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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 1989)
The Battalion SPORTS 7 3 M MU m cxk MiSf Wednesday, February 8,1989 Lady Aggies crush SMU Roper, Jordon lead crucial second-half run By Stan Golaboff SPORTS WRITER Thou® i JUJT LOVE HELPING PEOPIF' ad in Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, “There’s no place like home!” The Texas A&M women’s basket ball team beat Soutern Methodist University 83-66 in G. Rollie White Coliseum. A&M is now 9-1 at home. The Lady Aggies (14-6 overall and 6-3 in SWC) ended their longest losing streak of the season (two games) using a strong defensive ef fort and all-around team play. “We changed the starting lineup around to get a better defensive ef fort and it worked,” said Head Coach Lynn Hickey. A&M forced 19 turnovers and outrebounded the Lady Mustangs 41-25. “We committed a lot of turnovers (25) because we were looking to run the ball and sometimes it looks like that person on the other end is open and they’re not,” Hickey said. “Their half-court trap in the sec ond half also caused us some prob lems.” Several times in the second half A&M converted easy lay-ups after full-court passes. “We were running well and those lay-ups are easy when you got a player like L.J. throwing the ball,” Lisa Herner said. “You have to look for those passes and it’s real easy when you’ve got people like Herner and Roper catch ing them,” Lisa Jordon said. Donna Roper led the Lady Aggies with 17 points, 14 of them in the last Texas A&M v SMU • What:The Texas A&M Aggies (9- 12; 2-7 in the SWC) host Southern Methodist (9-10; 4-4) in Southwest Conference action. • WhenrTipoff is at 7:30 p.m. • WhererG. Rollie White Coliseum. • Radio/TV:The game can be heard on KTAM-AM 1240 with Chuck Cooperstein handling the play-by- play and Duke Keith on color com mentary. eight minutes. Herner, Jordon, and Nette Garrett each had 14. Garrett scored all 14 of her points in the first half before suffering a groin pull. She did not play in the second half. It is not known if she will be able to play Thursday against Texas. “Nette was getting open in the paint on a play designed to get Lisa (Jordon) open,” Hickey said. “SMU over committed and our guards found Nette. We decided to rest her after the injury and we will have to wait to see how serious it is.” A&M took an early lead only to see SMU lead 19-18 with ten min utes left before half. A&M went on a 16-4 run over the next eight min utes. SMU closed it to ten before the half and trailed 38-28. The most im pressive thing about A&M’s 38 points was that they all came from the field. A&M did not attempt a free throw in the first half and didn’t make one until ten minutes left in the game. In the second half, SMU rallied to within two, 48-46, before A&M started running. A&M outscored SMU 35-20 in the last ten minutes with 15 of those points coming from the line. A&M limited SMU to 38 percent shooting from the field while shoot ing 61 percent themselves — a sea son high. A&M’s next game will be Thurs day against the University of Texas in Austin. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Texas is 15-4 overall and 9-0 in SWC. Texas has won 110 straight SWC games. Photo by Jay Janner A&M guard Lisa Herner (13) pressures SMU’s Jeannia Nix (15) during A&M’s 83-66 win Tuesday. 4 Tom A&M rial Commat. I to a “comm.; tance in pro® nnecl force 1 , >rovide specif ie missile cot nd the electro: d will be aim irement, Posit eady offered )ility to work ng it to workc i. A&M andil us are expectt: lat period. r universities: ograrn will co: Jes more fumi engineers me udents. nt currently^ — 75 masici: SWC football coaches taking bad rap in schoolboy signings Today marks one of the most important days in college football. Today is national signing day. Today is the day when all the high school seniors turn their verbal commitments into writing. After today some coaches will be smiling with satisfaction over their impressive list of signees, while others will be trying to ‘put on a happy face’ when they find out that they didn’t get that star player they were counting on. Some coaches will do so well that they will guarantee themselves a job for long time to come. Others will lose their jobs because of their losing the recruiting war. They won’t be fired anytime soon, but in the fall when their teams fail to win, they’ll be shown the door. Every year the media charges that the SWC coaches let the best athletes in Texas get away. The media blames the coaches and the Stan Golaboff Sports Writer scandals.that have seen only three SWC football teams avoid the dreaded NCAA investigators and probation. However, the media may be jumping the gun or shooting at imaginary ghosts. This year the SWC, which has eight of its nine teams based in Texas, has had great success at keeping the stars of Texas high school football in Texas. Only one of the top recruits, No. I Jessie Armstead has avoided making a verbal commitment. Armstead, a Dallas Carter linebacker, has narrowed his list to three schools with Baylor and Texas A&M being two of the finalists. If Armstead commits to an SWC team, the SWC will have kept five of the top eight players in the state. Along with this success, a recent Houston Post survey has shown that the SWC and other Texas colleges have kept 60 percent of the Texas’s top 30 players in the state. They also kept 60 percent of the top 100. So why has the media been down on the coaches and the SWC? Actually, it’s rather simple. The top athletes were leaving. Although the Post figures show that 60 percent of the best athletes stayed, the figures are a bit deceptive. The top athletes that have left are usually skill-position players. These players are the ones the media pays attention to. The Texas-based coaches generally lose three or four of the top five players. They then generally get the next five, it just doesn’t make up for the loss of these players. Coaches in Texas also have to compete with the powers of Oklahoma and Arkansas. These big-time schools have always been like a magnet for Texas high school stars. This year the NCAA has helped Texas’s coaches by placing Oklahoma and Oklahoma State on probation, but they still got some of Texas’s great talent. Despite these facts and the seemingly endless line of probation-plagued schools in the SWC, Texas stars are staying home this year. In fact, behind the likes of the University of Texas (which will likely win the recruiting war in the SWC) SWC coaches are enjoying success on the home front and even competing for other states’ top athletes. There will be some out there in the media who will continue to rave on about the inadequate recruiting talents of SWC coaches and other Texas schools. However, it looks like the great talent runaway has been stopped. The figures may not show it this year, but in years to come Texas gridiron stars will be staying home more. Fans must also remember that you never will be able to keep all the players in Texas because, like the saying goes, “How you goin’ to keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?” I don’t know the answer to that one, but the SWC coaches seem to have the answer this year. enlists in Tea | i the design a weighing lysin* peel of the pi? acility, in w| n be accuraitf nitored in nj awth chamta ae a number? rs dispersn 3us,” he said.'. 1 for centralis anmentally-rij 3ers.” so includes li Arabian gra) :>us U.S. univfl a lily faculty id A&M is eduS students in tl y and arid lat iterization is it Saudi Arab t is intended staff trained: ins in teaefe ■ ft nistrative are; RS 10W! )5 Immediate openings for 1989 Spring & Summer Graduates: CS, BANA, EE, IE, Chemical Engineering, Technical Sales (all technical majors, Business/MBA, for marketing). When you start your career, thertfs nothing like initial success. 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