12/7/1972

Cool frosh shoot down Trojans

By P. J. ERICKSON
Assistant Sports Editor

It was dark, the game was long over, and the student was trudging past Bear Down Gym, a text book under his arm.

"Who won?" he inquired of the guy coming through the gate.

"Arizona," the fellow answered. "71-69."

"Close game," said the young man. And he shuffled off through the night.

Oh, well. Even in the most ravaging epidemics, someone always manages to avoid the fever. And fever is just the word to describe what occurred in Bear Down Gym last night when the Wildcats defeated Southern California. Mind you, this was not Cal State-Bakersfield, nor UCC-Santa Barbara. This was THE Southern Cal. The big, bad, lean, mean Trojans, unbeaten before last night and ranked 15th and 17th by the wire service basketball polls, favored in some quarters by as much as 20 points.

And they were beaten. Beaten by four freshmen, a JC transfer and two seniors, part of a team that may only now be realizing how good it is, much less how good it will be.

Much of the time, Lynard Harris was the only UA player on the floor who wasn't a freshman. Apparently, nobody ever told coach Fred Snowden that you do not beat Southern Cal with freshmen, or if he was told, he didn't believe it.

Staunch Trojan rooters will point to the box score and say that they lost because of the 10-point edge in free throws, but the facts are: 1) Had USC made 100 per cent of its free throws, as Arizona did, the Trojans would have won by a point; and 2) there were only three fouls difference between the two teams.

Arizona opened an 11-point lead with 5:33 to play on Jim Rappis' two foul shots that made if 61-50.

The Trojans, however, know what they're about, and they trimmed the lead to one point at 63-62 with 2:45 left on Clint Chapman's jumper.

This is the point where freshmen are supposed to fold. Close game, ranked opponent, a big lead fading, legs growing heavy, .pressure mounting.

So what happens? Freshman Al Fleming drops both ends of a 1-and-l situation; senior Tom Lawson slips past the Trojan defense for a gift layup after the Cats ate up a minute with a delay; Harris drops both on another 1-and-l and freshman Jim Rappis hits nothing but net on two free throws for a 71-67 lead with 11 seconds left, locking up the win.

USC answered each of those scoring efforts, but just answering wasn't enough. After Don Lambert's rebound basket, Fleming took the ball out of bounds with four seconds left. He had five seconds to get it in play and he knew it, so he never even tried.

"When Al made that play," said Snowden, relaxing in his office "I said to myself 'will you look at that freshman. Will you LOOK at that FRESHMAN!' He knew exactly what to do, and he did it. We let them get that basket, because there's no way they can beat us unless we give 'em a three-point play."

Arizona shot 52.7 per cent from the floor, supporting a belief Snowden has held all along.

"When we shoot well," said the UA coach, "there's not many people who are going to beat us. That's what we did not do against Stanford. If we had shot this well over there, we'd have beaten them, too."

The Cats also avoided two other trouble areas that often plague the inexperienced team. They were never in foul trouble and they had only 16' turnovers, surprisingly low for a young team playing the running game Snowden favors.

Never was the devastating effectiveness of the fast break more evident than just before halftime, when three absolutely picture fast breaks broke a 27-27 tie and led the Cats to a 35-29 halftime lead.

The Cats are idle now until Tuesday, when the University of San Diego will be the opponent in Bear Down Gym.