Basketball's Week

THE TOURNAMENTS

While most of the nation's major-college teams were putting their uniforms away for another year, a select and successful few were getting ready for the glamorous postseason tournaments.

The NCAA added three more conference winners: the Big Eight's Colorado (18-6), Southwest's Texas Tech (18-6) and the Mid-Atlantic's St. Joseph's (18-8). Only the winner of Monday night's Missouri Valley playoff between Cincinnati and Bradley was needed to complete the national championship pairings as first-round action began at Philadelphia, Lexington, Ky., Dallas and Corvallis, Ore.

The NIT, which has one of its finest fields in years, was ready to open Thursday night in New York's Madison Square Garden. Mid-Atlantic runner-up Temple (17-8) was in, and the last spot was being held for the Cincinnati-Bradley loser. That team, plus St. John's (19-4), Loyola of Chicago (21-3) and Houston (21-5) were seeded, but these four favorites were going to face some stiff competition from the first-round survivors. The pairings: March 15, Wichita (18-8) vs. Dayton (20-6) and defending champion Providence (20-5) vs. Temple; March 17, Holy Cross (19-5) vs. Colorado State U. (18-8) and Duquesne (20-5) vs. Navy (13-7).

The small colleges were already holding their own eliminations. Defending champion Wittenberg, Mount St. Mary's, Nebraska Wesleyan, Northeastern, Southeast Missouri, Valparaiso, Southern Illinois and Sacramento State survived regional playoffs and moved on to Evansville, Ind. to fight it out for the NCAA college-division title. Meanwhile, the NAIA's 32 district champions gathered in Kansas City, where a full week of play was leading up to the finals on Saturday.

THE EAST

All season long St. John's Joe Lapchick had made it clear that he wanted to beat old rival NYU more than anything else in the world. "If I lose to NYU, I'm sick," he had said. Well, Lapchick may have felt a bit queasy when the two teams met last Saturday night before 6,228 in St. John's new Alumni Hall, but he was far from sick—not even when the Violets surrounded his 6-foot-10 LeRoy Ellis with a collapsing defense and held him to six points. Lapchick rather expected that to happen. But he has been around long enough to know that the best-planned strategy can't beat putting the ball in the basket. He simply had his Redmen, attacking deliberately and carefully, get the ball to Kevin Loughery, who shot over the Violets from the side for 23 points, and to elusive Willie Hall, who faked NYU's Barry Kramer out of his sneakers and scored 21 more. An aggressive man-to-man defense kept NYU from fast-breaking and St. John's won the big one 70-58. While NYU Coach Lou Rossini sadly contemplated his young team's failure, Lapchick was more impressed with St. John's disciplined defense. "We played it the way it should be played," said the old Celtic.

St. Joseph's made it to the NCAA but, for a while, the Hawks seemed headed for oblivion, especially when they trailed Lafayette by 16 points with 13 minutes to go. However, the Leopards folded before St. Joe's harassing full-court press and the Hawks won 78-68 to tie Temple for the Mid-Atlantic title. Three nights later St. Joe's dawdled behind the Owls in the playoff in Philadelphia's Palestra. This time, 6-foot-4 sophomore Jim Boyle, who had been operated on for appendicitis only 19 days earlier, bailed them out. He put in seven points in the last four minutes and the Hawks won 75-65.

Villanova tuned up for the NCAA by beating LaSalle 75-67; Holy Cross whipped Fordham 98-73 as Jack Foley, the nation's second best scorer (33.2 average), gunned in 38 points; Seton Hall's Nick Werkman scored 35 (for a 33-point average) in an 81-64 victory over Iona. And there was even one last thrill for Syracuse's Coach Mark Guley, who has been replaced by Mississippi Southern's Fred Lewis. After 27 straight losses, Guley's Orangemen beat Connecticut 72-67 for their second win in a row. The top three:

1. ST. JOHN'S (19-4)
2. NYU (18-4)
3. VILLANOVA (19-6)