Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, April 25, 2003 7 GAME SCHEDULE CONTACT US BASEBALL at Ole Miss, 7:30 p.m. Friday ., „ „ . „ „ 0 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S TRACK at Penn Relays Story ideas? Questions? Comments? Philadelphia, Friday and Saturday E-mail us at gamecOcksports@hotmail.com Carolina bashes Wildcats W Davidson a (14-29) 4 »6 ,£fi" * BY BRAD SENKIW THE GAMECOCK Stephen Broome (1-0) only pitched 2 2/3 innings for the USC baseball team (27-14,9-9 SEC) on Wednesday night, but it was good enough for him to record the first victory of his career in a 13-4 win over Davidson (14-29). The redshirt freshman gave up one run on two hits in the victo ry Conor Lalor started the game, but was pulled after allowing three runs on seven hits in 31/3 pitched. USC head coach Ray Tanner was pleased with Broome’s perfor mance in last night’s game. “Well, I’m glad for .him to get” the victory, Tanner said. “He’s a guy that redshirted last year, and he had a great fall for us, but his spring wasn’t that good. He’s had a couple of ap pearances now, and you like to see guys like that be able to help you late.” Tanner used three other pitch ers and was glad his bullpen was ^able to get some experience head ing into the latter part of the sea son. “I thought (Zach) Reeves had a good outing, as well, and then (Rico) Bravo threw the ball pret ty good,” Tanner said. “Cliff Donald got some work (Tuesday), so you feel better about your bullpen.” Brian Buscher went 3-for-4 with three RBIs, and Bryan Triplett added a three-run home run to lead the Gamecocks at the plate, as 14 USC batters made ap pearances at the plate. Senior Matt Riddle chipped in two RBIs in a 2-for-4 night. Riddle “had a couple of quality at-bats,” Tanner said. “He’s an older guy who’s Riddle been around the program, and he wants to get some hacks, and he’ll get a few uiuie. Eli Benefield led Davidson with three RBIs and a 3-for-4 per formance at the plate. Jay Haefner also had three hits, and Sam Navarro added two hits for the Wildcats. Matt Hanson (0-1) recorded the loss for Davidson in relief as the Wildcats used seven pitchers to try to stop the Gamecocks. USC trailed early as Davidson jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the second inning when D.J. Daily hit an RBI single and later scored off Benefield’s single to short stop. Kevin Melillo got the Gamecocks on the board in the third inning with a single that brought Steve Tolleson home. Two batters later, Buscher’s two PHOTO BY MARK SCHILLING/THE GAMECOCK Bryan Triplett tags a Davidson runner at first base In the Gamecocks 13-4 win over the Wildcats on Wednesday. Triplett went l-for-4 at the plate, but his only hit was a three-run home run, and he was also credited with two runs scored. USC will play Ole Miss this weekend. run single scored Jon Coutlangus and Melillo. In the fourth inning, Davidson regained a short lead with a Benefield two-run single, but Carolina tied the game in the bot tom half of the inning with Michael Campbell’s RBI single. Carolina scored four runs in the fifth inning, highlighted by a Buscher RBI single and a two-run double by Riddle. Carolina shut out the Wildcats over the last five innings and added two runs in the seventh inning on Melillo’s second RBI of the game, and Triplett came home on a balk before smashing a three-run home run in the eighth. The Gamecocks take to the road to play the Ole Miss Rebels in a three-game series starting Friday. Ole Miss lost Wednesday on the road at Memphis 6-3 after blanking Tennessee-Martin 7-0 on Tuesday. The Rebels are coming off a se ries win against Alabama in which they won the first and third game of the series in Oxford, Miss. Ole Miss (25-17,10-8 SEC) is next to last in the SEC Western Division, but trails first-place LSU by 21/2 games. Stephen Head is getting it done at the plate for the Rebels with his .364 batting average, 30 RBIs and five home runs, and Chad Sterbens also has 30 RBIs and five home runs. At the mound, T.J. Beam, who has a 2.12 ERA, is leads the team with a 6-1 record and 55 strike outs. Coach Tanner hopes the mid week success will carry over into the weekend. “We were able to win two games in the middle of the week, and I think that helps a lot, too. Now we’ve got to go on the road and try to do a good job down in Oxford,” Tanner said. Friday’s game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., with Steven Bondurant set to face Beam. