THE BATTALION Page 11
MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1978
Day students get their news from the Batt.
4
e Owls trailed the Aggies 28-0
ie half. But in a way that is be
ing familiar to the Owls, they
led in the second half to make the
exciting. Behind the passing of
terback Randy Hertel Rice ral-
for three second half
ichdowns. But this time the rally
just short.
I told this team at halftime that
could move the ball on them
M),” Rice Coach Ray Alborn said
>r the game. “And we went out
1 showed that we could in the sec-
ihalf. With our kind of offense we
score some points.
I told our guys going into the
lethat if we kept tackling A&M
dand kept sticking them, they’d
e up the ball. And they did early
the ball game.”
[he Aggies fumbled the ball three
lesinthe first half, twice losing it
the Owls. Yet Rice was unable to
jtalize on the two turnovers. One
tor contributing to their first half
ffectiveness was the passing of
rtel. Missing most of the week’s
ctices with a hip pointer, Hertel
ised on his first five passing at-
f pts, hitting only 6 of 16 passes in
first half for 54 yards with one
erception. Hertel ended the game
for 33 for 190 yards.
My hip bothered me but only on
lys that I had to roll out or scram-
on,” Hertel said. “When I just
pped back and threw I didn’t
e to put any pressure on it. But
[enlwas running I couldn’t get the
action I needed to throw the ball
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hard enough. I was underthrowing
open receivers because of it. And the
A&M rush didn’t help my cause too
much either. They were knocking
me around all day.”
In hopes he could create the same
excitement generated last week
against Texas Tech, Alborn pulled
Hertel nine minutes into the game
and inserted sophomore quarterback
Robert Hoffmann. Against Tech last
week Hoffmann led the Owls to scor
ing 22 points in 10 minutes. But last
week’s magic wasn’t there against
the Aggies.
"Randy was overthrowing every
body in the first half so we wanted to
give Robert a try,” Alborn said. “Plus
we were hoping he could do it again
this week. But he couldn’t move the
ball either. Then he got hit (on a
roughing the passer call) and got his
bell rung and he was out for the day.
“We put Randy back in and we
were watching upstairs (in the
pressbox) to see if he was still ineffec
tive. We were ready to go with Mark
(Snyder) if we had to. But right when
we were ready to take him (Hertel)
out he’d do something great and
we’d leave him in.
Before the Owls had broken a
sweat they found themselves 21
points down in the first quarter. But
they made the proper defensive ad
justments and held the Aggie attack
in check for most of the ball game.
“The Aggies introduced the man-
in-motion against us to try and de
termine our defensive coverage,’’
Alborn said. “And it confused us at
first. It shouldn’t have because we’ve
been working on that set all season.
“We were making the proper de
fensive calls but we weren’t execut
ing them. We were slanting against
them on the line the way that the
man in motion would be going. But I
don’t know if it was the crowd noise
or what, but the players said they
were having a hard time hearing our
check-offs. So we had some people
slanting one way and others were
slanting the other way. It looked
pretty confusing.”
The Owls looked confused on the
Aggies’ first play from scrimmage.
The Rice secondary was burned on a
52-yard Mike Mosley to Gerald Car
ter bomb for the game’s first
touchdown and the Aggies first TD
in three games.
“I felt like they would come out
throwing the ball and they sure did, ”
Alborn said. “Actually our kid (safety
Mike Downs) was in a good position
to intercept the ball, but he slipped
right before the ball got there and
they scored.”
The Rice safety echoed the
thoughts of his coach about the play.
“No, that pass didn’t catch me by
surprise,” Downs said. “I just mis
judged the ball. I thought it would
come short and I slipped trying to
stop. It kept going and they got it.”
While the Aggies were introduc
ing new formations, Rice introduced
one of their own. On their third play
of the game quarterback Hertel
dropped back into the shotgun for
mation to receive the snap.
“We like it because it gets every
body spread out all over the field and
it give our quarterback a chance to
see the whole field,” Alborn ex
plained. “If we have the quarterback
set seven yards deep the defense has
to rush eight yards to get to him.
“We’ve been working on it for
three weeks but we just got it down
good enough to use this week. It
didn’t really help us today. But it will
on down the road.”
uggets defeat Rockets
by Pat O'
ncourage!
United Press International
td )ENVER — George McGinnis
iDavid Thompson each scored 26
nts Sunday to lead the Denver
ggets to a 134-121 NBA victory
ir the Houston Rockets.
The triumph was Denver’s
enfti straight over the Rockets,
shave never beaten the Nuggets
ethe former ABA club joined the
A three seasons ago.
ie Nuggets broke open a close
elate in the third period. They
just 84-81 with 2:34 to go in the
quarter but went on a 23-9 surge
over the next five minutes to take a
comfortable 107-90 lead.
Houston closed to within 111-103
but Thompson scored seven straight
points in the next 40 seconds to
clinch the win.
Rick Barry led Houston with 29,
Moses Malone had 23 and Calvin
Murphy 22 but could not overcome
Denver’s balance.
Dan Issel and Charley Scott each
added 15 points for Denver and Scott
handed out 12 assists.
i Mosley
inklin kid
inklin look 1
inklin kick 1
jal
ertel(Hanifi
Hertel
ranklin kid
Hertel
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