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.