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8 THE GAMECOCK ♦ Friday, March 5,2004 _ , _ Game.Scheduie -V /X ~m-X r II /''"NJ MEN’S TENNIS vs. Kentucky, 2 p.ir 1/ \ I If I 1L 1 WOMEN’S TENNIS at Kentucky, 4 p.m. Contact I " I I 1—< I MEN’S AND WOMEN’S SWIMMING in Bulldog Invitational Story ideas? Questions? Comments? I I VI I ILf WOMEN’S GOLF in LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic E-mailusatgamecocksports@gwm.sc.edu ■ 1 1 at Baton Rouge, La. Men’s.basketball * USC seeks momentum for tourney BY JAIME DOWNS THE GAMECOCK Saturday the USC men’s bas ketball team will take on the Tennessee Volunteers in its final regular season game, hoping close out the season with a win and en ter next weekend’s SEC touma-. ment on a lygh note Without center Rolando Howell, who is out for the rest of the season with a fractured wrist, the Gamecocks are going to have to step it up a notch to ensure a victory. . The Gamecocks are 21-8 over all, 8-7 in the SEC. A victory over Tennessee could help them earn ♦ MEN’S, SEE PAGE 9 SEC Standings All statistics are current as of March 4,2004. EASTERN CONF. OVERALL Kentucky 12-3 22-4 Florida 9-6 18-8 USC 8-7 21-8 Vanderbilt8-719-7 Georgia- 6-9 14-12 Tennessee 6-9 14-12 WESTERN CONF. OVERALL Mississippi State 13-2 24-2 LSU 8-7 18-8 Alabama _ 8-7 16-10 Arkansas _• 4-11 13-13 Auburn 4-11 12-14 Ole Miss 4-11 12-14 PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK Forward Olga Gritsaeva had 13 points and nine rebounds. Disappointing season ends for USC women BY BRAD MOSELEY THE GAMECOCK The USC women’s basketball team wrapped up its season Thursday night as they lost to the Georgia Lady Bulldogs in the first round of the SEC Tournament, 73-42. “I think this is one of the toughest seasons I have had as a coach,” USC coach Susan Walvius said. “We have a very young basketball team. We only have two seniors and two sopho mores. Both sophomores have been injured this year. We have a big group of freshman with a lot of potential.” The Gamecocks started out strong, scoring first and j umping out to a 6-2 lead. Georgia would soon wake up, however, using five early Gamecock turnovers to get back in the game. The Lady Bulldogs didn’t look back. By half time, the Lady Bulldogs led 37-19. Georgia won the battle of the boards, 39-31, despite USC hav ing out-rebounded Georgia in their first meeting earlier in the season. The Gamecocks also turned the ball over 21 times. Two highlights for the Gamecocks were freshmen Iva Sliskovic and Larissa Kulcar, who led the Gamecocks for most of the game. Sliskovic scored 14 points on 6-12 shooting. Seniors Cristina Ciocan and Kelly Morrone were shut down offen sively in the first half, going 0-4 and 0-1, respectively. Morrone tried to make a little noise to start the second half as she helped lead the Gamecocks to a 5-0 rim. She couldn’t get much going after that. Ciocan also had a tough night, finishing with eight points and 3-of-9 shooting from the field. “Cristina has had a great ca reer at South Carolina and so has Kelly Morrone,” USC assistant coach Michelle Marciniak said. Another small victory for the Gamecocks was the quiet night of Georgia’s senior center, Christi Thomas. Thomas was re cently awarded first team All SEC honors. “One of our main objectives was to take Christi Thomas out the game, and we did that,” Marciniak said. Unfortunately it seemed that Thomas’ quiet performance only boosted the game of her team mates, Alexis Kendrick and Janese Hardrick, who led the Lady Bulldogs in scoring. The Gamecocks, desperate to pull off the upset, used seemingly every defensive set they could think of, going from a box and one to a 2-3 and from a 3-2 to man to-man, but nothing would work. The Gamecocks also tried trap ping the Bulldogs with full and half court presses. The traps did create Georgia turnovers, but in the end the 45 percent Lady Bulldog shooting proved too much for the Gamecocks. Comments on this story?E-mail gamec.icksports@gwm.sc.edu PHOTO BY MARK SCHILLING/THE GAMECOCK Forward Kerbrell Brown launches the ball in the face of a Kentucky player during Wednesday’s game. Carolina cannot match tough teams Kentucky did it again. In what could have been a great win for the USC men’s basketball team heading into the season finale on Saturday, the Wildcats shot their way past the Gamecocks. But focusing on the fact that it was Kentucky that beat Carolina so soundly is not the way to go. Instead, under BRAD SENKIW standing why Fourth-year the crew from print Lexington journalism bashed usc>s student , ... head m is more important. Plain and simple, the Gamecocks lack the ability to pull out a needed win against a highly ranked oppo nent. It was obvious against Mississippi State and just as clear against Kentucky. With that being said, it’s not a knock on what head coach Dave Odom has done with this group of young players. I’ve been to a couple of the Kentucky games and this one had the most en ergy at the beginning of the game that I’ve encountered. Where was the execution and toughness on Wednesday? Did the letters across the blue jerseys in timidate Carolina or was it the hot shooting that put a damper or winning? It was a combination of all this and more. The defense that once dominated has begun to falter. With Rolando Howell out and the interi or defense weakened, Kentucky simply used its outside threats while Carolina packed it in down low in the second half. This is a sign of weakness that will probably spell doom in the postseason. Also, Carolina was unable to force Kentucky to play its game. When the Wildcats began throwing up shots with reckless abandon, USO followed suit. Shots