Texas A&M
The Battalion Sports
Wednesday, June 1, 1983/The BattaIion/Page 11
rock ‘satisfied’ with NCAA championship
by Joe Tindel Jr.
ifip Battalion Staff
t/|satisfied coac h is an unusual
fehi
' But to say that 1 exas A&M
ifijball coach Bob Brock is any-
-tingless than satisfied would all
jliminate the word from the
■onary. If winning a national
lampionship doesn’t bring
itisfaction, what does?
True, the Aggies’ road to the
top wasn’t full of homers or
blowouts, nor does Texas
A&M’s final 41-11 season record
indicate perfection. But Brock’s
not losing any sleep over that.
As the Aggie coach put it: “It
wasn’t pretty, as far as hits were
concerned, but it was enough to
win.”
And winning is what a coach is
paid to do.
Tuesday afternoon, Brock
walked into the women’s athle
tics office looking like he’d just
set down a 50-pound sack of
potatoes. After all, surviving in
jury to a key pitcher, less than
adequate hitting, and a loss in
the first game of NCAA soft-
ball’s College World Series can
set a coach’s nerves to rest, if
■
fixers grab title
H United Press International
INGLEWOOD, Calif. —
Hit a difference a decade can
nake.
■The 1972-73 Philadelphia
f Srs compiled a 9-73 record,
hekvorst record in the long his-
foraPi* the NBA.
here we are with the
le Isn®>_83 version of the 76ers
and GM stamped themselves Tues-
lay night as one of the NBA’s
1 1 11-nme great teams with a 115-
t° n > 08 drubbing of the defending
IB A champion Los Angeles
■ers, completing just the
§th championship series
p in league history.
/hen the regular season en-
with 76ers holding a spark-
67-15 record, Philadelphia’s
es Malone was asked what
nggercieexpected from his team,
nt of »‘Four. four, four’” he re-
the Bellied. He meant four-game
nebps of each of the three play-
peries.
His expectations almost were
7 K
lorly in: I-
) bases q
;banon
fulfilled. Only a single loss to the
Milwaukee Bucks blemished the
76ers incredible playoff streak
and their 12-1 postseason re
cord goes into the book as the
best in NBA history.
Malone, who carried the
76ers to their first NBA crown in
16 years, was named the series
MVP after scoring 24 points and
grabbing an incredible 23 re
bounds in the final game.
But he wouldn’t take much of
the credit.
“This is the greatest moment
of Moses’ life,” the burly center
gurgled through a mouthful of
champagne in the Sixers locker-
room. “But this isn’t Moses’
championship. We did it for our
fans, and we did it for us, but
mostly we did it for the Doctor.”
And Julius Erving, the “Doc
tor,” was there. Tuesday night
he silenced the critics who had
said despite his enormous talent
he would never play on a cham
pionship team. He sat quietly in
ts middle of the wild celebration.
“I’m not out of control now
because of all the things I’ve
been through, things that go
beyond basketball,” Erving said.
“My family is still the most im
portant thing to me. They stuck
with me through six years of
frustration.”
Erving finished the game with
19 points, seven coming in the
last two minutes when the 76ers,
who had not led since the open
ing period, bolted back into the
game. An Erving steal and dunk
with two minutes left tied the
score, 106-106. With 59 seconds
left, Erving slammed one home
and was fouled. He made the
free throw and the 76ers led,
109-107.
After a free throw by Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar pulled the de
sperate Lakers within 109-108,
Erving dethroned the cham
pions by drilling a 10-foot jum
per with 24 seconds left.
.. and Philly fans party
United Press International
PHILADELPHIA
hbusands of joyful, screaming,
-drinking fans took to the
ts Tuesday night after the
ladelpia Sixers dethroned
I Los Angeles Lakers to be-
e NBA champions.
Fireworks sputtered and
tourlef P e d throughout the center
"the city and cars raced
ugh the streets blowing
horns. Garbage trucks
ie mlting their nightly rounds
ofSanS ed a deeper note with their
mifforns.
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The celebrations erupted in
bars throughout the city where
mahy had spent the evening
watching the 76ers take an early
lead, fall behind, then fight back
to a 115-108 victory.
Mayor William Green called
the 76ers’ team, with its regular
season record and its record set
ting 12-1 playoff mark, “one of
the finest ever to set foot on a
court.”
One of the 76ers’ biggest fans
and native Philadelphian, come
dian Bill Cosby, watched the fin
als at his Connecticut home with
his wife Camille.
“I loved it,” Cosby said. “I
kept saying L.^. is going to get
tired. They are playing so hard,
playing so far above themselves,
reaching for every ball, going
for every shot.
“They ran out of steam in the
last seven minutes of the game.
They had given as much of
themselves as they could.”
“It was a happy moment.
Even my wife lit up a cigar,” he
said.
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they’re not already shot.
In between a good night’s
sleep after Monday’s flight
home from Omaha, Neb., and
celebration Tuesday, a cheerful
Brock sat down to reflect on the
championship series.
