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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1998)
Monday • February 9, 1998 The Battalion fiE“ '' H.bii..ij..i„ Brn mrm mrm mJ “ lyP re 1 Lggies come out gunning, sweep Pan Am )feginning with Friday’s combined no-hitter, Texas A&M rolls to impressive opening weekend 1-Ala.,t omir.: he MtJ 4J BRANDON BOLLOM/The Battalion renns.or All-American centerfielder Jason Tyner opened the season going 8 for 12. i thin. By Chris Ferrell Staff writer If this weekend was any indication ofwhat the rest of the ‘98 season will be like for the Texas A&M Baseball Team, they should do just fine. The Aggies opened the season by sweeping a three-game series from UT- Pan American Friday and Saturday at Olsen Field and in the process answered the biggest question which had plagued the team during the off season. Collectively, A&M’s pitching staff had spent more time under the knife this past year than a victim in Scream 2. Senior pitcher Ryan Rupe, who had a rib removed to allow for circula tion into his pitching arm, and junior Shane King, who returned after miss ing the ‘97 season due to injuries, were the first to make their statements as the two returned to combine on an opening day no-hitter as A&M cruised to an 9-0 victory. “I think for those guys coming off the surgery, we’ve recovered so well,” sophomore pitcher Casey Possum said. “I think coming out of this week end, we’re confident, realizing we have more guys that can throw. King and Rupe did an excellent job. All our guys are able to pitch now. Knock on wood that we don’t get any more injuries.” In all, Coach Mark Johnson and his staff got looks at nine different pitch ers over the weekend. “Everybody said I better not give up the first hit of the season, or the first run,” Possum said after pitching up a 6-3 victory in the first game of Sat urday’s doubleheader. “Or we’re going to fine you in kangaroo court. I just went out there trying to throw strikes, get some outs, throw ground balls. I was pitching with a lead most of the game and I just wanted to get balls over the plate and throw some ground balls and fly balls. I was sure a hit was bound to happen today. I couldn’t escape that, but we did well. “It was nice to get a win my first time out. I think last season it was my fifth time out. It’s a big relief. Once you get the first win, it’s easy after that. I’m just glad the team won. We got a sweep. We’re 3-0.” A&M completed the sweep behind junior Matt Ward’s first career start with a 10-3 win. Ward said he felt good about his outing once he got used to pitching in front of the Olsen crowd. “I was really nervous,” Ward said. “I had to adjust to that big crowd. Our (junior college) games had maybe 100 people. That first inning I was shak ing. I had to calm myself down out there. “We’ve been hitting really well. We had some good hacks. I knew we were going to score some runs. I like pitching with a lead but 1 -0 is not too bad.” The Aggie bats were heard throughout the three-game set, exploding for big innings which put Pan Am out of the games fairly early. “I think we have an opportunity to be a big-inning team,” Johnson said. “Their second baseman let one go through and all of the sudden that turns into 15 minutes more. “I think the bottom of the order—that’s what you look at because most of the time your going to have a good top order—can they keep an inning going. I think (sophomore second baseman) Sean Heaney and (senior catcher) Scott Sandusky there in the middle had some big ones for us. We wanted to score and we wanted to increase the lead.” Once again it was A&M’s junior All-American centerfielder Jason Tyner leading the offensive assault. Tyner helped get things going early on Sat urday and closed out the doubleheader by going seven for nine on the af ternoon with two runs scored and an RBI. “We’re hitting the ball OK,” Tyner said. “Overall we haven’t made an er ror in three games, our pitching’s going good and we’re having big innings so that’s what we need to do. We’re a little timid at the plate. We’re hitting the ball well, but we have enough good hitters that we should get more than 12 hits a game.” Johnson said the Aggies accomplished what they set out to do over the weekend but are still far from where they need to be. “I don't know how great we were, but we got three wins,” Johnson said. “That’s what we wanted to do. I thought the pitchers did a good job. All in all, it was a good weekend. I was particularly pleased with the defense. When you go three games without an error, you say tliat’s pretty good. We got to try a few things that I wanted to try. In that regard it was good; when you can get wins while your trying some things and get new guys in you have to count your blessings.” Aggie Sports News from staff and wire reports rexas A&M falls to Tech, 102-75 IRS Texas Tech Men’s Basketball Coach James Dickey lould be afraid of what the future holds for his squad, enior Tech guard Corey Carr will graduate to the NBA nd take his NBA game, which he proudly displayed for jxas A&M Saturday, with him. Carr scored 25 points and added five assists to lead ■ mmM pP BRANDON BOLLOM/The Battalion aron Jack and the Aggies