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McPherson,Thompson, and Laakkonen pick up college women’s golf awards STAFF REPORTS USC women’s golfer Kristy McPherson has been named to the National Golf Coaches Association First Team All-America squad, the second-straight such honor for the award-winning golfer. McPherson, who led the Lady Gamecocks to the 2002 SEC Championship by winning her sec ond-consecutive individual SEC crown, becomes the first South Carolina women’s golfer ever to earn first team All-America honors on two occasions. McPherson, a junior, crushed the USC school record with a 73.92 stroke average and easily led the team with five Top 5, seven Top 10 and nine Top 20 finishes. She carded 14 rounds at or below par and had nine-consecutive finishes in the Top 10 during the season. For her career, McPherson has four career tournament titles - two more than any other Gamecock ever and four of the 15 total individual titles in USC history. She owns the USC top individual round, the 67 at last year’s SECs, and of the 30 all time individual rounds of 70 or bet ter, McPherson owns 12, including six this season. She has six of the 13 all-time USC rounds of 69 or bet ter. end also owns the USC and SEC Tournament all-time top two indi vidual tournament scores, 207 at last year’s SECs and 209 this season. She also has 12 of the 22 all-time Carolina tournament scores at 222 or better, five this season which in cludes four of the last five. USC women’s golfer Kacy Thompson has been selected to play on the NCAA All-Star Golf Team Asia tour, a month-long event high lighting some of the nation’s top women’s golfers. Thompson, a junior who helped lead USC to the 2002 SEC Championship, will spend four weeks in the Orient - the same tour that McPherson participated in last year. The team will convene in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., June 23, play in the NCAA All-Star Invitational college-am June 24, then leave for Tokyo, Japan June 26. The team will play in a series of tournaments against individuals in Korea. Tokyo, Japan, and in Hong Kong. Thompson finished the 2001-02 season with a 78.02 stroke average, playing in all 11 tournaments, in cluding the 2002 NCAA Championships. Thompson had four Top 20 finishes and two in the Top 10, which included a season-best fifth-place finish at the LSU/Cleveland Classic in Baton Rouge, La. Senior women’s golfer Reetta Laakkonen has been named to the National Golf Coaches Association Academic All-America team. Laakkonen, who recently com pleted her Carolina career, majored in sport and entertainment man agement at Carolina. Laakkonen had a 3.50 grade point average and also was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll for her efforts in the classroom. The Tampere, Finland native fin ished the year with a 78.36 stroke av erage and had one Top 20 finish on the year - an 18th place showing at the SEC Championships where she posted back-to-back career-low rounds of one under 71 to pace Carolina to the victory. Comments on this story?E-mail garmcocksports@hotmail.com Baseball CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 •The Carolina bats continued to falter off reliever J.D. Cockroft, who relieved Roberson in the seventh, and two more insurance runs made it a 4-1 Miami lead in the ninth in ning. George Huguet came out of the Miami bullpen to begin the ninth and was greeted with a double by Peters; the first Carolina hit since the third inning. Buscher followed with a single and a pinch-hit RBI double by Trey Dyson. Luke DeBold relieved Huguet and yielded a game tying pinch hit double by Garris Gonce. Cohn was pulled after a * Justin Harris bunt single in favor of Andrew Cohn. Cohn uncorked a wild pitch that scored Gonce, and a passed ball by Matienzo scored Harris to give USC a 6-4 lead while Drew Meyer stood at the plate with two outs. With the sellout crowd on their feet, John Wesley negotiated through a rocky ninth inning, al lowing two singles before retiring Burt on a foul pop to rightfielder Tim Seaton to earn his first win and send Carolina to the CWS for the first time in 17 years. Afterwards Meyer joked about the strange ninth inning, “I saw the ball go in between the guys legs and I iV~." SSP.«S>™ | PHOTO BY ROBERT GRUEN/THE GAMECOCK Justin Harris heads home with the sixth run of Sunday’s game. I said, ‘Okay, that works,” An emotional Tanner added, “As I always say, anything worth achiev ing is difficult to obtain.” Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com BRIEFLY USC alum scores goal in World Cup Former Gamecock Clint Mathis scored the lone goal in the United States’ 1-1 tie with host South Korea on Monday, keeping the United States’ hopes of advancing to the second round alive. Mathis scored a 24th-minute goal in his return to the lineup, after missing the 3-2 win over Portugal due to a knee injury. South Korea tied it in the 78th minute when sec ond-half substitute Ahn Jung-hwan outjumped defender Jeff Agoos to head in Lee Eul-yong’s free kick. South Korea and the United States are both 1-0-1 with four Points, following by Portugal (1-1), which has three after beating Poland 4-0, eliminating the Poles. The hosts lead Group D on goal dif ference, plus-2 to plus-1. With a tie or a win against the Poles on Friday, the United States would ensure its first trip to the sec ond round since 1994, when the World Cup was played in America. South Korea would advance with a tie against the Portuguese. Victim testifies in NFL rape case The woman who has accused Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Darrell Russell of videotaping her being raped by two of his friends testified Monday that she blacked out after Russell mixed her a drink, and vaguely remembers looking up at the red eye of a video camera. The testimony by the 27-year-old woman, who was dating Russell at the time of the alleged Jan. 31 rape, came on the first day of a prelimi nary hearing. Russell is charged with 25 felonies as an accomplice in the alleged attack. Police said they seized a video tape of the incident during a search of the Alameda house where Russell’s teammate, safety Eric Johnson, lived. Russell, a two-time Pro Bowl se lection who is serving a one-year NFL suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, has been free since posting bail. Under California law, Russell could be found guilty of crimes committed by either of his two friends if he did not intervene. Notre Dame beats FSU to advance to College World Series Freshman right-hander Chris Niesel allowed one run in eight in nings and Steve Sollmann drove in two runs as Notre Dame beat top seeded Florida State 3-1 Monday to reach the College World Series for the first time in 45 years. J.P. Gagne struck out the side in the ninth inning to pick up his sec ond save in the best-of-three super regional between two of the hottest teams in the country. Florida State, which finished the season 60-14, came into the weekend against the Irish with a 25-game winning steak. Notre Dame (49-16) has won 31 of its last 35 and a first-round game against Stanford as it heads for Omaha, Neb. The Irish were last in the CWS in 1957. The two teams combined for 31 runs and 55 hits in the first two games of the series, but pitching de cided Game 3. Niesel (4-0) struck out five and scattered six hits in eight innings, while Florida State’s Marc LaMacchia (11-2) gave up six hits and two earned runs before leaving with one out in the seventh. Sollmann singled in Notre Dame’s first run in the third inning and his sacrifice fly in the seventh scored the final Irish run. 1 ai