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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 1989)
The Battalion SPORTS Monday, November 6,1989 9 Sports Editor Tom Kehoe 845-2688 , Aggies win big, Abut never wanted ‘|to run up the score (■: | ss. If!; A Clay Rasmussen Sports Writer f f» When is enough enough? ofl I guess that depends on your coaching philosphies. I Houston Coach Jack Pardee seems to « tfiink that his team can’t get enough. nH Two weeks ago, Houston mauled t. hapless Southern Methodist, running up Hie score in pursuit of national records. _ I The Cougars and their quarterback ^Bndre Ware did just that, scoring 95 points and gaining more than 1,000 l^rards of total offense, while limiting the Mustangs to 21 points. ■H More important is what Houston lost the game. JH loses some respect in win I The Cougars lost a lot of respect H'ound not only the Southwest Honference, but also among coaching Haffs around the country. B Pardee and his offensive coordinator, Hohn Jenkins, chose to allow the Hlouston offense to romp around the Hstrodome unrestrained and in pursuit Hf national recognition. ■ “We didn’t run try to run up the Hore,” Pardee said. “Our offense is just a high-powered offense and was Horking.” I Ware, who started receiving national attention as a Heisman Trophy candidate earlier this season, said the high score was a result of the high- |§coring Run-and-Shoot offense. The Cougars could do nothing to stop it. ■ “Our offense is designed to score a lot of points,” Ware said after the UH-SMU game. “It was really clicking and the pointsjust kept coming.” r SMU Coach Forrest pregg said he felt Pardee and Jenkins kept throwing fresh players into the game against his tired, worn-down, bunch of freshmen. | Actually, what killed SMU was the fact that Houston just kept throwing the ball, not people, during the game. If True, Pardee pulled Ware out after the First half, but Dave Klinger wasjust as competent a quarterback as the next guy against the undersized Mustang Backfield anyway. Saturday a different story P Unlike Pardee and the Cougars, Texas A&M Coach R.C. Slocum showed Hnesse in handling a weaker team. | After building a lead he could feel comfortable with, Slocum yanked starting quarterback Lance Pavlas and running backs Darren Lewis and Robert PVilson in the second quarter. ; And as the game progressed, Aggie fans saw the future of the Texas A&M program. H “I played everybody I could find,” Slocum said after the game. | It wasn’t so much playing his second and third string, but Slocum slowed the tempo of the game down by keeping the ball out of the air. 1 The Aggies threw the ball only nine times, completing only six. Those six passes were devastating to the Mustangs’ defense. A&M amassed 205 yards in the air, an average of 34 yards per pass completed. Think what the score could have been had Slocum chose to continuing passing. A&M tried to keep score down Pardee allowed his offensive machine to pass throughout the game and that’s the kind of numbers the Cougars rolled up. I don’t think Houston had anything to worry about to justify throwing for more than 700 yards. Still, many would look at A&M’s 63-14 win as running up the score, but then they wouldn’t know the real story. “They tried everything they could to keep the score down,” Gregg said. “We gave them easy touchdowns.” “I wasn’t trying to pull out all the stops so we could see how many points we could get on the board,” Slocum said. “That’s not significant in a game.” While A&M’s offense is not quite as potent as Houston’s, it is capable of putting points on the board. When it’s clicking, that is. And clicking it was, Saturday. “We’ve got our offense down pat,” Lewis said. “We’ve been working hard on our running game and it shows.” That sounds a lot like Ware’s “Our offense is awesome” quote. Only difference is Slocum knows when enough is enough. Maybe Pardee and Jenkins should take note. No. 20 A&M blows out SMU, 63-14 Photo by Jay Janner SMU quarterback tries to avoid A&M defenders Aaron Wallace (23), Terry Price (88) and John Cooper (27) in the second quarter. A&M went on to beat SMU 63-14, and now sits atop the SWC race