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14 GAME SCHEDULE MEN’S BASKETBALL vs. Clemson, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday WOMEN’S BASKETBALL at Georgia, 7 p.m. Thursday CONTACT US SOFTBALL vs. UCLA at Desert Classic Tournament in Las Vegas, noon Friday Story ideas? Questions? Comments? - BASEBALL vs. James Madison at Berkeley Co-op E-mail us at gamecocksports@hotmail.com Shootout in Charleston, 1:30 p.m. Friday Carolina to renew rivalry The Gamecocks look for their third straight victory over the struggling Clemson Tigers BY BRAD SENKIW THE GAMECOCK It might not be football season, but ten sions will run high tonight as USC’s archri val, Clemson, faces off against the Carolina men’s basketball team at the Carolina Center. The Gamecocks (8-9,2-7 SEC) are looking for two consecutive wins for the first time in more than a month when they go out of conference against the Tigers (12-7, 2-7 ACC). Carolina is coming off an 84-72 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday, which broke a sev en-game losing streak and provided the Gamecocks with their first road win of the season. Clemson will play its second straight game away from home after losing to the Duke Blue Devils 65-55 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C. Chey Christie led the way for Clemson with 17 points, 15 of which came in the first half. Edward Scott added 11 points and five assists, but it wasn’t enough to overpower the eighth-ranked team in the country. The defeat gave Clemson five losses in its last-six games. On the season, Scott leads the Tigers with 16.4 points and 6.1 assists per game. Christie follows Scott with 12 points per game. Sharrod Ford ranks third on the team in scoring with 9 points per contest and also grabs 7.5 rebounds per game. As a team, Clemson averages 70.2 points per game and gives up 66.2 points to its op ponents. The Tigers rank last in the con ference in free-throw percentage with 64.3 percent, but lead the league in shooting at 47.1 percent from the field. Clemson began the season with a nine game winning streak, but has dropped sev en of its past 10 games to place the team in a tie for last place in the ACC. The Gamecocks took last season’s match easily at Littlejohn Coliseum with an 81-59 victory. USC took control early in the game with a 22-4 run that gave the Gamecocks a 51-30 halftime lead. The Tigers could cut the margin only to 14, but Carolina went on a 13-4 run to seal the victory. Aaron Lucas led the Gamecocks with 20 points and Jamel Bradley added 18 points in last season’s victory over Clemson. The win marked the second straight for Carolina and the worst home loss for Clemson since Littlejohn opened in 1969. This season, USC looks to take its third straight game from the Tigers and is hold ing strong to a series lead of 84-68 against Clemson. Carolina leads 51-24 in games played in Columbia. The first meeting be tween the two schools took place in 1913, '.with the Gamecocks taking the victory 39-18 in Columbia. Odom has never lost to Tigers head coach Larry Shyatt and has won all seven meet ings by an average of 15 points. “We’re obviously heading into a non conference situation,” Odom said. “But it’s much more than that in this situation. We’re coming off a hard month. I don’t think the hard times are particularly over.” Odom was pleased to get the win at Vanderbilt, but thinks his team will face a tough game against the Tigers. “We’re coming off a good win against Vanderbilt,” Odom said. “We were able to do something that we hadn’t been able to do well, and that’s rebound. I think we were • very fortunate to win that game.” “It’s not unrealistic to believe that your team will begin to relax and find some re newed confidence,” Odom said. What hap pened in Nashville is great for us. But Clemson will have something to say about that.” The in-state rivalry tips off at 7:30 p.m. at the Carolina Center. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com FILE PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Chris Warren, who had 11 points and five assists In the Gamecocks’ win against Vanderbilt, and the men’s basketball team play Clemson tonight. FILE PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Koretha Johnson, left, and the Gamecocks travel to Athens, Ga., to take on the Georgia Bulldogs. Carolina is looking to even up the season series with UGA. BY NICK YOUNG THE GAMECOCK More than three weeks ago, the Carolina women’s basketball team (17-5, 5-4 SEC) came into a key match-up with the Lady Bulldogs of Georgia (16-5, 7-1) and was riding high with a 14-2 record. During that game, Georgia led most of the way and was leading by 13 at halftime. Carolina finally battled to get within one, but wouldn’t get any closer. Two Georgia i riursuay in Ainens. The first game left players and coach es perplexed, but it was just a bump in the road for the Gamecock women. The team has gone 3-2 since, with both losses to teams — Tennessee and LSU — that are ranked high in the Top 25. Fourteenth-ranked Georgia, on the oth er hand, has had a little better luck since its meeting with the Gamecocks. The team has gone 4-1, and its only loss was a 68-64 thriller against fourth-ranked LSU. During that span, Georgia beat 16th ranked Mississippi State by five points, as well as Kentucky, Auburn and Alabama. On Carolina’s side, many players will be key to the Gamecocks’ success. First and foremost is team leader Jocelyn Penn. Penn is currently the nation’s fourth-high est scorer and leads the SEC with 24.9 points per game. Penn is also looking to move up to fourth on USC’s all-time lead ing scoring list. She is currently in fifth place with 1,769 points. Schonna Banner, with 1,791 points, is ahead of Penn, who has already broken two school records —- single-game scoring and career steals — and is on her way to a third. If her current scoring average uuiua siccus ui guca up, Penn can break the record for most points scored in a season. Penn will look to con tinue her scoring ways and help give Carolina an advantage in the fast break scoring category. In the teams’ last meet ing, Georgia came away with the advantage. Two other important players are point guard C/iisium wucan anu