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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, March 19, 2003 11 --p. pi ' GAME SCHEDULE AAMTAAT TTC I 9 i I I 9 ! I l V ' BASEBALL vs. Wofford, 7 p.m. Wednesday VjUJN IAvj 1 U U 9 ^ I 9 9—^ 9 MEN’S TENNIS at North Carolina, 2:30 p.m. Thursday „ „ 999999k BASEBALL at Tennessee, 7 p.m. Friday Story ideas? Questions? Comments? |\/|9|k? WOMEN’S BASKETBALL vs. Chattanooga at NCAA E-mailusatgamecocksports@hotmail.com _ 9 —9— —9_ Tournament in University Park, Pa., 12:10 p.m. Sunday Carolina to meet Wofford Wofford at No. 14 USC 7 p.m. Wednesday Sarge Frye Field BY BRAD SENKIW THE GAMECOCK The 14th-ranked USC baseball team hopes this past weekend’s losses aren’t going to become a reg ular theme in SEC play. Before the Gamecocks can get their minds back on success in the conference, the Wofford Terriers stop by Columbia tonight to take on USC. Carolina (15-5) stumbled this 1 past weekend as the team lost both games of Sunday’s doubleheader against Arkansas. The Gamecocks, 12-4 at home, have won seven of ineir pasi iu games. Wofford (2-15) has struggled this season with its only two wins com ing against North Carolina A&T on the road and Niagara at home. The Terriers are on a nine-game losing streak with the last three losses at the hands of The Citadel on the road. Wofford was held to two runs the entire series and lost to Wake Forest 26-8 on March 12. Wofford has been outscored this year 161-81 and has lost all six of its conference games. Brian Casey leads the team in hitting with a .339 batting average. Jason Nidiffer and Jesse Cole are > hitting .333 and .326, respectively. Nidiffer and Blake Timanus are □ tied with a team leading two home runs, while Timanus leads the team in RBIs with 11 Senior Culley Kline (0-4) gets the Lalor start for the Terriers and has given up 27 runs in 16 innings pitched and an ERA of 12.94. Kline has 10 strikeouts and eight walks and has been taken deep twice for home runs this season. Freshman Conor Lalor (3-0) takes the mound for Carolina with a 1.47 ERA, which is tops among starting pitchers. Lalor’s last victory came against Western n Carolina on March 12, when he gave up four hits and one run in 6 2/3 innings. USC head coach Ray Tanner plans on keeping a tight leash on Tanner Lalor to keep him fresh for the weekend. Tanner expects to give Forrest Beverly and Rico Bravo some time in relief. The Gamecocks hope to get the bats going again after scoring only nine runs in the Arkansas series. Brian Buscher has tnerngnestoatting average on the team at .405, with Jon Coutlangus right behind him at .339. Buscher will try to keep his nine-game hitting streak alive and has had a hit in all 20 of the team’s games except for one. He also leads Carolina in at-bats (79), hits (32), home runs (4) and total bases (48). Landon Powell is the team leader in RBIs with 18 and is batting .319 with eight doubles. The USC pitching staff has a 2.86 ERA with 167 strikeouts and 50 walks on the season. The Gamecocks have scored 133 runs and held opponents to 70. Carolina leads the overall se ries with Wofford 53-21-1, includ ing a pair of wins at home last year by scores of 15-6 and 11-0. The two teams will meet again this sea son at Wofford on April 30. The first pitch is scheduled to go out at 7 p.m. at Sarge Frye Field. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com Teams ruin own NCAA dreams MATTROTHENBERG GAMECOCKSPORTS@HOTMAIL.COM Four schools’ actions burst their own bubble. Now that the field of 64 teams has been set for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament (well, yeah, there are really 65 teams, _ but the play-in game last night eliminated one), we should take note of the teams that should be there but aren’t. No, these aren’t the so-called bubble teams, though their bub bles were clearly burst some time ago. First off, let’s talk about Georgia. That team is missing the NCAA tournament, and is ineligible for \TTT Kaaoiico if Time maI oilATim/T to participate in the SEC Tournament last week. The simple reason is because UGA determined academic fraud in a class for which former assistant coach Jim Harrick Jr. taught — a class on how to coach basketball. It just so happened that three Georgia play ers, including ex-Bulldog Tony Cole, were in that class, never at tended and yet got A’s. Cole ac cused