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com Curling is a new low for NBC, me MATTROTHENBERG GAMECOCKSPORTS@HOTMAIL.COM NBC Sports is so lame, it’s showing curling. Without the NBA and NFL, the NBC Sports programming de partment must be having an aw fully difficult time filling airtime. This was never more apparent than it was on Sunday afternoon. As I enjoyed an afternoon off from The Gamecock, I got to fill it up with the best that NBC Sports had to offer: curling and arena foot ball. Making the best of an undesir able afternoon of sports program ming, and seeing as how I had lit tle else to do, I decided to give it a try. Well, if you ask me, I have no idea why NBC decided to show curling, which is probably lower in popularity among Americans than the strongman and strong woman competitions on ESPN. uui u uucan i get cuij ucuci tiiaii the 2003 Women’s World Curling Championships, straight from the Winnipeg Arena in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Never before in my life, other than perhaps during the Olympics, had I ever seen curling on television in the United States. In fact, as much as it appeared to be a live broadcast, it wasn’t. People who are into curling, or those who regularly check Canadian sports news Web sites — like myself — would actually know the championship game was held April 12, more than a week earlier. Don Chevrier and Don Duguid called the action of what is perhaps the biggest American upset on ice since the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets. In fact, Chevrier called it “curling’s answer to the Miracle on Ice.” Yeah, sure. Beating the Canadians in curl ing will have so much more em phasis on the Sch| , American psyche than beating the Soviets in ice hockey. Elfi Schlegel provided the intense out-of-the booth reporting, as well. Curling is actually a more in teresting sport than I figured. Did you know that any given curling athlete walks about four miles and hurls about 10,000 pounds’ worth of granite stone per game? It’s truly trivial. This is clearly not shuffle board on ice. Besides, you don’t see senior citizens from Florida grunt ing to their teammates to “hold the line,” “peel that guard” or some other indecipherable phrase. Anyway, in curling, groups of four members on a team have to send granite stones down a sheet of ice to try to get points by landing the stones in one of a number of cir cles in what’s known as the house. After 10 ends — portions of the game in which all desired rocks have been delivered and scored — the team with more points wins. The U.S. team, headed by skip Debbie McCormick (who’s origi nally from Canada herself), put up two points in the fourth end to eventually upset the Canadian team, led by Colleen Jones, 5-3. Jones, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, was clearly disappointed be VIC cause she s some ME thing of a curling star in Canada, not K***8# I to mention a mete orologist and Jones sports reporter on theCBC— I’d like to see WIS’s Ben Tanner match that. Overall, it was an interesting broadcast as far as curling goes, as Chevrier and Duguid’s com mentary was good, at least by my ♦ ROTHENBERG, SEE PAGE 8 Softball beats Furman in last two home games BY MATT R0THENBER6 THE GAMECOCK Following a pair of disappoint ing losses to the Alabama Crimson Tide the prior weekend, the USC softball team had to get its pitch ing, hitting and defense all on the same page to defeat Furman in a doubleheader yesterday at Beckham Field. Sure enough, the 18th-ranked Gamecocks (34-14) came through in all three areas against the Paladins (18-24), sweep ing a doubleheader with scores of 6-0 and 9-1. “We just need to keep moving and we can’t worry about what happened last weekend. New day, new game,” said USC head coach Joyce Compton. “It’s just impor tant for us to come out and have some good at-bats against pitch ing other than-our own.” Game 1: USC 6 - Furman 0 In the first game of the double header, Carolina rode the live arm of Melanie Henkes to victo ry. Henkes (15-3) struck out a ca reer-high ll batters while only al lowing one hit to the Paladins. She carried a perfect game through six complete innings be fore Furman’s LaKerah Barr sin gled to lead off the seventh in ning. Compton said she thought Henkes threw particularly well, and the ball moved well. “Coming off of Alabama, they were just such an intense team, and I started off with that same intensity,” Henkes said. Furman’s batters “weren’t as aggressive as Alabama’s, so it was very differ ent Playing '71irman, who ‘ "wasn’t as aggres sive, really helped,” she said. But the Gamecocks’ of fense was doing a goodjobofitsown. smith Carolina was led by