Basketball with Bells

In the press coop, Western Union operators bent low to hear the chatter of their instruments above the din. In St. Louis' jammed Kiel Auditorium last week, one of the noisiest collections of bells--cowbells, sleighbells, dinner bells--ever assembled under one roof was ringing the rafters. St. Louis rooters were doing their tintinnabulary best to help St. Louis University's basketball team (ranked No. 2 in the nation) to get revenge against arch-rival Oklahoma A. & M. (ranked No. 3).

The bells didn't bother the Aggies. They played the slow, deliberate, agonizing brand of basketball for which they are famous, and for which fast-breaking St. Louis had no antidote. On the St. Louis bench, Coach Ed Hickey gave an imitation of a man fighting off bees as the score went against him, furiously diagrammed plays on the floor with chalk during time-outs. On the Aggie bench, Coach Hank Iba said reassuringly to his men: "Take your time. Take your time."

With seven minutes to play and an 11-point lead, the tantalizing Aggies went into their "freeze." When the game ended, St. Louis had lost its fourth straight game to Oklahoma A. & M. in two years (while losing only two other games all told), 40-37. The subdued crowd of 11,624 moved for the exits, dragging their bells behind them.

P: Michigan State, which recently made headlines by becoming the tenth member of the Big Nine, made some more by running off with the I.C.4-A. (for Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America) track championship at Madison Square Garden over runners-up Yale and 44 other colleges. Best individual performance of the meet: an American indoor-record heave of 60 ft. 7 3/4 in. by rawboned Jim Scholtz, a West Point first-classman, with the 35-lb. weight.

P: Vulcan's Forge, a horse recently sold by Millionaire Sportsman C. V. ("Sonny") Whitney for $80,000, got it all back in one lump for his new owner, I. J. Collins of Lancaster, Ohio, by winning the world's richest race--the Santa Anita Handicap (value to the winner: $102,000).

P: At Hialeah, Calumet Farm's Coaltown waltzed home ahead of the pack to present Owner Warren Wright with his fourth Widener Handicap and $42,300.

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