Last Monday, Norman, W. Shepard started separating the sheep from the goats. So far, he has found no goats. This doesn't surprise the new varsity basketball coach a bit, for, as he says, "I pretty much figured all along that I'd have to be starting from scratch."

Shepard is a little man with a big job. Starting last Monday, five-foot, seven Inch Shepard climbed upstairs from the bare type of office the H.A.A. is prone to give its coaches in the Indoor Athletic Building, and began sorting out fifty competent larger varsity candidates. So far," he says, rustling a typewritten varsity roster, "I don't even know their names. I'll just have to drill them every day until I know what they can do."

Mr. Shepard has done quite a bit himself. He played basketball for North Carolina "quite a while back" and managed to pick up a graduate degree in Business Administration while he was at it. After a year of coaching, Shepard headed west to "sell tobacco to the Chinese." The temptation to use this degree was too much for him.

He stayed out in the Orient for five years, taking in both China and the Philippines. In between tobacco deals, he found the East had developed considerable interest in basketball. Shepard played a little himself to keep his hand in, and in 1926 he took out enough time from weed-peddling to coach the Chinese Olympic basketball squad.

Shepard came home in 1929 and started coaching again, teaching fast-break ball to southern teams until he wound up at Davidson College in North Carolina. It was here that the long frantic arm of H.A.A. Director William J. Bingham '16 fell on his shoulder. "I was proud to get a chance to coach at Harvard," says Shepard. "You may not realize it now but back when I was playing, Harvard had an athletic reputation, too I haven't forgotten that."

The new coach is also pretty proud of his executive officer. Shepard's assistant is a tall blond Dartmouth man called Floyd Wilson, who also has served a stretch in the Orient. He played basketball for Marine teams in China in 1945. His present job is to break Shepard into the intricacies of Eastern intercollegiate League Ball; in about two weeks Wilson will take over the freshman team. Shepard says "I needed someone who had played the northeastern circuit."

Shepard thinks his new team ought to do a little better than last year's three-up and 20-down wonders. He leans back, grins, and says "I might as well make the usual coach's comment. Things look encouraging." Shepard is going to teach his boys, the same fast-break type of ball he played himself; his schedule is a "reasonably tough one."

"Basketball is a big game," he says. "I hope I do a good enough job here so that they'll come out and watch it."