Winning Ways

The University of Kentucky's tall and terrifying basketball team (record: 33 wins, two defeats) ambled nonchalantly onto Madison Square Garden's polished floor. Their coach, heavy-jowled Adolph Rupp, hadn't even bothered to get a scouting report on the enemy team. Kentucky was dangerously cocky--with the N.C.A.A. championship hinging on the game. And before anybody had a chance to work up a sweat, Kentucky had scored 13 points to Baylor's one. There just wasn't anything that Baylor could do about 6 ft. 7 in. Alex ("The Nose") Groza, Kentucky's star center, whose head seems to threaten the mezzanine. He sucked in rebounds like a vacuum cleaner. He was swift afoot and deadeyed. Final score: Kentucky 58, Baylor 42.

With that, the curtain rolled down on 1948's collegiate basketball season, leaving Kentucky out front, taking bows as team-of-the-year (N.C.A.A. champions are usually so acknowledged). There was angry buzzing in the wings. Some experts thought that St. Louis University, winner of the rival National Invitation Tournament (TIME, March 29) had the better team. The question might have been decided in this week's Olympic basketball trials. But the Jesuit Fathers at St. Louis U. quietly announced that the team was through for the season: it was high time for the boys to get back to their schoolbooks.

Other champions crowned last week:

P: In Belfast, a 110-lb. Irishman named Rinty Monaghan, who trains on goats' milk, became the world's flyweight boxing king. He creamed Jackie Paterson, a Scotsman, in the seventh round and Paterson sagged to the floor. As he was being counted out, Rinty did an enthusiastic jig in his corner, then led the crowd in singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. The celebration continued at Rinty's home until a wellwisher, while demonstrating "how I would have handled Paterson," accidentally knocked the new champion cold.

P: In Madison Square Garden, a 17-year-old Chicago cook named Dick Guerrero forgot to duck in the second round and was knocked clear out of the ring. Guerrero climbed back in, talked the referee out of stopping the fight. He then battled his way to the Golden Gloves welterweight championship. The heavyweight winner: 20-year-old Coley Wallace of Harlem, who looks like Joe Louis but doesn't fight as well; he was booed after winning.

P: At Ann Arbor, Mich., La Salle College's Joe Verdeur, 22, broke his own world's record in winning the N.C.A.A. 200-yard breaststroke championship and was voted "outstanding college swimmer of 1948." Team winner of the meet: Michigan.

P: On London's Thames River, the underdog Cambridge crew caught a crab at the start of its traditional race against Oxford. Then, with 200,000 people watching, Cambridge caught up with Oxford and forged ahead to win a five-length victory--in the fastest time since the race was first rowed in 1829. One Cambridge secret weapon: a cow that the crew had bought to insure a healthy supply of milk in food-scarce Britain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.