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GAME SCHEDULE CONTACT US WOMEN’S TENNIS at Rolex Regional Tournament „ ., „ _ „ _ in Winston-Salem, Monday Story ideas. Questions. Comments. „ MEN’S SOCCER vs. Davidson, 7 p.m. Friday E-mail us at gamecocksports@Jiotmail.com VOLLEYBALL-at Auburn, 8 p.m. Friday ■FOOTBALL USC holds on against Vandy ft GAME 8 Vanderbilt (1-8,0-5 SEC) USC « (5-3,2-3 SEC) SOUND BITE “We did not play particularly well in the secondary. We put on a pass blitz, you think our guys are in the witness protection program." _ LOU HOLTZ H USC HEAD COACH 10 Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler threw the ball to 10 different players in Saturday's game. Wide receiver Erik Davis and tight end Dustin Dunning had six receptions each. Dunning, fullback Matthew Tant and wide receiver Marlon White all caught touchdown passes. 45 (^The USC offense ran the ball 45 times against Vanderbilt, netting 218 yards. Three players - running back Daccus Turman, quarterback Dondrial Pinkins and tailback Cory Boyd - had double digits in carries. Turman finished with 15 carries, while Pinkins and Boyd ended with 10 rushing attempts each. 456 The USC defense allowed 456 yards of offense by Vanderbilt, which allowed the Commodores to stay in the game. Vandy had 155 yards of offense in the "fourth quarter alone. PHOTO BY DAVID STAGG/THE GAMECOCK USC’s Cory Boyd, right, busts through the Vanderbilt defense to score the Gamecocks’ second touchdown in the first quarter. It was the first touchdown for the freshman, and Carolina won the Homecoming game 35-24. BY SHAWN ROURK THE liAMECOCK After getting ravaged for 33 points against LSU, the Game cocks bounced back with a 35-24 win against Vanderbilt at home Saturday night. The win was solid but not pret ty, and it was hardly convincing for head coach Lou Holtz. The offense was able to score 35 points on the back of quarter back Dondrial Pinkins, who ran for three touchdowns and threw for an additional one. Carolina’s defense, however, was a com pletely different story. “I thought offensively, we played well. Defensively, we gave up 456 yards. It all starts with we can’t get a pass rush. We blitzed. I mean, we blitzed everyone we could. But we can’t get a pass rush,” Holtz said. Carolina’s defense has been beaten up in the past two games and has surrendered more than 70 points in the past three games. The secondary has been pretty weak all season, and Saturday night, Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler took ad vantage of that, carving up the Gamecock secondary for 319 yards in the air on 27 of 35 completions. “I went to Skip (Holtz) when I think it was 28-10, and I said ‘Skip, we can’t stop them. You’re going to have to control them on offense.’ And that they did,” Holtz said. “We did not play particularly well in the sec ondary. We put on a pass blitz, you think our guys are in the witness pro tection program.” Robinson The secondary also suffered a blow when cor nerback Dunta Robinson had to leave the game with a concussion, leaving a bigger whole in the Gamecock defensive scheme. What bright spots there were in the defense mainly came from sophomore Moe Thompson. The 6-foot-3-inch, 280-pound defensive end forced and recovered a fum ble and had a 25-yard intercep tion. Both forced turnovers re sulted in Carolina touchdowns. The Gamecocks’ offense was solid all night. Overall, the Gamecocks were able to run for 247 yards on 45 carries, while quarterback Pinkins threw for 161 yards on 13 of 21 completions. The team was able to establish its running game early and often during the first quarter, with freshman Gory Boyd getting many short runs that set up Pinkins’ first of three touch downs on the night. The six-yard run came with 7:32 left in the quarter. Holtz “had a couple of meet ings with the offensive line and told them that we were going to have to make a statement by let ting everybody know that we are going to line up and we are go ing to run right here and you can’t stop it. And basically, that’s what we tried to do today,” Boyd said. The Gamecocks would score less than three minutes later, af ter the Thompson interception and a pass interference call in the end zone in the favor of the Gamecocks. Boyd .then blasted a three-yard run up the middle for his first touchdown of his career. Daniel Weaver’s extra point attempt made it 14-0 with a little more than two minutes left in the quarter. Vanderbilt’s only score of the half came from a 27-yard field goal from Tolga Ertugrul to bring them within 11 points of the Gamecocks. A little later, USC capitalized again when linebacker Jeremiah Garrison came up with a loose ball that put USC on the Commodores’ 21-yard line. Two plays later, Pinkins scored his second touchdown of the night on a 5-yard run, putting USC up 21 3 with a few minutes left in the half. Vanderbilt tried a late field goal as the clock wound