Roughhouse

Dr. James Naismith, a gentle Y.M.C.A. official, designed basketball as a "noncontact" game, and wrote 13 rules to bar roughhousing. Gangs of toughs in the 'gos used to gather outside gyms to beat up the "sissy" basketball players on their way home. Basketball's inventor, only eight years dead, never dreamed of what the Big Nine would do to his game.

In Madison, Wis. last week,, the only teams still undefeated in Big Nine competition went after each other with elbows, knees, hands and feet. Officials called 47 fouls and threw four players out of the game. At the final whistle, four more, with four fouls apiece against them, were on their best behavior. A screaming, wildly partisan Wisconsin crowd of 13,000, who regarded booing as a legitimate way to keep warm on a winter night, razzed the visiting Iowans unmercifully, cheered to the rafters every Wisconsin basket.

Shoot! Shoot! Wisconsin's acting Captain Ed Mills shoved an Iowa player 15 feet off the court, into the laps of front-row spectators, and was put out of the game. The crowd booed the referees, cheered Mills. The only lowan the crowd seemed to respect was catlike little Murray Wier. They remembered too well what happened one night last season, when Wier blazed away continuously without hitting much besides the backboard, and the crowd chanted derisively: "Shoot! Shoot!" Wier kept his temper and changed his luck, piled up 24 points before the game was over. Last week Wier was the night's high scorer, with 20 points. Wisconsin fans even applauded him when he left the game on fouls, the ultimate accolade for a worthy enemy.

S.R.O. Fans being what they are in a cooped-up gymnasium, basketball experts usually give the home team a six-point advantage before it goes out on the court. In the Big Nine, it is more like a ten-point handicap. Wisconsin's first five home games this season have played to S.R.O. fieldhouses (total attendance: 66,700), and the defending Big Nine champions won all five.

They played the harddriving, football-style game, the hardest in the country. It was all running & shooting, running & shooting, with few set shots. But when Wisconsin's bantam Forward Bobby Cook (last year's Big Nine high scorer) got set for a push shot, as many as three Wisconsin players lined up in front of him to throw a block on the opposition. Any player knocked off his feet was apt to be raced over by a herd of buffalo in gym shoes. Final score: Wisconsin 60, Iowa 51. After the whistle blew an Iowa player shook his fist furiously at the stands and shouted: "Wait till we get you at Iowa City!"

He didn't have to wait that long. Five nights later Michigan invaded Madison, gave Wisconsin its first conference defeat of the season, 43 to 39.

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