Giraffes in West Texas

"Tallest team on earth" is a big boast. But Al Baggett, basketball coach at West Texas State Teachers College, has a just claim. The tallest man on his team towers 6 ft. 10; the shortest 6 ft. 2. The team's average: 6 ft. 6.

Fast as well as big, these Texas giants--who call themselves Buffaloes but look more like giraffes--have lost only two games out of the 21 they have played thus far this season. They have scored 1,418 points for an average of 68 points a game; have twice swamped their opponents with scores of 100 or more. Of course, Al Baggett's boys played teams like Chihuahua State College, but they also played Arkansas, Bradley Tech, De Paul, Long Island University and other notable U.S. basketball teams.

Six years ago, as a promotion stunt, the Globe Oil & Refining Co. of McPherson, Kans. rounded up a nine-man basketball squad that averaged 6 ft. 5. The Oilers were so slick they won the National Amateur Athletic Union championship that year and five of them, picked for the U.S. Olympic squad, helped rout the champions of 23 nations at Berlin. Last week it looked as if Al Baggett's Buffaloes were headed in the same direction.*

Like most Southwest and Rocky Mountain fives, West Texas State uses the spectacular "fire-engine" offense (a helter-skelter drive toward the scoring zone). In fact, Coach Baggett's system can be summed up in his one pet plea: "Boys, don't bother passing to anybody--just pass it at the basket." For defense, his galloping giraffes don't give a hoot. They just rely on "Long Taw" Charlie Halbert. 6 ft. 10, who hangs around their opponent's basket, bats out sure goals by simply reaching up a bit.

"I like tall boys," says Baggett, 6 ft. 4 himself and no mean basketball player when he was a student at Ouachita College in Arkadelphia, Ark. "And we don't have to look far in our part of the country." To scotch any suggestion of ivory-hunting, he points out that three of the boys in his starting line-up live within 100 miles of the college campus; the other two. who hail from Malta Bend, Mo., came to West Texas State because their uncle is a caretaker there.

In the nine years he has coached the Buffaloes, Al Baggett has never had a starting line-up that averaged less than 6 ft. 3. "It takes three times as much work to develop a tall player as it does a short one," says he, "but when you've finished you have something." Already branded for next year's freshman team is a kid 6 ft. 11.

*A.A.U. officials are planning to send a basketball team to the Pan-American Olympics, scheduled for Buenos Aires next November.

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