down on the half, but Ertugrul shanked it left to leave the score 21-3 at the half. Early in the third quarter, Pinkins added his third rushing touchdown of the night on a 29 yard bootleg that he easily ran in for the score. That put the Gamecocks up 28-3. Vanderbilt would battle back, scoring on two touchdown pass es from Cutler — one from 15 yards out to Matthew Tant and the other from 6 yards to Dustin Danning. The Gamecocks next play Ole Miss on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com Pinkins finally puts it all together for Gamecocks BY WES WOLFE THE GAMECOCK ft The USC and Vanderbilt quarter backs gave it their all Saturday night, providing a nice show for what was otherwise a dominating perfor mance by Carolina. Dondrial Pinkins finally put it all to gether for the Gamecocks, rushing for —three touchdowns and throwing for one ^nore in Carolina’s 35-24 win over the 1 'Commodores. “I think we played well. Our team stepped it up, and the offense did a great job, but we still can improve on things,” Pinkins said. “We came out and played with confidence, and when you do that, you are unstoppable. If you don’t do that, you won’t play well.” Pinkins put the game away for USC in the fourth quarter, after Vanderbilt scored a touchdown and pulled within 11. At the 9:33 mark, Vandy had ample time to tie up the game or try for the lead. The drive started on the Carolina 25 yard line, but after a five-yard loss by run ! ning back Cory Boyd, Pinkins and the Gamecocks were faced with driving 80 yards for the score. Pinkins threw passes of eight yards and 13 yards on the next two plays, however, and brought USC out to its own 41. Pinkins had rushes of eight yards and one yard, along with rushes by Daccus Turman and Boyd, to put Carolina oh the Vanderbilt 16 yard line. From there, the team lined up, and Pinkins laid the ball in Boyd’s hands for the nail in the coffin. The 14-play drive took more than six minutes off the clock, leaving the Commodores with a less than three minutes to overcome an 18-point deficit. “We knew we had to score and put up some more points,” Pinkins said. “We moved the ball and we were able to get a touchdown.” In the third quarter, Pinkins ran a naked bootleg to the right side of the line of scrimmage, completely faking out the Vandy defense, and ran 29 yards to the end zone. “He is a very mobile quarterback who is a dual threat,” said Vanderbilt free safety Kelechi Ohanaja. “He can make plays and make it difficult for the defense.” In the past few games, Pinkins hasn’t had the complete package for the team. Against LSU, Pinkins had 254 yards pass ing but ran for negative 26 yards and had no touchdowns throwing or rushing. The last time the Camilla, Ga., native played anywhere close to how he did against Vandy was in USC’s embarrass ment of Virginia. In that game, Pinkins had 142 yards passing and 43 yards rushing. Still, though Pinkins had one touch down throwing and one rushing, the touch down pass of 99 yards to Troy Williamson contributed more than two-thirds of USC’s passing yards on the day. Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler also had a great day, although a couple of mis cues killed Vandy’s hopes for an upset over the heavily-favored Gamecocks. Cutler threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, tossing the ball to 10 differ ent receivers and giving six players more than one reception on the night. Cutler and the Vanderbilt offensive at tack had its moments and moved the ball well in the second half. “We had a great game plan,” Cutler said. “Offensive line played great, and the re ceivers ran crisp routes. They made it easy for me.” Cutler’s excellent play, however, was diminished by two big mistakes. In the first quarter, the Vandy. quarterback threw an interception to USC defensive lineman Moe Thompson, which led to Carolina’s second touchdown. Cutler and Thompson met up again in the second play after the Commodores re covered an onside kick in the fourth quar ter. Thompson sacked Cutler, which re sulted in a fumble and a fumble recovery for Thompson, cementing the Carolina victory. “He got me good,” Cutler said. “A tenth of a second later, we had Kwame (Doster) right down the middle. Who knows what would’ve happened?” Comments on this story?E-mail gamecocksports@hotmail.com BRIEFLY « Volleyball loses 2 Blames on the road The USC volleyball team lost two matches over the weekend, falling to 10-12 and 4-6 in the SEC. The losses came on the road against Georgia (14-8,7-3 SEC) on Friday and Florida (22-1,10-0 SEC) on Sunday and left the Gamecocks in the middle of a five-match losing streak. Despite winning one game against Georgia, Carolina was dominated en route to the 3-1 fi nal score. Georgia won its three games with victory margins of 12,15 and 16 points. Outside hitter Sarah Morgan ended the game with 12 kills, while middle blocker Nicole Miller was second with 10 