with a 5-1 conference mark. Shane Garrett (80) and Percy Wad dle (81) celebrate a touchdown. By Richard Tijerina Of The Battalion Staff Early in the first half of Texas A&M’s game with Southern Methodist, clouds darkened and a storm threatened to fall on Kyle Field. It didn’t, but the Aggies started a storm of their own, scoring a touchdown late in the first quarter. And another in the second. And another. And another. For SMU, when it rained, it poured. The Mustangs jumped ahead of the Ag gies early, taking a 7-0 lead on a 66-yard drive on the game’s first possession. But A&M scored the game’s next nine touch downs on the way to a 63-14 mauling over SMU. With the win, the Aggies improved to 7- 2, 5-1 in the Southwest Conference. Cou pled with Texas Tech’s 24-17 upset over Texas, A&M now is in the driver’s seat for the conference championship. The Aggies must win their last two home games against Arkansas (4-1 in SWC) and Texas (3-1 in SWC) to earn a fourth Cotton Bowl trip in five years. “Going into the season, we wanted to be in this position,” A&M Coach R.C. Slocum said. “We’re now at the point in our season where we’re in the position for the championship. Now we can start zeroing in on Arkansas (Nov. 24). “We know where we are and where we have to go.” The Mustangs, who are playing in their first season back after a two-year layoff be cause of the NCAA’s death penalty, looked SWC Standings T**m Texas A&M Arkansas Texas Baylor Texas Tech x-Houston TCU Rice SMU SWC Record 5-1 4-1 3-1 3-2 3-2 3-2 2-4 1-6 0-6 ineligible for conference championship. Saturday’s results A&M 63, SMU 14; Arkansas 38. Rice 17; Texas Tech 24. Texas 17; Houston 66. TCU 10; Next Saturday’s schedule SMU at Notre Dame, 11 a.m.; Baylor at Arkansas, 1 p.m.; TCU at Texas Tech. 2 p.m.; Texas at Houston, 4 p.m.. Texas A&M is kne. Rice is icfle. like they have a long way to go bef ore they can start competing for the Cotton Bowl. SMU dropped to 2-6, 0-6 in the SWC, and have been blown out by large margins in some of their losses. A 95-21 trouncing by Houston earlier in the year prompted Coach Forrest Gregg to accuse the Cougars of running up the score against a weaker opponent. The Aggies on Saturday didn’t draw the same complaint, even though the 63-14 loss was the second worse for the Mustangs this year. “(A&M) tried everything they could to keep the score down,” Gregg said. “They basically ran the ball most of the fourth quarter. You’ve got to be able to stop that when you know what they’re going to do.” The Mustangs may have known what the Aggies were going to do, but they did little to stop them. The Aggies finished with 512 total offen sive yards — 307 on the ground, 205 in the air. It was the second largest offensive out put of the year for them. Last week, the Ag gies totaled 525 yards. “We’ve got our offense down pat now,” said running back Darren Lewis, who led all A&M rushers with 126 yards on 18 carries. “Our offensive line is playing hard and working hard. We’ve been working hard on our running game, and it’s starting to show.” However, it was the Mustangs who did the showing off first. After their opening touchdown drive to start the game, the Mustangs held the Aggies scoreless until late in the first quarter. The Aggies blocked a Casey Clyce punt, and Lewis ran the ball on every down of a five-play, 22-yard scoring drive that ended when he cut inside and ran untouched for the score that made it 7-7. The Aggies scored again the next time they touched the ball. Quarterback Lance Pavlas threw a 64-yard bomb to wide re ceiver Shane Garrett, and the Aggies went on top 14-7. Pavlas’ touchdown pass was the second longest of his career. He finished the day with modest statistics — three of six for 93 yards and two touchdowns, but his day ended early, as Slocum took him out mid way through the second quarter. In the last two games, Pavlas has com pleted 16 of 22 passes for 250 yards and five touchdowns. The Aggies went up 21-7 on their next possession, as Pavlas threw his second touchdown of the day to Percy Waddle. After a SMU punt, A&M drove 65 yards to go up 28-7. Lewis broke free on the right side and scored on a 30-yard touchdown run. Five