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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 1990)
.. The Battalion 'SPORTS 9 Monday, January 29,1990 Sports Editor Richard Tijerina 845-2688 W— ' .m—M I « ! Clay Rasmussen Assistant Sports Editor ubscrfcji mniversi] he imuj ii stud:- tting M scortshj Longhorn grad turned Ag prof ‘ bleeds maroon in IW khasba Gi )lack le by sit VXig ’em Homs ... er, or is said T? diat Hook ’em Aggies, m. “If , ] Confused? So am I. you uJ Just recently I learned of an A&M tooted;marketing professor obsessed with Ag- ■e sports. Who else but a fanatical prof 1 u l *°uld s P cn d his first lecture day show- tmeX C ^ aSS 3 v '^ eo ta P e t ^ ie lri M&M baseball team and its dream sea- nn? I A lot of instructors around our campus ' feel the same sort of bond with Texas ■.&M as their students. I But how about the fact that Dr. James Meigh graduated from the University of ■exas? I And if being a teasip graduate wasn’t aste tiip ei-mgh, Leigh also has earned a master’s here fjegree from t.u. And yet he’s an Aggie fanatic. Growing up in Austin, Leigh was sur- unded by Longhorns (of the collegiate pe). His time after school, no doubt, was ■pent in a soda shop munching on Bevo :,Andf| Burgers and drinking orange shakes, uandi ?dreaming of t.u. coeds. ghioJ Deciding t.u. not hard dema:! .pus d of si the ripjl “l might have thought about going to liable;Knottier college,” Leigh said. “Sort of a emicev ‘(' lC t outta p>odge’ attitude, but Austin i maii: was tk ®ad always been my home. rst KhiM cousins are Longhorns and my ee frj'^lbend was still living there, so I sta- be hen y e ^- I Leigh ended up studying marketing he nedlnd was your normal, everyday Long- ese pt" hom lover. I He was caught up in the A&M-Texas iow, ai: rivalries, even though he didn’t spend ' oes; much time at the athletic events. °w 9 ^ 0 ’ s boot ahead about a decade and A,Suddenly Leigh is a professor of market- dofsppngat A&M. And like new students who loes pSomc to the University, he was swept up Hen ! in the spirit of Aggieland. lows,® “Students at A&M seem more com- id learfinitted to the University,” Leigh said. bYou see enthusiasm across all facets. undf|^t Texas, there was only a small group ^'flfdedicated Longhorns; mainly the ath- “ "fafc boosters." I‘"I The more Leigh realized the bonds be- Kween student and school, the more he Recame impressed with his newfound Riche at A&M. And he became quite the ®ggie fan, even to the point of accusing Bhe Longhorns of dirty football. I “The more I watch Texas, the more I grealize they play a dirty sort of football,” iteigh said. ifSOfl Leigh has blended in well with Ag- nlOflfe' 68 even ta L' n g on A&M characteris- p -Allies, like a hatred of Louisiana State and na p„;f a fierce loyalty to Aggie baseball, has« n vii Making the switch esearf’; ty fr® ^sst Leigh has said that what has kept g Bl» Texas from sharing the same sort of Ispirit felt at A&M is its size and back- ? grounds of students. “Texas always has attracted national students and is so large, while A&M has ||rawn in students from around the state and stayed smaller than UT,” Leigh said. i'Now, as A&M becomes nationally rec ognized, it will attract students from pround the nation and the world, just like Texas.” [ And if we progress like Texas ... 1 shudder to think. I So does Leigh. “I hope I’m wrong, because A&M is a good place to be,” Leigh said. || What is really scary, though, is the fact ‘that Leigh’s attitudes aren’t unique. [k “I think if you go around and talk to some of the instructors around A&M that have graduated from Texas, you’ll find a great many of them feel as I do,” Leigh said. Can we expect an onslaught of t.u. grads to our campus? Actually, that’s kind of flattering. What better way to humble the Long horns than to beat them six years in a row in football, take two-of-three in baseball and steal all their graduates and convert them to Aggies. Maybe we can even identify them on fational television at the next A&M- $exas game, and have them sing the War Hymn. Cougars dominate Aggies in 108-90 romp Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack A&M’s Brooks Thompson (I) battles Craig Upchurch for a loose ball. Ags drop to 3-4 in SWC ledger By JAY PEDEN Of The Battalion Staff HOUSTON — The Houston Cougars thoroughly dominated the Aggies 108-90 in a Southwest Conference basketball game Saturday at Hofheinz Pavilion. For the first seven minutes, the Aggies played the Cougars closely as the lead see sawed 12 times. With 12:22 left in the first half, guard Byron Smith hit the first of his game-high six three-point goals to give the Cougars a 22-19 lead. It was a lead they would not relinquish. After Smith’s three-pointer, Houston scored nine more unanswered points to open a 12-point lead. A&M guard Freddie Ricks broke the string with a lay-up, and after the two teams traded baskets, Brooks Thompson hit a three-pointer to cut the Cougars’ lead to seven. The Aggies never