Harrick Jr. of the fraud Supposedly, Harrick Jr., the son of now-sus pended head coach Jim Harrick, also paid a number of ex penses for Cole, as revealed by Cole in an interview last month. It’s unfortunate that Georgia won’t be playing in the NCAA Tournament, and a couple of players even sued for the right to play in the SEC and subsequent NCAA Tournament. But that’s as iai ao mj oj mpauij 5UU0, omvu UGA administration knew of Harrick’s checkered past when it hired him. If you can honestly tell me that Georgia President Michael Adams and Director of Athletics Vince Dooley didn’t know about Harrick’s dealings at Rhode Island, then I’ll laugh in your face. Can people improve their rep utations? Sure. But still, a certain amount of precaution must be tak en before hiring people of Harrick’s ilk. Harrick and his son single-handedly screwed their program out of the postseason be cause they tried to cover up their misdeeds. And Georgia isn’t the only place this happens, either. Fresno State is going to sit out the postseason after revelations showed academic wrongdoing, □ likely during the reign of former head coach Jerry Tarkanian, who retired after last season. The school imposed its own postseason restric Tarkanian tions, probably to abate any punish ment from the NCAA itself. This is another black eye for college basketball. Despite being the undisputed 2002-03 regular season champions of the Western Athletic Conference, the Bulldogs and Rookie Coach of the Year Ray Lopes will watch the NCAA Tournament and NIT from their living room couches this year. Another talented team, another one to fall prey to the blemished past of a not-so-clean coach. Tarkanian was well known for hav ing fine teams during his tenure at UNLV; however, there was also a cloud of controversy, which re sulted in his quitting in 1992. Again, these college presidents and athletics directors know what they’re getting: Guys happen to be good coaches but can’t avoid prob lems during their tenures. ♦ ROTHENBERG, SEE PAGE 12 PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Brian Buscher and the 14th-ranked Gamecock baseball team will play Wofford tonight at Sarge Frye Field. Buscher has a nine-game hitting streak and leads the team in at-bats, home runs and total bases. His batting average is .405. Shyatt out at Clemson following poor season BY JEFFREY COLLINS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CLEMSON — Three days af ter Clemson had beaten then No. 1 North Carolina 75-65 in 2001, the Tigers found them selves behind 41-9 to Wake Forest at halftime in a game they would lose by 32. It was that kind of inconsis tency that dogged Clemson throughout coach Larry Shyatt’s tenure, and led-to his resignation Monday after five years and a 70-84 record lead ing the Tigers. Clemson’s season came to an abrupt end Sunday when the Tigers failed to get an invi tation to the NIT despite a 15 13 record. It was the fourth year in a row Clemson failed to make the postseason. “I feel it is just time to give someone else an opportunity to coach this program,” Shyatt said in a release issued by the school. Clemson fin ished in eighth place in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season, after three straight finishes in the league base ment. Shyatt met with athletic di rector Terry Don Phillips on Monday, and agreed to step down. But Phillips said Shyatt has been such a good rep resentative' for the school, that he agreed to pay Shyatt the ♦ SHYATT, SEE PAGE 12 PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Larry Shyatt stepped down as Clemson’s head men’s basketball coach on Monday. NFL mulling the addition of two wildcards to playoffs NEW YORK (AP) — The NFL is considering a proposal made by the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs to ex pand the playoffs by two wild card teams. However, like the dozens of proposals submitted annually by teams and individuals be fore the NFL meetings, it prob ably will not be enacted this year because it takes only nine of the 32 teams to defeat it. Under the proposal, the play offs would increase next season from six teams to seven for each conference with only the team with the best record in each conference getting a first round bye. It is being consid ered by the league’s competi tion committee, which is spli on the idea, an indication tha getting it