The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, October 04, 2002, Page 8, Image 8
8 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, October 4, 2002 ^ 1 (yjyj p g ^ ipjpDULE
■ "V ■ 'V r | 'l / ^ WOMEN’S GOLF at Lady Tar Heels Invitational in Chapel Hill, N.C.,
CONTACT I TS I_} m I I F I WOMEN’S TENNIS in Lady Gamecock Classic, Friday-Sunday
I I ■ I ^ I . WOMEN’S SOCCER at Kentucky, 7:30 p.m. Friday
Story ideas? Questions? Comments? I ^ F B B ILl VOLLEYBALL at Arkansas, 8 p.m. Friday
E-mailusatgamecocksports@hotmail.com ■ B B FW FOOTBALL vs. Mississippi State, 1 p.m. Saturday
HOMECOMING
PHOTO BY TRAVIS LYNN/THE GAMECOCK
Corey Jenkins, right, and the USC football team will play Mississippi State this Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium. To see
who has the edge in the Homecoming matchup, visit www.daiiygamecock.com.
USC returns to Wilhams-Brice
Mississippi State
at USC
1 p.m. Saturday
Williams-Brice Stadium
Radio: WTCB '106.7
BY BRAD SENKIW
THE OAMBG0CK
This weekend’s theme at USC
is Homecoming, and being back
at Carolina might be just what the
Gamecock football team needs.
The Mississippi State Bulldogs
are set to come into Williams
Brice Stadium on Saturday for
what figures to be a game be
tween two SEC opponents look
ing to gain momentum.
USC has won the last two
meetings between the schools, in
cluding last year’s first national
college football game after Sept.
11. The Gamecocks won the game
16-14 behind fullback Andrew
Pinnock’s 93 yards rushing.
In 2000, Carolina had a his
toric second-half comeback in
which backup quarterback Erik
Kimrey threw a touchdown to
Jermale Kelly for the 23-19 win.
USC (3-2,1-1 SEC) will be with
out several starters this week,
however, as the offensive line
fights injuries and linebacker
Lance Laury is out with a knee
injury. Darel Slay will fill in for
Laury, and the offensive line will
rotate several players off the
bench.
USC head coach Lou Holtz
knows that injuries could play
an important role in the outcome
of Saturday’s game.
“Looking at Mississippi
State, they have always played
us very well in the past, but they
present more problems this
year then ever before,” he said.
“You know (MSU defensive co
ordinator) Joe Lee Dunn is go
ing to come at you from every
angle possible.
“We have been fortunate the
last two years to have some sem
blance of an offense with experi
enced people. Now, we have to
replace three people on the of
fensive line, and going up
against them seems a bit unfair.
Pass protection and running
with 60 percent of a new offen
sive line is difficult.”
The Bulldogs (1-3,0-2) are com
ing off consecutive losses against
SEC West opponents LSU and
Auburn. LSU rolled over them
last week with a 31-13 victory
that included a 256-yard rushing
day for the Tigers. Mississippi
State’s quarterback Kevin Fant
managed only 122 yards and
threw two interceptions.
But MSU comes into the sea
son with the second-best pass de
fense in the conference and the
fifth-best in the nation. Its vaunt
ed defensive corps is led by
linebacker Mario Haggan, who
leads the team with 56 tackles.
“They are one of the top pass
defenses in the conference,” Holtz
said. “That is for two reasons:
They get tremendous pressure
and have good cover people.”
The Bulldogs offense is led by
the passing game, which aver
ages 239 yards per outing —
fourth in the SEC.
Holtz also knows that stop
ping the pass will be tough.
“Offensively, I think it is a bet
ter offensive team with Kevin
Fanf at quarterback,” he said. “He
“Pass protection and
running with 60 percent
of a new offensive line
is difficult.”
LOU HOLTZ
use FOOTBALL HEAD COACH
is a tall guy with a very good
touch.
“They have two great re
ceivers in Terrell Grindle and
Justin Jenkins. (Justin) Griffith
is their fullback and a very excel
lent receiver out of the backfield.”
Mississippi State head coach
Jackie Sherrill feels his team has
not played consistently this sea
son and knows that is part of
their struggle.
“We have not played 60 min
utes yet,” Sherrill said. “We have
played for two or three quarters,
but not a full 60 minutes. The
consistency is just not there for
us yet.”
Saturday’s game is scheduled
for a 1 p.m. kickoff at Williams
Brice Stadium.
“It’s good to be back home,”
Holtz said.
Comments on this story?E-mail
gamecocksports@hotmail.com
Sorting the unemployed MLB managers
MATT ROTHENBERG
GAMECOCKSPORTS@HOTMAIL.COM
No skipper’s job is safe
when his team doesn’t
perform well enough.