got closer than that. Cougar guard Derrick Daniels answered Thompson’s trey with one of his own, and Houston gradually padded its lead the rest of the half. The Cougars led 55-42 at the in termission. “We were sluggish,” Aggie point guard Tony Milton said. “In the first half, we had no intensity. That’s when they opened it up.” The second half began much the same way the first ended. The Cougars contin ued to score, and the Aggies could not stop them or make up any ground. Between Daniels’ first-half three-pointer and trash time, the Aggies scored four con secutive points only four times. The Aggies didn’t make a run at the Cougars until the last three minutes of the game, when the Cougars had emptied their bench. With 3:07 left in the game and Houston savoring a 108-78 advantage, rarely-used Cougars Gerry Holmes, Sam Pyle and Dar rell Grayson came in. They allowed the Aggies to score 12 straight points, making the final score closer than the game actually was. “I don’t think we were as ready to play as we needed to be today against Houston,” A&M Coach John Thornton said. The loss leaves A&M 3-4 in the confer ence and 10-11 overall. Houston is now 4-3, 14-6 overall. Center David Harris was the only real stand-out for the Aggies, scoring 26 on 12- of-16 shooting against Cougar big men Carl Herrera, Craig Upchurch, Alvaro Teheran and Kelvin Smith. “I was really pleased with David Harris,” Thornton said. “When you consider what that guy was facing, he did an admirable job. There was no rest for David. He played exceptionally hard.” Milton added 10 rebounds and 25 points for the Aggies, but hit only 10 of his 23 field-goal attempts. The Aggies were outrebounded 50-38 and out-assisted 29-19. There was also a se vere discrepancy in the three-point shot de partment. The Aggies made only one of their 10 three-point attempts, with Thompson be ing the lone marksman. Meanwhile, at the other end of the court, the Cougars were hitting 8-of-13. Smith led the long-range assault with 6-of-9 shooting from beyond the arc, including three in a span of 1:10 midway through the second half. Daniels hit 2-of-3 three-pointers, and he dished out a career-high 14 assists. Smith combined long-range accuracy with 11-of-15 overall shooting to lead all scorers with 29 points. Houston center Herrera added 20 points and pulled down 11 rebounds. “They did the things that a great basket ball team does,” Thornton said, “and they were one today.” Herner sparks Lady Ags in win Photo by Phelan M. Ebenhack Sheri Dillard (23) tries to block UH’s Cynthia Jackson Saturday in Hous ton. A&M won, 88-67. The win improved its conference record to 4-3 By NADJA SABAWALA Of The Battalion Staff HOUSTON — The Lady Aggies held off the University of Houston Lady Cougars to win 88-67 in a battle of free throws Satur day in Houston. A&M senior point guard Lisa Herner scored a career-nigh 28 points, lifting the Aggies’ record to 12-6 overall and 4-3 in the Southwest Conference. Herner, who had a 5.4i-scoring-average before the game, had a game-high 11 points in the first half on five-of-six shoot ing. “Before the game, you could just see the intensity in everybody’s face,” Herner said. “I think that game me an edge.” Senior forward Lori Dillard followed Herner with 18 points and was eight-of- eight in her free throw attempts. “Usually we can say we lost the game be cause of free throws, but today we can say we won the game because of free throws,” Dillard said. The Lady Cougars pulled away from A&M with an early seven point lead, aided by a three-point shot by junior guard Ar lene Brown. The Lady Aggies came back and tied the game 10-10 with 13:27 left in the half. A&M soon began to pull away from Houston, extending its lead by 13 points with 7:47 remaining. Houston followed with an eight-point attack in the final min ute of the first period, but the Lady Aggies remained on top, 36-34 at the end of the half. A&M returned from the locker room and slowly chipped away at the Lady Cou gars. Lady Aggie Coach Lynn Hickey said, “We came back out in the second half and executed much better and we worked as a team.” The game fluctuated around a seven- point lead throughout much of the second half until the Lady Cougars began fouling A&M. With 5:09 left in the game, the Lady Ag gies pulled away again. Dillard was fouled three times in the final minutes, converting six-of-six for a 10-point lead. “We haven’t even been at the free throw line in a lot of our contests because we haven’t been aggressive taking the ball to the basket,” Hickey said. Eleven of the last 15 points were from the free throw line, and A&M held on to win. 55-10 MVP Montana shines in Super Bowl rout over Broncos NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Joe Montana and the.San Francisco 49ers proved Sunday that they have just one competitor — his tory. In the most dominant performance ever at a Super Bowl, the 49ers routed the Denver Broncos 55-10 to become the first repeat NFL champion