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Show .tP&hlNG Released by Western Newspaper Union. ATIDWEST sports writers ran completely out of adjectives recently re-cently when the University of Illinois basketball team rearranged Western conference records to their own liking. lik-ing. The "Whiz Kids" from Illinois left little doubt that they comprise the greatest basketball aggregation not only in the extremely basketball-conscious basketball-conscious Midwest but possibly in the nation. Keepers of Big Ten conference records were kept busy for days cutting new stencils for the books. Every important scoring mark compiled com-piled since the Western conference began official play in 1906 was boosted boost-ed to new all-time heights by the more than terrific Illini and their amazing forward, Andy Phillip. New Targets When Illinois beat Chicago 92 to 25 in their final conference game, they blasted 11 records, sweeping the platter clean and establishing a set of standards which probably will defy conference cagers for a long t-r Nsa A: i r l V s ' " j '" 'i i 5 v ZA ! f ' Y 3 : v "j ANDY PHILLIP time to come. Phillip, who already had smashed numerous records, added five more. The performance of the Illini is all the more remarkable because they tore up basketball records in a season limited to 12 games because of wartime transportation restrictions. restric-tions. Many of the marks Phillip and the team broke in their 12 games bad been made last season over a 15-game campaign. Phillip's new records: He scored 40 points on 18 goals and eight free throws for a 12-game total of 255. Former high was Chuck Carney's collection of 188 for Illinois in 1920. For the 15-game schedule, the record was 242, set by Johnny Kotz of Wisconsin in 1942. His 16 goals against Chicago topped the previous high of 13 in a single game. His 40 points erased Bill Hapac's 34-point record in a single conference confer-ence game, set in 1940 against Minnesota. Min-nesota. Two-Year Total He broke Illinois' three-year record, rec-ord, set in 1920-21-22 by Carney, 398 points. Phillip compiled a two-year total of 414. In 12 games Phillip broke Kotz's field goal record for a 15-game schedule. The Wisconsin star had 95 last year and Phillip boosted his total to 111. Against Chicago Andy made more field goals than any other player ever made before in the Big Ten. He made 16 and eight free throws. Only five men had ever been able to make as many as 13 baskets before. Team records were: The "Whiz Kids" broke their own record for field goals in a single game, 38 against Northwestern, by plumping in 41 against Chicago's Maroons. The Illini total of 755 points for a season topped the old mark of 721 established by Iowa last year in 15 games. The 92 points against Chicago was six better than the mark set a few days previously against Northwestern. Northwest-ern. Illinois' 325 field goals for a season sea-son shattered Indiana's 288 mark set last year in 15 games. Bottleneck In fact, of the long list of scoring records, both team and individual, the only one that Illinois failed to crack in 1943 is the one which reads: Most points one game two teams. And the only reason they failed to crack that was the fact that their opponents weren't able to co-operate. As it was, they missed tying it only by two points in their 86-44 root of Northwestern when the total score read 130. The record is 132. Just to make it unanimous, the final game saw the Maroons from Chicago drop their 39th consecutive conference i'ame, a mark they have been shattering every time they played a game. In that particular game, Phillip had 20 points at half time when the Illini led, 40 to 17. Seven minules of the game remained when he shattered shat-tered the individual single game scoring record. |