have lost 11 straight games. the Red Raiders to a 102-75 victory over the hapless Aggies, making many fans realize the possibility of a winless conference season for A&M. The usual sequence of events took place at the be ginning of the game for the Aggies with junior forward Shanne Jones scoring their first three baskets. The last A&M lead in the game came off a Jones basket five minutes into the game that made the score 12-11. Free throws have been anathema to the hopes of many Aggie victories this season and, although this game was not close enough to worry, A&M shot a piti ful 61 percent from the “charity stripe.” Forward Aaron Jack had the opportunity to give Texas A&M the lead with two free throw attempts when Tech led at 15-14, but he clanked both shots off of the rim and A&M never had a chance to pull any closer for the rest of the game. Texas A&M was within six points of tying Tech with about three minutes left in the first half, but the Red Raiders ran off three consecutive three-pointers that were unanswered by the Aggies. The three danger ous guards — Stan Bonewitz, Rayford Young and Corey Carr — each contributed one of the half-end ing daggers. When the buzzer sounded on the first half, the Aggies found themselves trailing by a 15 point margin at 45-30. Jones led the Aggies once again in the scoring col umn with 23 points and 10 rebounds. Chris Clayton came off of the bench and contributed 10 points by go ing 2 for 5 from beyond the three-point arc. Backup cen ter Chris Richards made the most of his playing time by nailing three field goals and going 3 for 4 from the free throw line in 13 minutes of play. Texas Tech’s Young matched Carr’s 25 points and scored his points on 10 of 13 shooting. Bonewitz scored 14 points and added nine assists. Tech for ward Da’ Mon Roberts scored 12 points and was perfect from the field (4 of 4) and from the free throw line (4 of 4). The Texas A&M Men’s Basketball Team will play their next game against Nebraska on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at G. Rollie White Coliseum. Swimming and diving teams ose to SMU, demolish Rice The 20th-ranked Texas A&M Men's Swimming and Wing Team continued their difficult schedule by facing ie No. 9 SMU Mustangs in Dallas at the Perkins Nata- Drium on Friday evening. The Aggies fell short of the pset, however, falling to the Mustangs 124-107. A&M eeded to finish one-two in the final relay of the meet d beat SMU, so swimming Coach Mel Nash chose to plit the two relay teams. The Mustang “A” team best- d the Aggies’ faster relay team by a little more than ne-tenth of a second. “It was a great meet,” Nash said. “They (SMU) swam [idsvell. We swam well. It was just a fun meet. It would , ave been more fun on the other side, but it was a great Clft ollege swim meet.” lYs Junior Jason Miles enjoyed a fine performance by /inning the 1,000- and 500- freestyle events in his est times of the season. Miles timed 9:22.26 in the .,000-free and 4:32.64 in the 500-free. Junior Jerrod happier has a 11-1 record in the 50-freestyle this sea- on after taking the event with a time of 20.69. Junior Jark Naftanel swept the one- and three-meter diving vents and set a new A&M varsity record for the one- leter by scoring 346.87. /Mark’s learning some new dives,” Diving Coach ^evin Wright said. “He’s been pretty focused the last iree weeks. The team is going through quite a con- irsion from the weight training they did in the fall to ie power they are feeling off the boards. They are fi- Sally starting to enjoy the fruits of their labor. If we can prepare Mark to dive at or near his potential every time, /e’ll be satisfied with that.” After the loss to SMU, the Aggies’ record for the sea- |on is 4-6. However, A&M has competed against three )p-10 opponents and two others ranked in the top-20. The Swimming and Diving Teams finished their dual meet seasons Saturday by destroying Rice at the Stu dent Recreation Center Natatorium. The victory was a revenge of sorts for the 25th- ranked women’s team since they lost to Rice a year ago. They were able to defeat the Owls 141-61 on Sat urday. A&M won 11 out of 13 scheduled events. The only events they did not win were the 50-yard freestyle and the 200-backstroke. "I was happy with the swims,” Women’s Swimming Team Coach Don Wagner said. “I thought we (A&M) raced well. We’re still about two weeks away from con ference championships, and that’s what we’re really fo cusing on. There were some really good swims today. Monica Williams didn’t have a lot of speed, but she closed really well in the 100. Kelly Bolton, when she is rested, is going to be very fast. Kids that haven’t exhib ited a lot of speed or strength are really starting to show some life, so we’re definitely going the right direction, and we’re all looking forward to the conference meet.” The 200-individual medley was the only event in which the 20th-ranked men’s team faltered. The men took the other 14 events and outscored Rice 137-96. Saturday’s meet marked the last dual meet at Texas A&M for the Aggie Class of ‘98. Senior Stacie Karnes won the 200-freestyle, 200-butterfly and was a mem ber of the winning 400-medley relay team. Senior Kyle Marden won the 100- and 