through is unlikely. When the league voted ir June 2001 to go from six divi sions to eight, it decided to con tinue with 12-team playoffs. A that time, commissioner Pau Tagliabue and other top offi cials said the NFL wanted to se< how the system worked before changing it. Under the new format teams play only six of their 1( games within their divisions leaving open the possibility that a weak division could b( won by a team with a record ot 8-8 or 7-9. Because there are now just two wild-card teams instead of three, that leaves open the possibility that a team with a winning record could miss the playoffs while a .500 team makes it. That happened in 1985, when Cleveland won the AFC Central at 8-8 while Denver (11-5) missed the postseason. In that year, only five teams made the playoffs from each conference. But the six teams that made ■ the playoffs from each confer ence in the first season of the eight-division format were thfc six with the best records. MLB cancels Tokyo opener rnucniAjMrj —major league baseball canceled the season-open ing series in Japan between Seattle and Oakland because of the threat of war in Iraq. “Given the uncertainty that now exists throughout the world, we believe the safest course of ac tion for the players involved and the many staff personnel who must work the games is to resched ule the opening series,” commis sioner Bud Selig said Tuesday. “It I would be unfair and terribly un settling for them to be half a world away — away from their families at this critical juncture.” The teams had planned to leave Wednesday for games March 25 26 at the Tokyo Dome. But plans were put on hold Tuesday morn ing as Selig and major league offi cials talked to government and se curity agencies. T ^nn’+ riml plary security efforts that the city of Tokyo and the government of Japan were prepared to provide for our players and personnel, I had to weigh those security precautions against a very unpleasant and po tentially dangerous set of variables that go along with a nation on the brink of war,” Selig said. Baseball opened its 2000 season in Tokyo, with the New York Mets j and Chicago Cubs playing two ' games. Seattle’s visit was highly antici pated because of two Japanese stars on the Mariners: Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki. It would have been the first time Seattle owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, who lives in Japan, saw his team play. 1 “I was looking forward to go ing,” Oakland outfielder Terrence Long said. “I think everybody was. A lot of people don’t get this opportunity. I doubt I’ll get a chance to go back.” The games were rescheduled for April 3 and June 30 in Cfekland. “With world tensions so high, mis is me pruueni course oi ac tion,” union head Donald Fehr said. Baseball had already been plan ning to have the New York Yankees open the 2004 season in Japan, probably against Tampa Bay, Toronto or Baltimore. “I find it extremely unfortu nate, but it’s because of war and there is little we can do,” Japanese baseball commissioner Hiromori Kawashi said. “Japanese baseball fans who were looking forward to the event must find it extremely disappoipting.” Other sports also discussed contingency plans, but the NCAA said Tuesday that it would not change its schedule for the men’s and women’s basketball tourna ments, which start this week. Even though several baseball of ficials already were in Japan, set ting up for the series, many play ers had been jittery about going. “We’ve got guys going to war for our country,” Oakland third baseman Eric Chavez said before the decision. “I want to be here. Call me patriotic or whatever, this is where I want to be.” Seattle outfielder John Mabry was ready for any decision. “I would have loved to have seen Japan, but I wasn’t looking forward to the 15-hour plane ride,” he said. On Monday, President Bush said Saddam Hussein must leave Iraq or face a U.S.-led invasion. In an evening speech to the nation, Bush gave Hussein 48 hours. Unlike the 2000 Japan trip, where many players took their families to see the sights, the trav eling parties for the A’s and Mariners had shaped up to be much smaller. AL MVP Miguel Tejada and Athletics outfielder Jermaine Dye were among those who planned to leave their families at home. “It’s a tough decision,” Tejada said. “We’ire a team. We all have to stick together.”