minutes later, Lewis burned the Mustangs on a 25-yard touchdown pass to Waddle. It was Lewis’ fourth career touchdown pass. He earlier had one in 1989 in A&M’s season opening 28-16 victory over Lousiana State. “I think everbody knows by now that Darren can throw the ball,” Waddle said. “That wasjust a perfect pass. The defense was keying on him. The defensive backs moved up a bit and the pass wasjust there.” Slocum took most of his starters through the secondut the crowd of 48,948 could hardly notice. The Aggies scored on their first posses sion of the second half when quarterback Chris Osgood threw an 87-yard touchdown pass to Garrett. The toss tied the fifth-long- est pass play in school history, and was the longest pass play by the Aggies since Gary Kubiak threw a 92-yard touchdown against Louisiana Tech in 1977. Garrett, who finished with 147 yards on two catches, had the most single game re ceiving yards by an Aggie since Jimmy Teal caught six passes for 173 yards against the Mustangs in 1984. The Aggies went up 49-7 when running See Aggies/Page 11 Lady Ags fall in three sets to No. 3 Nebraska By Alan Lehmann Of The Battalion Staff It was one of those days for the Lady Aggies. No matter how hard the Texas A&M volleyball team played, it couldn’t beat No. 3 Nebraska. The Lady Aggies fell to 9-14 on the season, losing to the Cornhuskers 15-12, 15-10, 15-11 Saturday night before a Lady Aggie Update • Score: A&M loses in straight ames to Nebraska by scores of 2-15, 0-15 and 11-15. • Record: 9-14. • Next game: Monday night against Rice. The match starts at 7:30 at G. Rollie White Coliseum. crowd of 815 in C. Rollie White Col iseum. A&M now has lost five straight matches, and nine of their last 10. However, three of their five non-con ference losses in the slump have come against nationally ranked teams. A&M Coach A1 Givens said the Aggies might have overscheduled this season. However, A&M has played their best matches against its better opponents, he said. “We want to be able to play day in and day out against the Nebraskas of the world,” Givens said. “The only way to do that is to keep playing those teams. “Eventually, though, you have to start beating them. I think tonight we showed that we can compete against a great team.” The Lady Aggies played a great match, Givens said. “I’m really pleased with our players,” he said. “Nebraska is a great team, and we competed really well. “There were a couple of places where we had some errors, but I can’t say enough about our effort. Everyone that came in contributed. Givens especially was pleased with his team’s defensive effort. “Our pursuit of the ball was unbelie vable,” he said. “We had a real desire for the ball.” Krista Hierholzer led the Lady Aggies in hitting percentage with 13 kills and two errors in 26 attempts, while Kelli Kellen had 10 kills. Nebraska’s Janet Kruse led all players with 15 kills, and her teammate Eileen Shannon had 13. Virginia Stahr, who owns the second-best hitting percentage in the nation, had eight kills and a .438 hitting percentage to go with her three aces. The Lady Aggies played well throughout the match, holding leads in each of the three games before losing. In the first game, the Lady Aggies tra iled 8-2 before they caught fire. They used two Moniki Daniels kills and a kill and a block by Kellen to take a 12-8 lead. Nebraska used a kill and an A&M ro tation violation to make the score 12-10, but Kellen ended the Husker rally with a forceful block of a Kruse spike. However, A&M couldn’t take advan tage of it, and lost as Nebraska scored five points on their next service opportu nity to win the game. A&M held a 2-0 lead in the second game before Nebraska took a 4-3 lead on a block and a kill by Shannon. The lead then changed hands three times before the Huskers grabbed a 9-6 advantage and ran away with the game. Hierholzer had some nice shots to slow the Huskers, but it was too late. A vicious Kruse spike glanced off Yvonne Van Brandt’s block, as the Huskers won See Lady Aggies/Page 11 Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack A&M’s Yvonne Van Brandt reacts after recording a kill against No. 3 Ne braska in the second game.