Scorecard

GAME TIME

What do 3.3, 9% and 2.7, 8% mean? Give up? They are the Nielsen ratings and audience shares for NBA telecasts on their last two Sundays of head-to-head competition with college basketball.

One more: Who are Adam Adams, Mark Mike and Rocky Rockett? Clue: they're on the same professional tour as Mark Lye, Wren Lum, Mike Zack and... Jack Nicklaus.

POLITICAL BASKETBALL

Orrin G. Hatch (R., Utah) took the floor of the U.S. Senate recently to extol the virtues of one of his state's products—college basketball. Hatch crowed because Utah had four teams entered in the NCAA tournament—Utah, Utah State, Weber State and BYU—and said he hoped to see one of them among the final four at Salt Lake City. Alas, the tournament ended last Monday night with nary a Utahan on the court, and Hatch had to do a little crow-eating. During his Senate speech he had said, "I know that all of this may seem like a bit of bragging on my part [but I] feel confident that no other Senator can find four schools in his state that have the support of the fans like these schools."

One other Senator, Richard G. Lugar (R., Indiana), knew a fish when he smelled it. After a few days of quiet research, Lugar got up to debate his distinguished colleague on a subject, said Lugar, "which is close to the heart of every citizen in Indiana—basketball, known in Indiana as 'Hoosier Hysteria.' With great respect for my good friend from Utah, let me just say that it is very difficult for me to imagine a place in the world where basketball is more popular than in Indiana."

Sure enough, out came the facts: Lugar's task force found that Indiana's four biggest basketball schools—Indiana State, Indiana, Notre Dame and Purdue—outdrew the Utahs 12,191 per game to 12,064, and, Lugar bragged, "It is only fitting that following this year's NCAA championship game at Salt Lake City, the site of the tournament finale will move next year to Indianapolis." Presumably, Lugar will remind Hatch this week how much better the Indiana teams did in the NIT and NCAA tournaments than the Utah teams.

It is nice to know that our Senators are not totally obsessed with inflation, oil prices and unemployment. We wonder, however, where Senators Walter Huddleston and Wendell Ford were while this basketball issue was being dribbled around. The combined average attendance for the top four basketball schools in their state—Kentucky. Louisville, Eastern Kentucky and Western Kentucky—was 12,616, better than either Indiana's or Utah's.

IN YOUR FACE, GOLIATH

Hoosier basketball fans have been stretched mighty thin lately. The finals of the state high school tournament, always a big deal in Indiana, drew more attention than usual last weekend when tiny Argos High—276 students, its tallest starter 6'2"—showed up among the final four in Indianapolis. Argos lost in the semifinals to Anderson (1,875 students), but no school that small had loomed so large since Milan (145 students) won the tournament in 1954.