It's possible that I have my wires crossed here; possibly I have the documentation and source versions out-of-sync. But, 'here goes' !
I had to modify an xml and a jsp to get the players.jsp to load properly( chapter 9. My changes are as follows. Hope it helps someone else.
change players.jsp to:
<%@ page import="net.sf.hibernate.*" %>
change hibernate-service.xml to:
net.sf.hibernate.cache.HashtableCacheProvider
Happy Hibernating!