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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 5, 1989)
The Battalion SPORTS 9 Duke leads Aggie Four critical double plays lead to By Jerry Bolz ^ a ppy with the win and the de- tensive effort. ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR Andy Duke celebrated his birth day by knocking in three runs on four hits to lead the Texas Aggies to a 9-3 win over Sam Houston State Tuesday. Duke hit singles in the second, third and fourth innings to help the Aggies notch their 34th win tn 35 games. Sam Houston dropped to 24- 14 with the loss. Duke was pleased he had such a good night at the plate on his birth day. it’s just one of those things,” he said. “I happened to have a great day on my birthday. A lot of the credit (for the RBIs) goes to the peo ple in front of me.” A&M’s Mike Easley also got three hits while Kirk Thompson and Terry Taylor got two apiece. The Aggies turned four critical double plays to keep the Bearkats r*^ garT V e - W 1 T L We g ot four double plays and if A&M Coach Mark Johnson was you’re doing that, a team has got to ESPN/Collegiate Basebal Top 25 Poll Team 1-Texas A&M 2. LSU 3. Wichita St. 4. Miss. St. 5. Arizona St. B.Arkansas 7. Oklahoma St. S.Texas 9. Florida 10. CIemson 11 Miami, Fla. 12. Arizona 13. Fresno St. 14. Long Beach St. 15. Florida St. 16.Southern Cal 17.California IS.Houston 19.San Jose St. 20.South Florida 21.UNLV 22.Oklahoma 23. Fullerton St. 24. Brigham Young 25.South Alabama Record 34-1 31- 3 30-3 21- 5 30-10 27- 4 23- 5 33-10 28- 9 24- 3 25- 10 25-12-1 22-12 2»4 28- 9 27-14 26- 10 32- 5 28-6 29- 9 26-8 18-7 21-11 18-9 22- 9 baseball team past Sam Houston 9-3 victory play great of tense to beat you.” The Aggies got on the board in the second inning, ascatcher Eric Al bright walked and went to third on a single by Duke. Easley singled to left field to score Albright to give the Ags a 1-0 lead. A&M did more damage to the Bearkats’ starting pitcher Norman Butler in the third inning. Shortstop Chuck Knoblauch was hit by a Butler pitch and stole second base. Third baseman John Byington singled but Knoblauch was thrown out at the plate by SHSU right fielder Tom Jones. Albright walked and Duke singled to score Byington and Albright to give A&M a 3-0 lead. The Aggies did the most damage in the fourth inning, getting five runs on only two hits. Taylor singled to right before Knoblauch and Albright walked to load the bases. Duke singled to left to score Taylor and Knoblauch. Albright and Duke scored when SHSU third baseman Clint Turling ton overthrew first base in an at tempt to throw out Easley. Easley Aggie shortstop Chuck Knoblauch awaits a (7) for the first out of a double play in the throw to put out SHSU’s John Carmichael second inning of A&M’s 9-3 win Tuesday. scored on another throwing eirof on the fifth and one in the ninth while innings and got the win for A&M fhetollowmg play to put the Aggies the Aggies got one more in their half and Butler (3-3) suffered the loss for U P of the fifth. the Bearkats. c tt ^ . . The teams play a single game to- Sam Houston scored two runs in Brent Gilbert (2-0) pitched three day in Huntsville at 3 p.m. Rule changes are unnecessary for today 9 s college basketball It never fails. Just when things are going good, someone comes along and tries to make unnecessary changes to improve things. In Seattle this weekend, NCAA coaches met to talk about various rule changes in basketball, just at the time when basketball, be it professional or collegiate, is enjoying its most popularity . Hey folks, haven’t you ever heard the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Among the rules changes that are being discussed are moving the three-point line back to the international line, abolishing the time line, widening the lane and the most asinine suggestion of raising the height of the goal. Let’s take a look at each suggestion and see why it would or wouldn’t work. First, there’s the moving of the three- point line back to the international distance. One of the main proponents of this move is Indiana Head Coach Bobby Knight. Knight thinks that 19 feet 9 inches is too dose to merit an extra point. This might be true, but even at 19 feet 9 inches, teams are still only hitting 30 to 40 percent of their three- point shots. The real reason Knight and others want to move it back is because they all lost to teams that used the three-point shot to beat the likes of Indiana and Arizona. Moving the three-pointer may help in international play, but the fans like to see teams like Siena and shooters like Glen Rice. Moving the line back isn’t going to keep three-point shooters from beating you, it will just keep fans out of the building. The one rule change that makes sense is the widening of the lane. By playing with a wider lane, the college athletes will be familiar with it and when the Olympics come around, American athletes wul not suffer culture shock from the wider lane. This will also help the likes of Alonzo Mourning, who loves to camp in the lane, learn to move and stay active in the scheme of the offense. However, this rule probably won’t be implemented because the wider lane looks foreign to the fans and they will not tolerate it. Abolishing the time line will never happen, because fans love to see man-to man defenses and presses. Take away the time line and there is no incentive to play defense until they get within 20 feet of the basket. More teams will start to play zone defenses and the game will slow down. The result will not only be a loss of fans, which means a loss in revenue, but a stadium of sleeping fans. The most off-the-wall idea is the raising of the goal to 10 feet 4 inches. There is no real reason for the goal being at 10 feet, except that’s where it has always been. The reason some want to raise the rim is because more and more players play above the it. The most harm will be done to smaller teams that will be forced to take more three-point shots, from wherever it is. as they will be out-rebounded by the larger teams that get up over the rim. The best news to come out of Seattle, besides the national championship, is the fact that none of these ideas were accepted. However, with the likes of Knight and others arguing for changes, those who like the game as it is (the fans and players) may have no choice in the matter. Hopefully, Knight and his litde band of do-gooders will wake up and smell the coffee. If they change the sport too radically the fans may reject it completely. If the fans don’t come to watch, then tickets aren’t sold, TV money dries up and basketbal gets filed in in the infamous circular file. No matter what Knight and his merry band do, at least we still have the NBA. This week’s pick hit! On top of the charts with IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 Your Special Price * $2666. 00 The 8530-E21 includes 1 Mb memory, 8513 Color Display, 80286 (10 MHz) processor, one 3.5” diskette drive (1.44 Mb), 20 Mb fixed disk drive, IBM Mouse, DOS 4.0, Microsoft® Windows/286, Word and hDC Windows Express ™. List price $4,437. Ask about IMMEDIATE DELIVERY! The IBM Personal System/2® Model 30 286 has long been on top of the charts. As a top performer, it’s fine-tuned to give you the right combination of features and options to help you work faster, easier and smarter at the flip of a switch. Right now, the PS/2 Model 30 286 with selected software is being offered at a great campus price. 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