The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, March 07, 2001, Page 10, Image 10
Gamecock Sports Schedule
■ Men’s tennis vs. Clemson, 2 p.m. Wednesday
■ Baseball vs. Furman, 7 p.m. Wednesday
■ Men’s basketball vs. Mississippi State at SEC Tournament in
Nashville, Tenn., 3:15 p.m. Thursday
USC fighting injuries, Bulldogs
■ 'Banged-up' Gamecocks preparing to face
Miss. State in first round of SEC Tournament
by Kyle Almond
The Gamecock
Less than a week after meeting in the final game
of the regular season, the USC Gamecocks and the
Mississippi State Bulldogs will go at it again Thursday
in the opening round of the SEC Tournament in
Nashville, Tenn.
The Bulldogs (16-11,7-9 SEC) held off the
Gamecocks (14-13, 6-10) on Saturday 77-73 in
Starkville, Miss., and earned the No. 4 seed in the West
division. For the Gamecocks, the East’s No. 5 seed, it
was the 11 th loss this season by eight points or fewer.
“Our team continues to have injury problems,”
USC head coach Eddie Fogler said Monday. “Aaron
Lucas, who did not play Saturday, will not practice this
week. Hopefully, he can play on Thursday. Tony
Kitchings has a strained arch and will not practice today.
Of course, we have not had (Chuck) Eidson or Travis
Kraft for basically the whole SEC season. So we’re
still banged up and look forward to trying to beat
Mississippi State after a close loss Saturday.”
Without Lucas, who injured his foot at Georgia on
Feb. 24, the Gamecocks are a team without depth,
especially at point guard. Before Lucas’ injury, Fogler
said he thought his team was a “ball-handler shy.” With
Lucas on the bench, his team becomes two ball-handlers
shy, and freshman Michael Boynton is left to play a
significant amount of minutes.
“No question, without Lucas, it hurts [USC],”
Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury said.
However, the Bulldogs’ coach remains wary of Carolina.
“I know that takes away some depth as far as having
backups, and no question, Lucas is an excellent player,
but USC is an excellent basketball team, and we are
still going to have to play our best to beat them,”
Stansbury said. “You skip their record when you
look at them because they’ve lost some very difficult
basketball games. They’ve got a quality basketball team,
and we will we have to play awfully well to win again.”
■ LOCATION:
Gaylord Entertainment Center,
Nashville, Tenn.
- ■ TIME: 3:15 p.m. EST Thursday
■ TV: Jefferson-Pilot Sports
■ RECORDS: USC (14-13, 6-10
SEC), Miss. State (15-11, 7-9)
With their win over USC on Saturday, the Bulldogs
have now won four of the past five games. Stansbury
thinks his team can make the NCAA Tournament
and get an at-large bid with two wins in the SEC
Tournament.
For USC to get into the “Big Dance,” it will have
to win the SEC tournament and earn the automatic
bid. With a second-round game against Kentucky
looming should they get past Mississippi State, the
Gamecocks would have to pull off some upsets.
More likely for Carolina is a shot at the NIT
Tournament. Since the NCAA Tournament was
expanded to 64 teams in 1985,20 of the 22 SEC teams
that finished with losing conference records but at .500
or better overall have received an NIT bid.
The Gamecocks have had trouble winning close
games this season and have lost five of their last six
games by a total of 18 points.
Basketball see page ti
Sean Rayford/The Gamecock
The Gamecocks might be without the services of starting point guard Aaron
Lucas for the SEC Tournament. Lucas is nursing a foot injury.
USC Baseball: Getting Back to Basics
*• *
Travis Lynn/The Gamecock
Steve Thomas and No. 6 USC look to get back on the winning track against Furman Wednesday.
Baseball team regroups
after first loss of season
by Kevin Turner
The Gamecock
Though the USC baseball team is
coming off its first loss of the season
against arch rival Clemson, it has
learned to move on and take the season
one game at a time..
“You can’t dwell on what
happened last week against Clemson,”
junior outfielder Marcus McBeth said.
“You just have to focus on the game
at hand, and that’s against Furman.”