200-breaststroke. The next challenge for men’s and women’s teams will be the Big 12 Conference Championships. The women’s championships will be Feb. 19-21 at the Ja- mail Texas Natatorium in Austin, while the men will host the other five Big 12 schools Feb. 26-28 at the Student Rec Center Natatorium. Longhorns too tough for women’s basketball team Texas’ Jackson goes for career-high 30 points in victory By Philip W. Peter Staff writer AUSTIN—From the minute the 7,556 fans saw her carry her 6-foot-4-inch frame through the introductory smoke and flash ing lights at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin Saturday night, it was obvious that University of Texas center Angela Jackson had a distinct size advantage. And, by handing the Texas A&M Women’s Basketball Team (6-14, 2-8) a 79-66 loss, Texas (9-11,4- 6) proved that it never hurts to have a size advantage. Jackson spent much of the night setup in the high post where she used her size to score a career- high 30 points on 12-for-20 shoot ing. It was clear from the start that Jackson wanted the ball, scoring eight of Texas’ first 10 points. “One thing I’ve been doing the last couple of games is really call ing for the ball and making sure my teammates see me,” Jackson said. “They’ve been really good about getting me the ball.” Once she got the ball, Jackson, guarded by 6-foot-2-inch Jennifer Burrows, was able to score at will. “She’s just a really good player,” Burrows said, “and their guards were doing a really good job of get ting (the ball) to her. She was play ing really well just turning around and scoring.” Even when Texas A&M Coach Candi Harvey called for a double team, Jackson and her teammates were able to answer. “Jackson had a big night,” Har vey said, “but I thought we did some things to bother her. When we did double (team), we were ef fective. But our point guard need ed to rotate down because the low- post player was open. She didn’t get that rotation and they still scored lay-ups.” Aside from Jackson’s perfor mance, the key statistic in Texas’ victory was in the rebound col umn. Texas equaled A&M’s 27 total rebounds on defense alone. But to make matters worse for A&M, Texas also grabbed 18 offensive boards, bringing its game rebound total to 45. The last time a team held a rebound advantage over Offensively, Texas A&M strug gled in the first half due in part to foul trouble. Sophomore for ward Prissy Sharpe, A&M’s lead ing scorer, was called for two fouls early in the first half and played only six scoreless min utes before half time. In the second half, A&M strug gled because of fouling trouble, “It wasn’t one person. You don’t see one player on their roster who out- rebounded us. Player by player, each one of them got more re bounds than we did.” Kera Alexander Sophomore Forward A&M that large, it was the Univer sity of Tennessee, who out re bounded A&M 47-22 in December. Although A&M’s field goal per centage (.451) was higher than Texas’ (.420), Texas used its 18 ad ditional rebounds to shoot 18 more times than A&M. “When we did get them to miss,” Harvey said, “we didn’t block out and gave them easy put-backs.” Texas A&M sophomore forward Kera Alexander said Texas just worked harder on the boards than they did. “It wasn’t one person,” Alexan der said. “You don’t see one player on their roster who out-rebound ed us. Player by player, each one of them got more rebounds than we did. They, as a team, worked hard er to get to the boards and worked harder at blocking out and they were more aggressive.” WST J I i RYAN ROGERS/The Battalion Freshman Brandy Jones gets mauled on a drive to the basket against Texas. sending Texas to the free-throw line 20 times. But Sharpe came on strong, shooting two for two from three-point range, on her way to 11 points and seven rebounds. Burrows, also a sophomore for ward, led A&M in scoring with 15 points and freshman guard Brandy Jones came off the bench, hit six for six from the free-throw line and finished with 13 points. But on the whole, the A&M of fense was stagnant. “Offensive execution just wasn’t there,” Harvey said. “We needed to move away from the ball. We need ed to be able to have some perime ter scoring tonight. They were giv ing us some pretty good looks at the basket, but when we did shoot, it was one shot and out.” Late in the second half, with Texas leading 55-50, Jackson and junior guard Kim Lummus sparked Texas to an 11-2 run that took the charge out of A&M’s comeback effort. Lummus, who is the cousin of Texas A&M sopho more guard Amy Yates, scored two points on a Harvey technical foul and dished out two assists to Jack- son during the run. She finished with 15 points, six assists and a ca reer high nine rebounds. “I thought that was the most positive thing about the game,” Texas Coach Jody Conradt said. “When we really needed to buckle down and make things happen and make the plays, we did. They were spreading out the defense and really getting on us. We just put the ball on the floor and took it to the hole and either scored or made some things happen.” This week Texas plays at home against Kansas State and Texas A&M travels to Stillwater, Okla., to face Oklahoma State. Both games are Wednesday at 7 p.m.