Whiz Kids

The galleries were even more frantic than usual, as the college basketball season drew toward its close this week. This year, for the first time in the game's history, there is a real national championship at stake. In former years every section of the U.S. touted its pet team, prayed for a bid to the National Collegiate A.A. play-offs or the National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden. This year the winners of these two events will meet in an April play-off in the Garden, for the benefit of the Red Cross.

The season has produced some tough competitors: Creighton University's Blue-jays, defeated only once in 19 games; Western Kentucky State's Hilltoppers, defeated only twice in 25; the quintets of Notre Dame, Wyoming, Kansas, Toledo, Rice, St. John's of Brooklyn, and little Pepperdine College of Los Angeles, whose sharpshooters recently handed the University of Southern California its first defeat in 16 games. If they had not decided to pass up the N.C.A.A. tournament because it would keep them too long away from their books, the favorites for the national championship would have been the University of Illinois' Whiz Kids.

The Whiz Kids are regarded reverently by many Midwest sportswriters as the greatest basketball team of all time. Last week, as they wound up their season with a 92-to-25 massacre of the unathletic University of Chicago, Douglas Mills's Kids chalked up four Big Ten team-records: highest score for a single game, most field goals for a single game (41), most points for a season (755 in twelve games), most field goals for a season (325). Undefeated in Conference play, the Kids had won the Big Ten championship two years in a row.

Their star is "Handy Andy" Phillip, 20-year-old son of a Granite City (Ill.) steelworker. When this imperturbable string bean with jitterbug feet gets in the groove, shooting baskets from all angles, he makes even the opposing galleries whistle themselves dizzy. In twelve games this season Andy scored 255 points, an alltime Big Ten high. He is Illinois's most renowned athlete since Red Grange.

Under normal conditions, the Whiz Kids could play basketball another year. But the long arm of the Army will probably break up the combination. Andy Phillip, a member of the Marine Reserve Corps, may not be called before his graduation next February. When told that he might have to be the entire team next year, he replied earnestly: "I couldn't do that."

Some of his fans think he could.

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