Sport: Court Commandos

The worst college basketball team in the U.S. is probably the University of Chicago’s: it has lost 55 of its last 56 games.

The best high-school basketball team in the U.S. may well be the “Commandos” of Chicago’s Marshall High School − a junior team. Last week the west side Chicagoans won their 94th straight game.

This sensational record has been made with few stars stars−1939’s team, which started the winning streak, has long since passed to the draft boards. The real explanation : tough players, a tougher coach.

Marshall’s toughness begins with a thundering, all-out attack. The boys are no taller than 5 ft. 7 in., but they have been got into walloping condition by tall, dark Coach Louis Weintraub, who toured Japan with Michigan’s championship basketball team in 1929. He calls his squad the “Commando Class” and puts it through such daily musts as 20 chin-ups, 75 pushups, 30 dips on the parallel bars and a 20-ft. pole climb in less than ten seconds without using the legs.

After such treatment, 40 minutes of brawling basketball is sport. Last week Coach Weintraub’s rowdies slapped Tuley High School around, 32-10-21, to win their fifth West section championship in Chicago’s High School League. The Commandos are still far behind Passaic (N.J.) High School’s 20-year-old record of 159 straight games, but they seem dead certain to end the season with 100.