Odd Assortment

Who ever heard of Florindo ("Porky") Vieira? Not the basketball fans who only bother with big-time games and big-name colleges. But the students of Connecticut's Quinnipiac College (enrollment 800) insist that their chunky, 5-ft-6-in. sharpshooter is one of the best roundball players in captivity. Last week Porky boasted an average of 35 points per game, a healthy five points ahead of such highly touted major-college players as Kansas' Wilt Chamberlain and South Carolina's Grady Wallace. In the national standings, only West Virginia Tech's Kenny Hammond ranked higher (36.1 points per game), and who ever heard of him?

Some such local hotshots fatten parochial pride for a season or two, then fade away. Only a few of the home-town heroes still look like heroes when the big-time tournaments begin. As tournament time approached last week, there was a good-sized batch of local stars whose talents raised them above purely local acclaim. The standouts made up an odd package of assorted shapes and sizes. Some of them: A sophomore, he is more than a match for the gangling giants he plays against. With his twisting one-hand jump shot Don easily earned the Most Valuable Player award at this winter's Orange Bowl tournament, almost alone has boosted Pitt to a 13-9 record. Wallace (6-ft.-4-in.) is a modest graduate of the Kentucky coal-mining country. All season long he has been scrapping with Wilt Chamberlain and Chet Forte for big-college scoring honors, while his exasperated coach keeps urging him to shoot more often. But Grady prefers to feed the ball to his teammates. When he does decide to cut loose, he can connect from outside as well as from under-the-basket melees.

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