center reira ujueiy*. Ciocan is second on the team in scoring with 12.1 points per game and is second in the SEC with 6.8 assists per contest. Ujhelyi is third on the team with 11.6 points per game. She also leads the team and the SEC in rebounding with 9.0 re bounds per game. On Georgia’s side, there is no clear-cut statistical leader. The Lady Bulldogs have a balanced offense; only 6.2 points sepa rate the leading scorer from their fifth leading scorer in this category. Leading the way for UGA are Thomas and Kara Braxton. Thomas leads the team ♦ WOMEN, SEE PAGE 15 Gillian Thomas and Alexis Kendrick, immedi ately stepped up and began putting dag gers into USC’s hopes. Georgia finally left Columbia with a 67 59 victory, but the 15th-ranked Gamecocks will seek to even up the season series in a rematch No. 15 USC at No. 14 Georgia 7 p.m. Thursday Stegeman Coliseum Athens, Ga. Softball to take on UCLA, top teams at Desert Classic BY MATT ROTHENBERG THE GAMECOCK Fresh off a championship vic tory in the Carolina Invitational last weekend, the 20th-ranked USC softball team will head to Las Vegas for the first of its three con secutive weekend tournaments. The Gamecocks (5-1) face a formidable set of opponents in the Desert Classic Tournament, held by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Included in those foes is top-ranked UCLA (5-1), which beat Carolina 1-0 in the championship game of last season’s NCAA re gional. USC head coach Joyce Compton says there is no revenge factor but that the game will be a new ma(ch-up between the clubs. “We can’t play on what hap pened last year. It’s a new group of kids for us, a new group for them,” Compton said. “We’ve just got to worry about the UCLA game right now and put that in perspective — that it’s one game of how many we play the whole year.” But there will be even more of a challenge for the Gamecocks than just playingf UCLA. Carolina will ♦ SOFTBALL, SEEPAGE 15 BRIEFLY Men s tennis nets a pair of victories The 20th-ranked South Carolina men’s tennis team improved to 4-0 on the season with victories over Davidson and Charlotte on Sunday. The Gamecocks earned their second shutout of the season against Charlotte, win ning 7-0. The Gamecocks won two of three doubles matches to claim the doubles point: Angelo Niculescu, Seth Rose, Marcus Westman’, Tom Eklund, Ben Atkinson and Geraldo Knorr all earned sin gles victories to cap the shutout win. In the afternoon contest against Davidson, the Gamecocks swept the doubles matches to pace the 6-1 win. After taking the early 1-0 lead, Carolina used singles victo ries from Rose, Niculescu, Carl Wermee, Knorr and Atkinson to close out the con test. The men’s tennis team will be back in action Saturday against N.C. State at the Sam Daniel Tennis Center. Looks of old are back in fashion MATTROTHENBERG GAMECOCKSPORTS@HOTMAIL.COM The retro-jersey mania misses its true meaning. Can anyone tell me what the deal is with all these retro sports jerseys becoming more and more mainstream? It’s a craze I’m just having some trouble understand ing. Sure, they’re quality products, and I guess that’s what you’re go ing to pay $300 or so for. Much of the credit for the retro jersey mania can be linked direct ly to Mitchell and Ness, a company in Philadelphia that came from nowhere to be the leader in pro ducing these uniforms. It’s quite possible that the greater public got word of these retro jerseys — based on the bizarrely colored or designed uni forms of yesteryear — through many hip-hop artists who sported the threads in their videos. Since then, it’s been an incredibly grow ing craze and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Mitchell and Ness has reaped several mil lion dollars in sales of its one-of-a kind, specially crafted goods. There are many reasons that people, especially those in the younger generations, wear these jerseys. One is that they help bring the wearer to a supposedly better time when sports were purer and life was simpler. Others might say they are “representing” their fa vorite team or player, which makes me wonder sometimes. How many of these people can even recall when such a team wore a certain jersey? Can they even remember who played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the “Creamsicle orange” era? Really, though, I don’t see the thrill of spending hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for some thing that just looks good. These items have become a status sym bol more than anything else. If you can afford to buy a few and wear them at your leisure, it makes you seem like you’re hot to trot. While it’s nice that you want to remem ber the days of yore, it takes an aw ful lot of disposable income to buy those things. If it seems like I’m jealous, I’m not. While I am interested in see ing what the jerseys looked like - - and surely, before now, the only place to see them was in museums — I don’t have that particular thrill of reliving any part of my past as a sports fan. That’s main ly because it’s not exactly a long past. I can go only as far back as Patrick Ewing’s glory days or when Dwight Gooden was known as “Doctor K.” Then there’s another reason for wearing old uniforms — having “respect” for the past greats in pro fessional sports. Younger players, particularly those out of high school or a year or two in college, have often come into the NBA with a swagger and are deemed by veterans to have little respect for their predecessors. Frankly, I don’t see how spending a few hun dred dollars for someone’s jersey is showing respect. Perhaps the only thing being respected is the quality and craftsmanship of the jersey itself. I recently read of an incident in an Associated Press story about these retro jerseys. It was the tale of a youngster who looked at a Boston Celtics jersey and asked the vendor who wore number 33. Obviously, it’s Larry Bird, which brings me to a point at which I must agree with the story’s writ er. He said there really isn’t re spect involved when you’re not fa miliar with the player whose uni form you’re buying. The writer suggested people do their research and learn about the history first. I think that’s a fine thing to do.jl wouldn’t want to ♦ ROTHENBERG, SEE PAGE 15