in a decade and tie the Pittsburgh Steelers as a pinnacle of Su per Bowl perfection with wins in four tries. Montana had five touchdown passes, three to Jerry Rice, breaking a Super Bowl record for TD passes on a day on which he also set a record with 13 straight comple tions. He also set five Super Bowl career re cords, including his third Super Bowl MVP award and San Francisco’s point total was the most ever. Montana left the game with nearly 11 minutes to play. His final num bers: 22-df-29 passes for 297 yards. In four Super Bowls he has thrown 11 touchdowns and no interceptions. For Denver quarterback John Elway, it was a day of futility, ending with his third Super Bowl defeat. He missed eight of his first 10 passes and was intercepted twice and fumbled once. By halftime it was 27-3 as San Francisco was playing against the record book rather than the Broncos, who by then were doing just the reverse — tying a. Super Bowl re cord for losses — 0-4 — with the Minnesota Vikings. San Francisco was boringly perfect, doing more than even the experts who made them favorites by nearly two touch downs after a 14-2 season and a waltz through< the playoffs. The NFC has now won six straight Super Bowls. Along with the records came a milestone as George Seifert, who took over when Bill Walsh retired after last season, became only the second rookie coach to win a Super Bowl — Baltimore’s Don McCafferty was the first in 1971 — and marked the sixth straight win by an NFC team. From the moment Montana hit Rice with a 20-yard TD pass 4:54 into the game, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. He began with the 20-yarder Rice, then threw a 7-yarder to tight end Brent Jones and put the game away with 34 seconds left in the half with a 38-yarder to Rice, last year’s MVP, who had 7 receptions for 148 yards. He hit Rice again from 28 yards and John Taylor from 35 early in the third See 49ers/Page 10 Lendl snatches Aussie Open as Edberg withdraws MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) —Ivan Lendl, handed a second straight Austra lian Open title when Stefan Edberg quit with an injury, hasn’t changed his mind about passing up a chance to go for a rare Grand Slam. iwt Lendl said Sunday he still plans to skip the day courts of the French Open and train for the grass of Wimbledon — the one major he has never won. “I don’t worry about the record books or my place in the game. I just would like to win” Wimbledon, Lendl said. The Australian Open, marred by inju ries and John McEnroe’s stormy exit, ended abruptly when Edberg retired from the final match with a torn stomach muscle after Lendl took a 4-6, 7-6 (7-3), 5-2 lead. It was the first time in the Australian’s 85-year history — and the first time in any Grand Slam event since Wimbledon in 1911 — that a men’s finalist quit in the middle of a match. “It doesn’t feel as great as if I had won it fair and square,” said Lendl, com forted by the $200,000 winner’s share. “I hope Stefan recovers soon,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but sometimes things happen this way. He carried on for quite awhile and showed great cour age. I hope we can come back 12 months from now and slug it out till the end.” Lendl, a Czech who lives in Green wich, Conn., said that despite the tainted result, “a win is a win.” Edberg said he hurt himself in his last service game of a semifinals victory over fellow Swede Mats Wilander. Edberg, who has had strained abdominal muscles several times in the past, felt the pain from the start of Sunday’s match but played for 2V2 hours. “It kept getting worse and worse,” he said. “I could only serve at 75 percent.” Dr. David Bolzonello, the tournament physician, said, “I think he made the right decision by not progressing.” The two-week tournament had more than its share of problems. Women’s second seed Gabriela Saba- tini and Australia’s Mark Woodforde were forced from their third-round matches with sprained ankles. McEnroe was thrown out from his fourth-round match for staring at a line- swoman, swearing at the umpire and cracking a racket. Edberg, forced to retire from the Aus tralian Open with a back injury last year, was in obvious pain from the middle of the second set on. A trainer worked on him after the fifth game of the second set, when Ed berg took advantage of four errors to break Lendl and put the set back on serve at 3-2 Lendl’s. Edberg held and kept the set on serve, pushing it to a tiebreaker when he came back from 15-40 in the 12th game. But after Edberg took the first two points of the tiebreaker, Lendl won the next six, including one on a double-fault by Edberg, and took the set with a back hand passing shot that whizzed down the line. Edberg double-faulted on the last two points to suffer a break in the opening game of the third set. He fought back three break points in the third game to hold after five deuces. But the injury was clearly slowing him, weakening his serve and draining him of energy.