Tonight, the Furman Paladins (11
6) travel to Saige Frye Field to take
on the sixth-ranked Gamecocks (13
1).
The scheduled starter for USC
will be freshman left-hander David
Marchbanks, who has already recorded
a win earlier this season and is 1 -0 on
the year. In 8 1/3 innings against
Geoige Mason, Marchbanks gave up
only four hits and one earned run while
striking out four. He seems content
to take a more cautious approach to
the game and allow his teammates to
do their part to help.
“I’m just going to throw strikes
and keep my pitches low so they hit
it on the ground and just let the defense
do the work,” Marchbanks said.
Looking to silence the Gamecock
bats will be right-hander John
Stallsmith (2-0). In 15 innings of work,
the sophomore has been lit up for
10 runs but has compiled 12 strikeouts.
Despite an ERA of 6.00, head coach
Ray Tanner and company aren’t going
to take Stallsmith and the rest of the
Paladins lightly.
“Stallsmith has been very
productive early in the season,” Tanner
said. “I think he’s been one of the
hottest pitchers for his team so far.
It’s also an in-state rivalry, and I know
that they would like nothing more
than to knock us out of the top ten.
“Our work is going to be cut out
for us. We need to play well and we
■ LOCATION:
Sarge Frye Field,
Columbia, S.C.
■ TIME: 7 p.m.
Wednesday
■ RADIO: WVOC 540 AM
■ RECORDS: Furman
(11-6), USC (13-1)
need to come up with some big hits.”
Though the Gamecocks had won
12 games in a row before splitting a
weekend series with Clemson, Tanner
Baseball see page n
Around the SEC
Kentucky faces harsh
penalties from NCAA
■ Investigation finds
more than three dozen
recruiting violations
by Kyle Almond
The Gamecock
An internal investigation has found
that Kentucky’s football program
violated more than three dozen NCAA
rules dating back to February 1999.
School officials submitted a 35-page
report to the NCAA on Thursday
outlining the rules violations, and the
NCAA’s Committee on Infractions now
has the final say on any penalties and
sanctions.
The investigation didn’t find that
former head coach Hal Mumme had
any knowledge of the violations, though
the report cited Mumme for “failure to
exercise appropriate control of the
football program.”
Musi ui me
scandal involves
former UK
assistant coach
Claude Bassett,
who was also the
team’s recruiting
coordinator. Bassett
was forced to
resign in No
vember when it
was discovered
that he had inappropriately cashed a
check from a booster that was meant
for Mumme’s football camp.
After resigning, Bassett admitted
in a television interview that he sent
$ 1,400 in money orders to a Memphis,
Tenn., high school coach. It was later
found that the money was a gift to
influence the coach to send players to
Kentucky.
The investigation also discovered
that Bassett wrote a paper for a current
Wildcat player, cashed another booster’s
check for himself and inappropriately
paid for lodging and meals for several
prospective recruits, their families and
coaches.
“We found that a majority of the
allegations in this report are the result
of one person’s misdeeds,” assistant
athletics director for compliance Sandy
Bell said. “This is not a person who did
not know the rules. This is a person who
knew the rules probably better than any
person I’ve ever worked with.”
The school has imposed penalties
on itself already, including a reduction
in the number of initial scholarships it
offers and a reduction in the number of
permissible football coaches they can
recruit off-campus in a given week.
However, the NCAA will have the final
word.
Elsewhere around the SEC:
Georgia: It’s been a great week for
Kelly Miller.
The Lady Bulldogs’ senior guard
hit the game-winning basket in the SEC
Championship game Sunday, and this
past Wednesday, she was named SEC
Player of the Year for the second season
in a row.
The senior guard from Rochester,
Minn., doesn’t even lead her own team
in scoring. That would be her twin sister,
Coco. But according to Georgia head
coach Andy Landers, it’s the intangibles
and a well-rounded game that make
Kelly Miller such a force.
“She may be the best listener that
I have ever coached,” Landers said.
“You go in at halftime and say that we
have to rebound, and she will come out
in the second half and get five or six
rebounds. You go in and say you have
to go out and disrupt to knock down
some balls, and she is going to go out
and deflect and steal the basketball.
