Tarantula from Cabin Creek

The night before a game, the high-strung forward from West Virginia is often so taut that he takes a sedative. In the dressing room, his hands are wet with sweat, and waiting on the bench, he has even retched into a towel. Then the game begins, and Jerry West, 21, sets his long face in a stony mask and begins to release his tremendous store of nervous tension.

On the basketball court, Jerry West can do just about anything. Standing only 6 ft. 3 in. and fretted down to a lean 175 Ibs., the spring-legged senior is still a superb rebounder, has cracked his head on a backboard 9 ft. off the floor. West would rather block a shot than make one, throws up such a defensive web with his long arms that his teammates call him "Tarantula." He is tenacious. A stray elbow broke his nose in the first half of a recent game against Kentucky. Blood streaming down his face, West came back to score 19 points in the second half for a total of 33 in the 79-70 victory. On offense, Playmaker West leads the fast-breaking attack of West Virginia with a long-striding, hard-pumping dribble right down the middle, averages 27.3 points a game (7th best in the nation), fakes his man so effectively that one frustrated opponent cracked weakly: "I'm no authority on West--I didn't see much of him."

Against Pittsburgh last week West shot sparingly but fed sure baskets to teammates all night long, led West Virginia to a 76-66 victory. Three nights later, with his team trailing sky-high William and Mary, West was at his brilliant best. When he fouled out with over five minutes still to play, West had scored 42 of West Virginia's 71 points, watched in anguish from the bench as his leaderless teammates lost 94-86 in one of the season's major upsets. Even so, by week's end West had hauled West Virginia to third place in the national rankings and a solid 16-2 record.

Son of a mechanic working in West Virginia's coal mines, West has made basketball his business since he was a five-year-old trudging out in snow or rain to shoot at a hoop nailed to the side of a house in Cabin Creek (pop. 700). In last year's N.C.A.A. championship (where West Virginia lost in the finals to California, 71-70), West won the event's most-valuable-player award over Cincinnati's great Oscar ("Big O") Robertson. Called by one coach "the most selfless all-America I've ever seen," West was awed by the ovation given him by the crowd when he walked out to receive the award. "I felt real little, like a little ball all alone."

Despite his lack of weight and height, the pros rate him with the gifted Robertson (6 ft. 5 in., 198 lbs.), the nation's top scorer (35.8 points a game). When a reporter once pointedly asked Robertson if West was the second-best man in college basketball, the Big O had a ready answer: "Baby, he may be the best."

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