“I just felt like that if we got by
UCLA, we were going to win the
tournament,” the coach said of
the Aggies 1-0 semifinal victory
over the Bruins. “The (Aggies’)
defense was tremendous. It was
actually Cal State-Fullerton’s de
fense that made the errors that
gave us the game. We never fal
tered, we never quit and we nev
er made an error.
“It’s a good thing. I think
(pitcher) Lori (Stoll) was getting
at the end of her rope at that
26th inning. She was really talk
ing about being tired. We got
together and everybody kept
saying to each other, ‘hey, we’ve
got to get Lori a run; this is one
game that we’re not going to let
Lori lose.’”
That extra effort was for a
worthy cause. Earlier this spring
in Albuquerque, Stoll went 19
innings against Fullerton and
lost. This time she had already
pitched 14 innings against
UCLA in Sunday’s semifinal.
She had to pitch 12 more to se
cure Texas A&M’s 2-0 victory
over Fullerton in the champion
ship game later the same day.
The chance to pitch against
UCLA was especially important
for Stoll, who finished her
career as a four-time all-
America and one of the best
pitchers in the nation. She had
lost to the Bruins two years ago
in 29 innings, 1-0.
Brock said he decided to let
Stoll handle a large portion of
thejaitching chores because she
was on a roll and had momen
tum working for her. But relief
pitcher Shan McDonald pitched
the Aggies to a 2-0 victory early
in the series over Louisiana
Tech, to help her team bounce
back from a 2-0 loss to South
Carolina in the first game of the
series.
“I decided that Lori had got
ten us where we were at, and I
knew I had Shan in relief when I
needed her,” Brock said. “(But)
I think Shan pitched a big, big
game when she beat Louisiana
Tech.
“I don’t feel like any of those
teams could have beaten Shan or
Lori. It’s just that it seemed that
Lori had the momentum going.
She had a lot of things going her
way.”
Stoll went straight home to
Chillicothe, Mo., after the series.
But in a long-distance telephone
interview Tuesday, she cited
confidence and determination
as her motivating factors during
her 26-inning pitching
marathon Sunday.
“I really wanted to win be
cause it was my last year, so I
decided to pitch as hard as I
could,” Stoll said. “I just knew
that our defense would hold. I
knew we’d get a run sooner or
later. It was just a matter of
when.
“It seemed like I got more
tired when I would come in be
tween innings and sit on the
bench instead of while I was out
there.”
Stoll and the Aggies were on
the hot seat from the outset, hav
ing lost the first game of the
double-elimination series. But
Brock said that’s been par for
the course for his team.
“It put pressure on a team
that had done it before,” Brock
said, “and a team that never
knew what the word quit meant.
It’s not the first time that the
Aggies lost the first game. Itjust
seems to be part of our makeup
— that we’re going to have to
lose that first game and battle
back.”
After its loss to South Caroli
na, Texas A&M defeated In
diana, 1-0, Friday, before
knocking off Louisiana Tech
Saturday. The Aggies beat Ful
lerton Saturday, 1-0, to earn a
chance to play them again in the
championship game.
The Aggies faced the same
problem in the championship
series that they faced all spring.
But field play made up, and, as
Brock said, the hits came at
opportune moments.
“We didn’t hit very well, but
we hit enough, and we hit in
spurts,” Brock said. “And our
defense and our pitching were
so awesome that it wasjust a mat
ter of time whenever we could
get some hitters that could put
something back-to-back.”
When the bats did crack,
Brock said Iva Jackson, Cindy
Cooper and Patti Holthaus were
responsible for most of the
splinters.
Cooper was one of the
youngsters who, to say the least,
didn’t disappoint Brock this
spring. She made the all
tournament team — as a fresh
man — at third base.
“I think the freshmen played
outstanding,” Brock said. “In
the final two games I had a
freshman in left field, a fresh
man in right field, a freshman at
third base and a freshman at
first base.”
Cooper, who was home in
Bartlesville, Okla., Tuesday,
said the newness of the cham
pionship series was hard to swal
low until the time came to actual
ly get out onto the field.
“Before every game, I was
real nervous,” Cooper said. “It
was hard to eat. It was hard to
even think about anything else
but playing.
“I remember every extra in
ning that we went out there, we
would keep saying, ‘three outs.’”
But Cooper and the Aggies
were able to throw away all the
Lori Stoll
nervousness after the 12th in
ning Sunday against Fullerton.
“I was crazy,” Cooper said. “I
mean I was the happiest I’ve
ever been. I was so tired from
having to play so much, but yet it
was like every bit of energy I had
left I spent on yelling and hug
ging people.”
For Brock, the winning ex
perience wasn’t a new one. His
1982 Aggies won the AIAW na
tional championship. Neverthe
less, he had powerful words of
praise for his NCAA champion
ship team: “I’ve never coached a
team that was more together
and more team-oriented. (They)
never knew what the words ‘give
up’ or ‘quit’ or ‘we’re through’
meant.
“I’ve never seen a team with
more composure and more en
thusiasm for the game. And nev
er once did they ever say, ‘we
can’t win this tournament.’
“I’m very, very proud of
them, as a coach. Basically all I
did was make up lineups and en
courage them. They did it them
selves.”
Food for Thought
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