catcher Ashley , Smith, who went 2-for-3 with three RBIs. Smith hit a single up the middle in the first inning to score Jodi Fittro and Amber Curtis. She also drove in Curtis again in the sixth inning. Debralee Troesh created some FILE PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Melanie Henkes struck out 11 Furman Paladin batters, which set a career-high for the freshman pitcher. Henkes earned the victory in the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. USC history, as well, hitting a solo home run in the third inning for her 10th round-tripper of the sea son. Troesh’s statistics set a new all time single-season home run record for the Gamecocks. Troesh said she felt “awesome” and that she was “real excited” about the milestone. Troesh previously shared the old record of nine with Joyce McMillin. Curtis and Nancy Crane both went 2-for-4 for Carolina in the vic tory. Barr was the only baserunner Furman had in the game, and Paladin pitcher Rachel Henley re ceived the loss, allowing six runs on nine hits. Game 2: USC 9 - Furman 1 In a game that was decided in the bottom of the sixth inning, be cause of the eight run mercy rule, Jodi Fittro emerged as an of fensive power house for Carolina. Fittro slammed two home runs—a two-run homer in the fourth inning Fittro and the game-win ning grand slam in the sixth — to lead USC over the 9 ♦ SOFTBALL, SEE PAGE 8 Raider Red mascot costume returned to Texas Tech police BY ANGELA TIMMONS UNIVERSITY DAILY (TEXAS TECH U.) LUBBOCK, TEXAS (U-WIRE) — The Raider Red mascot cos tume, stolen from Doak Hall on April 12, was returned to Texas Tech Police on Monday night, Maj. Eddie Huckabee said. The costume, previously re ferred to incorrectly as the mascot’s baseball costume, is the mascot’s all-purpose cos tume and was □originally stolen from Raider Red’s residence hall room following a home base ball game. Huckabee said the situa tion is still un der investigation. The police had been questioning several suspects, he said, and one par ticular subject finally admitted to the theft and returned the costume to the police. “After questioning, they said Tramp sponsor, said the police still have the costume in their custody for some procedures they need to go through. Dean said the process of getting the costume returned involved the police investigation, and it was not voluntarily turned in. How the investigation will be handled from this point on is up to the police, Dean said. The Saddle Tramps had sug gested an anonymous return* but the police ended up hav ing to track the uniform down. “Our position was, whoever took it, if they would just turn it back in, we wouldn’t prose cute,” he said. “How they want to handle it is up to the police. We’re just very glad tc have it back.” Jeff Blatt, head of the Raider Red committee, said the Saddle Tramps are thrilled to have the costume back, but are disap pointed the situation is being turned over to the police and district attorney. “For one thing, it’s pretty sad and agreed to retrieve it for us,” Huckabee said. Huckabee said as soon as the case is prepared, names and more infor mation may be released. Huckabee reported no “We definitely learned our lesson. We’ll make sure it’s never kept on campus again - this definitely opened up our eyes to the situation.” JEFF BLAH HEAD OF THE RAIDER RED COMMITTEE turn it in and we had to find it because of the prosecu tion they have to face now,” Blatt said. “I’m pretty' scared for them right now.” Blatt said the Saddle Tramps are damage to the costume. The portion of the costume stolen, which was ev erything except the head and hat, has an estimated value of $2,495. While Huckabee said whether or not charges will be pressed is up to the Saddle Tramps, state law requires the police department to bring the incident to the attention of the court. “Our policy is, every time we resolve a case, we have to bring it to the district attor ney’s office,” he said. “But they may not press charges,” Bill Dean, mass communi cations professor and a Saddle looking to press quite a few charges since the procedure involved investi gation instead of a voluntary, anonymous return. However, the Tramps have learned a few things about keep ing the costume safe, Blatt said. “We definitely learned our lesson,” he said. “We’ll make sure it’s never kept on campus again — this definitely opened up our eyes to the situation.” Blatt said this particular circumstance is not necessar ily routine, with the individu al playing the part of Raider Red bringing the costume back to his personal place of residence.