It’s that time of the year again
in the world of Major League
Baseball — the time when more
I heads start rolling than did in
revolutionary France — and I’m
not talking about some New York
Mets’ reactions to marijuana, ei
ther.
Rather, what I’d like to discuss
are the recent firings of numerous
MLB managers, such as the Mets’
BODDy vaienune
to the Rangers’
Jerry Narron.
This season, there
have been 14 man
agers let go, in
cluding three in
terims, and that
number may
Valentine grow yet. You see,
the managers can
be separated into different cate
gories depending on the reason
for their dismissal.
For starters, there are the man
agers fired for being on a losing
team filled with guys who are ei
ther washed-up major leaguers or
glorified minor leaguers. Usually,
there are one or two veritable All
Stars, but, for the most part, these
clubs are hopeless and usually
end up in last place.
This is a sad group that in
cludes Tampa Bay’s Hal McRae,
the Brewers’ Jerry Royster and
Detroit’s Luis Pujols. All three of
their teams played pathetically
over the course of the season, and
all finished with the three worst
records in baseball. While just a
minor facet of his demise, Pujols
got royally screwed when his best
pitcher, Jeff Weaver, was dealt to
the Yankees for nothing.
True, while they are members
of “small market” franchises, all
three teams were realistically, if
not mathematically, eliminated
from the playoffs before the All
Star Break. Even the Tigers and
Brewers rid themselves of their
original managers — Phil Gamer
and Davey Lopes —when man
agement knew the future looked
bleak.
Next, there are the managers
who get the hook when their
teams, an amalgamation of high
ly talented, generally overpaid
stars, end up looking worse on the
field than they do on paper. When
these clubs underachieve, it is a
sure bet that the manager is go
ing to get the pink slip.
Sure enough, Valentine and
Narron received theirs this week.
The Mets, who went on a spend
ing spree last winter, got poor sea
sons from guys like Jeromy
Burnitz, Roger Cedeno, and
Robbie Alomar among others. In
Texas, Narron got a great year
from A-Rod, but not much else
from the rest of the team — no
one had more than nine stolen
bases all season.
When Kenny
Rogers is your
best pitcher, you
know you have
problems.
Perhaps both of
these managers
didn’t deserve all
the blame, for a lot Rogers
of it should go to
both their players as well as front
offices. When a team spends mon
ey, it’s best to spend it wisely. But
who knew? Most of the time, it’s
the manager whose job is finished.
Then there’s Bruce Kimm, for
merly the interim skipper for the
Chicago Cubs. He falls into the
category of “the manager who
was put into a situation where the
organization just needed some
one decent to run the team for the
remainder of the season to ensure
a finish higher than last place.”
He’ll surely get another posi
tion within the Cubs organiza
tion, but with parts of the team
performing well and others not,
Kimm’s departure was almost as
sured of happening.
Another category is those man
agers who see their season end by
July or even sooner. Eight skippers
got that treatment this year. The
list includes Don Baylor (Chicago
Cubs), Lopes (Milwaukee), Gamer
(Detroit), Tony Muser (Kansas
City), Charlie Manuel (Cleveland),
Buck Martinez (Toronto), Buddy
Bell (Colorado) and Joe Kerrigan
(Boston).
Most of these dismissals real
ly came as little or no surprise to
anyone. Most of these clubs were
performing poorly in the first few
months of the season and some,
like Muser, were running low on
remaining chances to get the
most from a team that was never
expected to be a serious con
tender in the first place.
The Blue Jays and Indians,
though, still finished respectably,
and the managerial changes were
likely motivational if anything.
Kerrigan falls into a rare class,
though. He was fired during
spring training and replaced by
Indians’ coach Grady Little. Not
many managers are let go during
March, but the new Red Sox own
ership had other ideas. After ex
general manager Dan Duquette
was let go, there were few people
who thought the owners would al
low Kerrigan to stay.
Despite finishing in second
place this season under Little,
Boston should have given more
of an opportunity to Kerrigan,
who was the interim manager at
the end of 2001. It’s hard to spec
♦ ROTHENBERG, SEE PAGE 9
Men’s soccer
gets another
shot at Tigers
Gamecocks haven’t beaten
their archrival since 1995
LJ
at No. 11 USC
2 p.m. Sunday
The Graveyard
BY KYLE ALMOND
THE OAMECOCK
The USC men’s soccer team, for
all its success the past decade,
hasn’t beaten Clemson in seven
years.
But history doesn’t matter to
Carolina goalkeeper Michael
Bachmeyer.
“Every year is different,”
Bachmeyer said. “Our team is dif
ferent than it was last year; their
team is different. Yeah, we think
about it, but I think we’ve put that
by us and are focused on this year.”