kills on the match. Carolina managed to be more competiti/e against Florida, though getting shutout 3-0. USC led 19-18 at one point in the first game be fore falling victim to a 9-1 Florida run. The Gators then cruised through game two. The third game wasn’t much better and Carolina ended the match with .a paltry .029 hit ting average and got out-killed by Florida by 18. USC next plays on the road at Auburn on Oct. 31 at 8 p.m. Women’s soccer has solid weekend The USC women’s soccer team (10-6-3,3-3-2 SEC) tied Ole Miss (13-4-1,4-3-1 SEC) and beat Mississippi State (8-8-2, 2-5-1 SEC) in action over the weekend. The tfe with Ole Miss marked goalkeeper Elise Matthews’ sixth shutout of the season, and she earned her seventh against Mississippi State. Matthews also had ca reer-high 18 saves in the game against Ole Miss. The Rebels attacked throughout the game, out-shooting Carolina 30-4. Rebel midfielder Kristal Menard had nine shots alone, including seven shots-on-goal. The Ole Miss game was the second time USC has played to a 0-0 tie against an SEC oppo nent this year, with thttother game being against Auburn at home. The Gamecocks pulled out a win Sunday against Mississippi State by a goal from midfielder Amanda Thurber. Both Carolina and Mississippi State had scoring opportunities in the first half, but neither team was able to put the ball into the net. Thurber’s goal came with less than 10 minutes remaining in regulation to give USC the win. The Gamecocks get some time off before finishing up me season on Nov. 1 at Florida. Unlikely champs prove to be worthy BEN SINCLAIR GAMECOCKSPORTS@HOTMAIL.COM The Marlins’ run was full of incredible story lines. While many of you were faith fully watching the final seconds of the Homecoming victory over Vanderbilt unfold, I sincerely hope many of you made it back to see the sports story for the ages unfolding in New York. The Florida Marlins, the team everyone loved to write off this baseball season, became the World Champions by defeating the most successful franchise in sports his tory, the New York Yankees. As Josh Beckett tagged out Jorge Posada to complete one of the biggest upsets in World Series his tory, I could not help but reflect on all this team persevered through in order to reach baseball’s pinnacle. This team had many reasons to throw in the towel — specifically, injuries. One of their most talent ed pitching prospects, A. J. Burnett, was lost for the season in April. Not to worry—young pitchers such as game-six hero Josh Beckett would skjTocket this team to stardom. All Beckett did in the sixth game was throw his first complete game since high school. Although Dontrelle Willis struggled this postseason, his masterful pitching early in the season is the reason the Marlins even made the wild card. wnen Aii-aiar mira Daseman Mike Lowell went down late in the regular season pennant race with Philadelphia, the rest of the line up stepped up and did a wonder ful job until Lowell could return. And l\ow about 72-year-old manager Jack McKeon? Everyone laughed when the Marlins brought in a manager that could be collecting social security. When McKeon was hired, some even complained the Marlins should have hired a qualified minority candidate. However, McKeon is the guy that took a team with a los ing record in third place in their division and turned them into World Series champions in less than one season. Even when the playoffs began, the Marlins were written off time and time again. They could never get past the San Francisco Giants in round one, last year’s World Series runner-up. Well they did and in convincing fashion, three games to one. Once the World Series began, everyone was patting the Marlins on the back for a job well done, but no one thought they would get past the mighty New York Yankees. Even as late as the day of Saturday’s game, almost every baseball commentator predicted the series would go seven games and that the Yankees would win. There are many things baseball fans will look at as the reason the Florida Marlins won it all. Some will cite the pitching of Beckett and Willis, while others will remember the clutch hitting of Ivan Rodriguez, Mike Lowell, Luis Castillo and Alex Gonzalez. A case could be made that the manageri al decisions of McKeon and the mo tivation he provided led the Marlins to the title. uuwcvci, meie is ex muni uig ger lesson that anyone, sports fan or not, can take from this year’s Florida Marlins. That is the lesson to never give up, regardless of how things appear. A team that was once in disarray and looking for a manager is now making plans to celebrate being champions. Now the baseball season is over. The critics are nowhere to be found, and everyone can finally quit doubting the Florida Marlins. As weird as it might sound and as hard as it is to believe, they are the World Series Champions. i Sinclair is a graduate student in the College of Education.