Lapchick to assign his dynamic little trouble-shooter, Hy Gotkin, to padlock Sailors, whose one-handed jump shots downed the Hoyas. Fuzzy will try to emulate a human porous plaster when he takes over the job of policing weir, Wyoming's under-basket specialist.
Wyoming has had a distinct height advantage over its opponents in the past but Gotkin, at 5 feet 7 5/8, will be the only Indian under six feet. Baxter and Levane are a fraction under 6-3; Plantamura is 6-4 and the rejuvenated Al Moschetti, one of the Redmen's recent high scorers, 6-1.
The Cowboys, aside from Weir, Komenich and Tony Katana, 6-4, are dwarfed by the Indians.