A wise choice, considering USC
has lost six matches and tied one
since winning 3-2 in 1995. The
Tigers have owned the Gamecocks
both in Clemson and Columbia,
and they’re looking to keep things
status quo Sunday when the rivals
meet at the Graveyard for their an
nual matchup.
Making the game even more in
triguing, both teams are having
great seasons. The Tigers (6-1-1)
are ranked ninth in the country
by the NSCAA, and the
Gamecocks (7-1-1) are ranked 11th.
USC was ranked third in that
poll before losing its first game of
the season this past weekend. The
Gamecocks fell 1-0 at Davidson on
Sunday.
“Davidson’s a tough team;
they’re always tough to play at
home,” Bachmeyer said. “We had
the better end of the play, and we
had our chances ... but they put
one away, and that’s just how soc
cer goes. It was unfortunate. Guys
were disappointed, but I think it
helped to refocus the team.”
Head coach Mark Berson also
hopes the team has learned a valu
able lesson from the Davidson de
feat.
“The key to that game is going
to be the key to this game on
Sunday,” Berson explained. “I
thought we created enough good
A-* _ _
w Will U1C
game, but we
weren’t able to fin
ish. And that’s a
very important fac
tor — we have to
be able to finish.”
Carolina re
ueiveu <x uttgc l/xvxw
this week when Berson
one of its top fin
ishers, transfer forward Ricky
Quest, quit the team for personal
reasons. Quest, the former Junior
College Player of the Year, was the
team’s third-leading scorer.
“Everybody was pretty shocked
at first,” Bachmeyer said of the
team’s reaction. “But I think ev
erybody has refocused and real
ized that, hey, we have to go on
without him.”
Berson said: “Everyone has to
pick up the slack a little bit.
Everyone has to work harder.
This happens, whether it’s
through injury or anything else —
through the course of the season,
you very rarely finish the year
with everybody intact.”
Berson said the losing streak,
along with any psychological edge
the Tigers might have on his team,
isn’t the main thing he’s worried
about.
“We have a lot of young players,
and I think our concern at this
point is that some of our players
♦ SOCCER, SEE PAGE 9
SEC FOOTBALL
Dye: Georgia can’t
slow down Alabama
(AP) — Just in case the hype for
Saturday’s Georgia-Alabama
game wasn’t hot enough, former
Auburn coach Pat Dye fanned the
flames — and then some — during
a radio interview earlier this week
in Birmingham, Ala.
Rather than just stop at pre
dicting that host No. 22-ranked
Alabama (4-1,1-0 SEC) would beat
seventh-ranked Georgia (4-0,1-0)
in their SEC showdown, Dye
launched this missive: “I don’t be
lieve Georgia’s man enough to
beat Alabama.”
Dye repeated that statement
twice when prodded by radio host
Paul Finebaum, the Columbus
(Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer reported
Wednesday.
“Alabama is gonna line up and
run the football and they’re gonna
play defense and I don’t believe
Georgia is man enough to beat
that,” Dye said.
The words hit Georgia players
like a sledgehammer.
“Wow! That one hurts,” senior
offensive tackle Jon Stinchcomb
told the Ledger-Enquirer on
Tuesday. “That’s a bold state
ment. I guess we’ll find out
Saturday. It stings a little bit
when you hear your team is not
man enough. That has some bite
to it.”
Added defensive end David
Pollack: “The former head coach
for Auburn said that? That’s in
teresting. He’s not dressing out, is
he?”
“There’s a million coaches out
there in the stands who don’t dress
out and think they know what
they’re talking about,” Pollack
told the newspaper. “Everybody
is entitled to their opinion. We’ll
see what he says afterward.”
Dye, a former Georgia player,
could not be reached for further
comment by the Ledger-Enquirer
on Tuesday. His remarks were the
basis for the first question for
Georgia head coach Mark Richt at
his weekly press conference
Tuesday.
“That would be good stuff (for
the bulletin board),” Richt said
with a smile.
Dye said the Bulldogs’ most re
spected opponents thus far,
Clemson and South Carolina,
“ain’t close to what Alabama is,
and those were both close football
games.”
♦ SEC, SEE PAGE 9
Standings
eastern conf. overall
Florida 2-0 4-1
Georgia 1-0 4-0
use 1-1 3-2
Kentucky 0-1 _ 4-1
Tennessee 0-1 3-1
Vanderbilt 0-3 1-4
WESTERN CONF. OVERALL
Auburn 2-0 4-1
Alabama 1-0 4-1
Ole Miss 1-0 3-1
LSU 1-0 3-1
Arkansas 0-1 2-1
Miss. St. 0-2 1-3