didn’t go down and Kentucky built a lead, which is all too obvious. What’s worrisome is that when this hap pens in the SEC or NCAA tourna ments, it can become one-and-done. Kentucky is just another exam \ pie that if a team brings its > game, Carolina can’t match it, therefore playing like the team that so many picked to finish dead last in the SEC East. That doesn’t mean they won’t have success in the tour naments, just don’t count on them making a major run this year. USC.Baseball Baseball holds off Furman, prepares for Clemson series BY JONATHAN HILLYARD THE GAMECOCK One state rival down, one to go this week for the USC baseball team, which defeated the Furman Paladins on Wednesday, 7-4. The win improves Carolina to 10-0 on the season heading into this weekend’s series with rival Clemson. The win was in large part thanks to a good start, in which USC scored three runs in the first inning. Back-to-back singles by Steven Tolleson and Bryan Triplett set the stage for Steve Pearce’s seventh home run of the season. The three-run homer com bined with single-run innings in the second, third, fifth and eighth innings to bring USC’s run total to seven. In addition to Pearce, both Triplett and Davy Gregg had two hit outings. RBI’s went to Tolleson, Triplett, Pearce, Kevin Melillo and Tommy King. As a team, the Gamecocks recorded 13 hits, the ninth consecutive game Carolina has notched 10 or more hits. On the mound for the Gamecocks was Jason Fletcher, who improved his record to 2-0 by pitching four scoreless innings and allowing only two hits to the Paladin offense. Fletcher record ed three strikeouts and didn’t walk a batter until he left the game with a 5-0 lead. Carolina used six pitchers, with the first three recording a two-hit shutout. Furman rallied in the eighth with four runs before head coach Ray Tanner turned to his new ace clos er, Chad Blackwell, who retired five consecutive batters to ice the win for USC. After 10 games, Tanner has to be impressed with his team, who lost key members of its offensive lineup and pitching staff. Behind the plate, newcomers Brendan Winn and Pearce have been extremely pleasant surpris es. Winn leads the SEC in batting average with .567, is third in slug ging percentage with 1.167 and sec ond in on-base percentage with .659. Pearce leads the SEC in home runs with seven, ranks fifth in bat ting average with .526, fourth in slugging percentage with 1.132 and third in RBIs with 22. As a team, USC leads the SEC ♦BASEBALL, SEE PAGE 9 PHOTO BY MARK SCHILLING/THE GAMECOCK Outfielder Davy Gregg slides into the base in action for USC this season. Gregg had two hits and two runs against Furman. Carolina, Clemson rivalry at its best This weekend two nationally ranked rivals will meet to claim bragging rights and try to position themselves as a national power. These two teams, and their fans, truly hate each other and would like nothing better than to see the other one get blown out. These two teams are consistently ranked in the top 25 and make postsea son play almost every year. Duke and North Carolina meet on the hardwood Saturday at 9 p.m., but the game I am referring to will TRAVIS happen close to seven hours BOLAND earlier. USC and Clemson Fourth-year meet on the baseball field print for a home-and-home series journalism this weekend. stuaent -phe USC-Clemson rivalry was recently recognized by ESPN as the most underrated college football rivalry in the country. Unfortunately, that ri valry has not worked out for the Gamecocks, as Carolina was blown out at home by its rival. The men’s basketball teams got together ear ly in the season with USC taking down the Timers in Littlejohn Coliseum. That game was featured on Fox Sports South. Now both nationally ranked baseball teams are getting together, and I can’t watch any of it because the game is sold out and it won’t be shown on TV. If there was ever a time to show a game be tween two teams it would be this weekend. The bad blood between the two would make for ex cellent TV. Just look at the College World Series two years ago when the two teams met. Pitches were thrown at batter’s heads, there were homerun celebrations and the infamous hat-trick moment for USC’s Michael Campbell. This is college baseball at its finest, yet no one seems to care. Much like the ESPN poll, the USC-Clemson baseball rivalry has flown under the radar for too long. This rivalry might not have the glitz and glamour of a Texas-Rice matchup or Stanford-Southern Cal, but the two teams have made leaps and bounds to become two of the top teams in college baseball. No longer is this game just a matchup be tween teams battling for in state players, but instead it has become a game with national magnitude. It can affect national rankings and national recruiting for both teams. It’s the first game between the two teams this weekend and some of the new players will get their first glance at the rivalry, and I hope they can understand what it means to Gamecock fans. The Tigers have won six of the last eight reg ular season matchups. This season Carolina fans have reason to believe that the rivalry might take a dram t ic turn, as the Tigers are slow out of the gaic and the Gamecocks are red-hot. Carolina is scoring in bunches and the Tiger pitching staff better watch out, because they don’t show any signs of slowing down. They might score 38 runs, much like they did against the Tigers a couple of years ago. My message to Coach Tanner and the boys is: score as many runs as you possibly can and don’t let up. Also, don’t fear Doug Kingsmore Stadium — it’s just a field and you guys can win there no matter what all those people up there say. <