Hot Rod And The Best

Through long hours of practice in empty gymnasiums, Hot Rod has mastered a full, ambidextrous repertory—jump, set, hook shots and even a few indescribable shots in which he changes the ball from one hand to the other, this with appropriate feints, after launching himself into the air.

But it is Hundley's fancy ball handling that gets the crowds. Against the Pittsburgh freshmen last year Hot Rod did nothing in the opening minutes and the crowd, force fed on large helpings of advance publicity, began to ride him. Suddenly Hundley, apparently well guarded, shot a pass from behind his back to a West Virginia player breaking for the basket half the length of the court away. He scored. A few seconds later Hundley again had the ball. Bouncing it twice behind his back—left hand to right and vice-versa—he swept past a thoroughly fooled opponent, took off in a broad-jumper's leap, carried the ball twice around his body and fed a pass from behind his left ear.

One of Hot Rod's favorite tricks is to offer the ball to an opponent in his extended right hand and then, with a flick of the wrist, make it vanish behind his back, catching it there in his left hand. Sometimes he stands out of bounds with his back to the court and flips a pass to a teammate he can't possibly see. This year in West Virginia's upset over Richmond, Hundley began to freeze the ball in the final minutes. Three Richmond players went after him. To hold on to the ball, he rolled it over his shoulders and passed it back and forth between his hands behind his back. With the gun about to go off he tossed the ball 40 feet in the air and with a triumphant smile walked off.

For all his sureness on court, Rodney Clark Hundley (his nickname came naturally) is anything but settled in his non-athletic life, a fact that has caused some critics to prophesy that he will blow up long before he ever becomes the great player he should. At 20 he stands 6 feet 4 inches, weighs 185 pounds, smiles easily, wears his hair in a short cropped crew cut and looks every bit the ordinary basketball player. But the similarity ends there. Twice in two years, both in September, Hot Rod has simply disappeared from the West Virginia campus. The first time he went to Charleston to enroll in Morris Harvey College but returned in 24 hours. "A kind of a mood" is the only explanation he has ever given.

This fall, two days after school started, Hot Rod took off for Philadelphia to land a job with the professional Warriors. The NBA has a rule against signing college players before graduation but the Warrior's owner Eddie Gottlieb offered Hundley a chance with his other Philadelphia team, the Sphas, a second-rate barnstorming outfit. Hundley returned to Morgantown. He was away for 10 days, and only the fact that he had not officially withdrawn from the university made it possible for West Virginia to re-admit him.

One of Hundley's troubles is education. He agrees that it's necessary but isn't convinced it is for him. As a boy Hot Rod lived with friends of his family, his parents having been divorced, and the minimum requirements were enough for him. In his freshman year, Hot Rod cut classes with a nonchalance that bespoke utter indifference. He failed, naturally enough, and had to take five and a half hours' work a day, Saturdays and Sundays excluded, with no excused absences for 12 sultry weeks this summer. He passed, but it may have been that experience that drove him to Philadelphia.

Hot Rod was an all-state player three straight years in high school in Charleston. From one coast to the other, 48 colleges and universities took part in the bidding for his services. He chose North Carolina State because it was the "best basketball school in the country." But the NCAA ruled that State had given Hundley an illegal try-out and prohibited him from ever playing there. High-powered salesmanship subsequently drew him to West Virginia, where he gets a full athletic scholarship—room, board, tuition, books, fees and $15 a month for laundry.

Temperamental, often capricious and plagued perhaps, by a feeling of insecurity, Hot Rod seems to get his real release in basketball. Once he's on the court he is the soul of confidence.

"What's the field house record for points?" he asked before a game with the Ohio University freshmen last year.

"Fifty points," said the student manager.