The Icemen

The "freeze" or "stall" is one of the oldest tactics in basketball--although it is clearly a violation of the spirit, if not the substance, of modern rules. Any college coach with a late lead to protect will order his boys to keep the ball away from the other team by holding it, passing it back and forth, refusing to shoot for the basket. Now a new fad is sweeping the courts: the game-long stall. Within a week, three of the nation's top teams have been bedeviled by opponents who set out to win by just standing there.

First to feel the chill was No. 4-ranked Princeton, the Tiger of the Ivy League and favored by 40 points over Dartmouth, a team it had already whipped 116-42. Dartmouth went into a stall at the opening tap-off; not a shot was taken for ten minutes, only 30 were taken in the entire game. Princeton won, 30-16, but Dartmouth Coach Dave Gavitt insisted: "If our shooting percentage had been better, we might have beaten them."

Southern Cal Coach Bob Boyd took the same tack, and came within a point of victory over Lew Alcindor and the unbeaten, No. 1-ranked U.C.L.A. Bruins. Alcindor wound up with only 13 points. At the buzzer, the score was tied 31-31; U.C.L.A. salvaged a 40-35 overtime victory. And then there was No. 10-ranked Vanderbilt, also forced into overtime to pull out a 51-41 victory over freeze-minded Georgia.

"The rules committee will have to take a serious look at this problem," says Kentucky's Adolph Rupp, who favors adoption of the pros' "24-sec. rule" that requires a team to shoot 24 sec. after it gets the ball. That would make the freeze thaw overnight. That is, unless folks get a kick out of the kind of game they had in Kentucky last week, when Adair County High beat Campbellsville by a score of 6-1.

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