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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1984)
bonfire 21 (I. “Then ost imposl mC.um'1 ml is sum bullduitl Idozercail ounel/Ttl nanaged I .ids, buhl e onlyein plans to J this uefll on lire nil ork. 13 sition” anl died in itl cle aroud to beattb a newsp ■d theaco e mantialt lot lowered Andres Sj- jolice ate ,ses, indud ho escaped dances« by hospiti! : inents set igh the® than thief i i jj-y Oil Of m about ih he violent! olice pnii ,( | , for you* d. e prep® reports 1 | , there ightersj| ilazes. | liert M° rt : (len hose' iring g ara | ers 25 ntfi e out on*| cm a vaM i houses^ ilding- M :n spre« 'll sepanl CIS ne inqjl i prog® e opei» all life| I geiitlyfl ala lents 'f i sits pql \Vedn| II This ,pee| t)1( j . bike rn* Sports Franco Harris not ready for Canton Thursday, Movember 7 i 984/The Battalion/Page 9 Aggie defense: ‘Me and my R.C. ’ Photo by DEANSAITO Texas A&M Hebacker Johnny Holland (11) wraps up Rice gie defenders Sammy O’Brient (90), Ken Ford (19) and Jay quarterback Kiry Overton during last Saturday’s game. Ag- Muller (82) make sure Overton is completely surrounded. By JEFF GRAUNKE Sports Writer As a rule, if a football team has a 1-3 Southwest Conference record, you’d expect its defense to be lousy. Texas A&M’s defense is an excep tion. This week, A&M’s defense slipped from first in the SWC in total defense to second behind Texas Tech. The Aggies are only giving up an average of 283.3 yards per game. A&M Defensive Coordinator R.C. Slocum is responsible for a large part of that success. In 1982, Slo cum’s first year in the Jackie Sherrill regime, the Aggies were last in the conference in total defense. But in ’83, the Ags inproved to third. This season, the Aggies are back on top again — defensively that is. Slocum believes 1984’s statistics ac curately reflect the defense’s perfor mance. “After seven games, when you start looking at it, we haven’t given up many yards,” Slocum said. “We haven’t given up many points in comparison to other teams in the league.” Slocum is pleased with this year’s defense, but not content. “As a coach I don’t think you’re ever totally satisfied with anything,” Slocum said. “We started the season having to replace six starters on de fense. I’ve been pleased. We’re play ing some young people on the de fensive line and 1 think those people are making a lot of progress. “Our strength is obviously Ray Childress. Ray is a great football player. Aside from Ray, I would say its our overall team speed. We’re not very big and, as a result of that, we are a fairly quick defensive team. We’re really not playing with any body I would classify as a slow guy. “Our weakness would he our overall size. We’re not just a big physical team. Our defensive backs are small. Our inside linebackers are small and really our outside line backers are small. We would like to have a big nose guard, but defensive linemen are hard to fill- It’s hard to go recruit a guy tlj weighs what would you would li^ for a defensive lineman to weigh /d yet he able to run. “Obviously yovff like to have 270 pounders acrossoe hoard, hut you don’t. I'd like uhave a 230-pound linebacker that tuns like Johnny Holland, hut fere aren’t many of those around I tn hoping and I really believe Wt Johnny Holland in a year’s timdviH he at least a 220- pound linebacker. So we ll get a cou ple of years out of him being a big guy- “Our guys are working hard to be come better. I think they’ve become better. From the start of the year to now, we’ve made steady progress. Replacing over half our starters, we were a team that was hit hard by graduation. We’re having to play young guys that have not played. You know people say that some times, but we’re extremely young.” Childress is Still questionable for Saturday’s showdown against SMU in Dallas. He has been out this week with infected bursitis in his right knee. With SMU’s offensive line av eraging about 275-pounds per player, the Aggies could have some definite problems. “Childress is obviously a talented athlete, but he’s playing good too. A lot of times you can have a guy like that and you look at him and see he’s a talented player and, particularly one going into his senior year, a lot of times you can find a guy like that who doesn’t perform up to his ex pectations,” Slocum said. “Ray has played very well for us. We’ve got some people in our sec ondary that, as a group, they’re play ing pretty good. So, overall, I’m pleased with the progress they’re making. We’ve improved steadily as the season goes on and last week we played without two starters — Chil dress and (David) Dowell. A&M’s R.C. Slocum “If he’s (Childress) not there, we’ll start Jay Muller and Ron Saddler like we did last week, two true soph- mores, and just make the best of what we got. WeTl go into the game and try to be positive about it. “I told the players Saturday that Ray was out and we could go one of two directions. We could use that as an excuse for failure and ineffi ciency, or we could use it as positive motivation and each guy play a little harder and try to take up a little bit of slack. I think they responded very well. “We played a three-man line a lot of the time against Rice. Agianst a team like th^it, I normally have a four-man rtfsh coming.” Slocum" played two defensive backs as outside linebackers during the Rice game. “We went to a six DB (defensive back) scheme and playing three down linemen,” he said. “They held up good for the first three quarters or so of the game. 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