FIVE LEAVES ON HARD THREE GAME SCHEDULE

Three days of hard sledding lie ahead of the basketball team as they leave Cambridge this afternoon for their initial encounter of the season with Rhode Island State at Kingston, Rhode Island. Play will begin at 7:30 o'clock this evening.

After the game tonight the Crimson hoopsters will return to Cambridge in preparation for their clash with Boston University, which will be played at B. U. tomorrow night. Friday will offer a brief period of respite to the Feslermen as they travel to Philadelphia where they will meet the University of Pennsylvania in the opening game of their Eastern Intercollegiate League schedule.

Veteran Team

Coach Fesler, who saw his team steadily improve last year until capable at the end of the season, of meeting league teams on even ground, will start practically a veteran team against Frank Keaney's Rhode Island aggregation. "Lupe" Lupien, the only sophomore to break into the starting lineup, will play at guard position with Verne Struck. George Lowman and Lewis McGowan will start the game at the forward posts, while Captain Bill Gray returned from a short illness, will first see action at the center position tonight.

In the season's opener last year the Rhode Island quintet ran the Crimson into the ground, to defeat the varsity hoopsters by a score of 44-28. But it should be a different story this year as in recent practice scrimmages the Crimson five has been handling the ball as well as they did at any time last season. Nevertheless, Coach Fesler predicts a hard fought game, and gives his team no edge over the home quintet.

Traditional Sport

Basketball is the traditional sport at Rhode Island where practice has been under way all fall. Frank Keaney's teams play hard ball, using a man to man defense and employing the fast break. This is the type of competition with which the Crimson will be faced in most of the major games.

Rhode Island, however, presents a peculiar problem in that the Keaneymen use a man to man defence on the entire floor instead of dropping back into defense position once they have lost the ball. They are one of the two or three teams in the country which use this system of defense. The Crimson, on the other hand, falls back into the more conventional defense position and uses a rotating offense instead of the break.

Fesler's reserve quintet finds Herrick at center, Snell and White at guard, and Shirk and Kuhn, who has recently replaced Beckel, at the forward posts. Beckel, however, along with Grondahl will stand ready to replace one of the above men should occasion arise