“People don’t know how much
slippage there is from a timeout. Fifty
percent of the time you get up from
doing something very simple in the
timeout, the kids walk on the floor and
don’t remember it. She does. All of
those things, and her desire to want to
do the best she can do and to please, has
made her the player that she is.”
Kelly and Coco Miller were named
to the All-SEC first team along with
LSU’s Marie Ferdinand, Florida’s Brandi
McCain, Mississippi State’s LaToya
Thomas, Vanderbilt’s Zuzana Klimesova
and Chatelle Anderson, and three
Tennessee players — Kara Lawson,
Gwen Jackson and Michelle Snow.
USC’s Teresa Geter and Shaun
SEC SEE PAGE H
Sports Commentary
America
gives no
respect
to soccer
That s it. I’m
fed up. I’m
tired of
soccer getting no
respect in America 4
Just hours after
the United States
won a historic
World Cup Kyle Almond
qualifier against is a second-year
Mexico this past journalism major.
Wednesday night, He can be reached
I was forced to sit Vja e.maj| at
through an entire gamecocksports®
half-hour of hotmail.com.
SportsCenter just
to see a single ,
highlight of the
game. In the meantime, someone in the
high offices of ESPN thought it would be
more important for me to watch highlights
of such meaningful games as the Coyotes
Islanders and the Nuggets-Clippers.
Though I don’t like it very much,
the press coverage, or lack thereof, sends
a message loud and clear: no one here
gives a damn about soccer.
What a shame. Everyone’s missing
out on one of the greatest sports in the
world.
Many Americans nave tins stereotype
of soccer, that it’s a bunch of little prissy
girlie-men scampering around the fielff
kicking around a ball for an hour and a
half with no real direction.
That’s a bunch of crap. Soccer is one
of the most intense sports out there, and
its athletes are tough, physical and
definitely better-conditioned than your
average baseball player.
Contrary to popular belief, soccer is
a contact sport. Guys get taken out left
and right in battles for ball possession and
field position. Players do get hurt. Anyone
see Brian McBride’s eye in the Mexico
game? Mike Tyson couldn’t have caused
an eye to swell like that. Whtch a game
and see how many times players hit the
deck. There are no girlie-men here.
And unlike football, players getting
tackled in soccer don’t get a break. In
most cases, players don’t even a see a
substitution and are forced to play the
entire 90 minutes. Timeouts? Not in
soccer. Players have to get up, shake
off the tackle and continue to play.
Soccer players have just as much skill
as players from other sports. Rickey
Henderson is fast, but Brazil’s Roberto
Carlos is just as fast, and he has to outrun
people with a ball at his feet Brett Favre’s
got tremendous field vision, but so does
Portugal’s Luis Figo, and he doesn’t have
an offensive line protecting him. Chris
Pronger is a tenacious defender, but so
is Holland’s Edgar Davids, and he doesn’t
have a stick to aid his cause. Think Jason
Kidd’s passes are accurate? England
midfielder David Beckham’s crosses are
just as accurate, and they make 11 players
look foolish, not just five. Soccer’s best
stacks up with anyone else’s.
Even off the field, soccer holds more
than its own in comparison with other
sports.
boccer tans arouna me woria are truly
in love with their teams. They live and
die with their team — literally and
figuratively. Riots erupt over games. Fans
from opposing teams clash, sometimes
violendy. Duriitg last season’s UEFA Cup,
a pair of supporters from Leeds United
were stabbed in Turkey by some fans of
Galatasaray.
So next time you call youiself a loyal
fan, ask yourself if you’d be willing to
take a knife for your team. Would you
die for your team?
Despite all this, most American sports
fans don’t seem to pay much attention
to soccer. Whether it’s because they don’t
understand the game or because they’re
skeptical of any sport where you can’t
use your hands, Americans fail to give
soccer a second look. As a result, when
the Wbrld Cup comes around, the United
States takes a beating. In the last World
Cup, we finished an embarrassing last out
of 32 teams.
I thought all Americans wanted to
be No. 1. In the age of Dream Teams, I
Soccer see page h