6B THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPORTS
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2005
Renovated
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"It's unbelievable how the changes will affect us," said sophomore Tyler Docking. "Having the new range will make it so much better for practicing irons. We will finally be able to see where our ball lands."
The faster greens that have been seeded will give the team better preparation for tournament play. Although the greens on the private course are similar in speed and smoothness to the new greens going in on the public course, the length of the public course will make it better in preparing for the bigger tournaments because it requires a driver off many of the tees.
"The new greens will help us a great deal in getting ready." Docking said. "It will be nice to play on faster greens because that is what we'll see in tournaments."
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Edited by Laura Francoviglia
order to have a great senior season.
Confident
Following the Illinois state meet her senior year, Pogioli expressed to the Journal Star that she felt good about her senior year.
Despite the hard work that she put in the summer before her senior year of high school, she still had major changes to make in order to train to the best of her ability with the Jayhawks.
Among the adversity of coming to college, Pogioli also struggled with getting used to the Kansas swimming program.
Defining the problem and taking steps to prevail through the problem took almost her entire freshman year.
"I was having a hard time," Pogioli said. "First semester was tough anyways, plus high school and USSS swimming were not as intense as college swimming."
She felt as though she wasn't in shape, she said, and things snowballed from there. Not only did she feel slow, but the proof was on the clock after every race.
"I was really depressed because I was swimming slower," Pogioli said. "It was such a big change, and I had to adapt to the training. I got really discouraged, and I felt like I couldn't do anything."
She said she realized after her freshman season that she needed to take some steps to have a successful sophomore campaign.
For that support, Lai Pogioi turned to her older brother, Giordan, a junior swimmer at Purdue.
She joined her brother and maintained a tough training regimen with Purdue coach Dan Ross throughout last spring and all summer.
"Purdue's program and training is a lot like Kansas." Lia Pogioli said.
She said she saw the results when the 2004-05 season kicked off in October.
She wasn't the only one who noticed the results. Coach Clark Campbell also saw Poglioli's improvements.
"The past summer of training at Purdue with coach Dan Ross instilled in Lia that she is a very good distance swimmer," Campbell said. "Lia is simply more confident in herself."
Even now, practices seem easier, Pogioli said.
"I'll say to a teammate, 'wow, that practice was easy,' and they'll say, 'no Lia, you're just in better shape," she said.
With a little boost of confidence and a head start on training, Poglioli has been a key asset to the Jayhawk swim team. She specializes in distance freestyle and has had some outstanding performances this year.
Although the 1,000-yard free isn't a race at the Big 12 Conference swimming Championships, Poglioli will be stepping up and swimming the mile. The mile is 66 laps, opposed to the 40 that Poglioli is used to.
With her newfound confidence and hard work ethic, the future looks bright for Pogioli, Campbell said.
"She is definitely maximizing her potential each and every day." Campbell said.
"The forward momentum has really helped me," Pogioli said.
She recently recorded her season-best time in the 1,000-yard freestyle against the Arkansas Razorbacks on January 29. She clocked in with at time of 10:27.87.
Poglioli, Campbell and the Jayhawks will take their momentum to College Station, Texas, for the Big 12 Conference Championships in two weeks.
— Edited by Lisa Coble-Krings
Coaching hunt begins for Patriots
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Deion Branch needed just five little words to explain why the New England Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls.
BY DAVE GOLDBERG THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Asked yesterday if he had any thoughts of leaving the team when he becomes a restricted free agent, the Super Bowl MVP replied: "My home is in Foxboro."
Then, referring to team owner Robert Kraft,
Branch added: "I'm proud of the family that Mr.
Kraft has built."
An emphasis on winning over money is what drives the Patriots to success in an era when free agency and the salary cap force major turnover at most teams each season.
most teams each season.
Next season's Patriots certainly will be different than this season's. The biggest losses are not players but coaches: Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis is the new head coach at Notre Dame, and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel accepted the Cleveland Browns' head coaching job immediately after Sunday night's game.
Crennel's move, which gives the NFL a record six black head coaches, was hardly a secret. As the Patriots' 24-21 win over Philadelphia was ending, coach Bill Belichick put his arms around his two top aides in a gesture of affection and appreciation.
"Romee and Charlie have done a great job. A lot of the success we've had should go to them," Belichick said Monday. "I've been with them both a long time. I go back to 1981 with Romeo and I'll miss both of them a lot."
They will be hard to replace.
The Patriots might, too.
The San Francisco 49ers came closest to three NFL titles in a row, winning the 1989 and 1990 Super Bowls, then losing the next NFC championship game on a last-second field goal by the New York Giants' Matt Bahr.
New York Giants' Mike Bann
That New York team, which went on to beat Buffalo in the 1991 Super Bowl, had a coaching staff headed by Bill Parcells and including Belichick, Crennel and Weis, along with future NFL head coaches Tom Coughlin, Al Groh and Ray Handley. Two of the players on that team are also coaches and are reportedly on Crennel's wish list for his staff with the Brown's: Pepper Johnson, New England's defensive line coach, and Maurice Carthon, the offensive coordinator in Dallas under Parcells.
Next season, they will be seeking to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls and the first to win four in five seasons.
under Pierce. Belichick's first order of business, therefore, is rebuilding his coaching staff, although he will take at least a week off, traveling to California for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.
Most of the core players, however, should be back, although some are getting up there in age, notably linebacker Willie McGinest and safety Rodney Harrison, both of whom have played major roles in the team's success. Harrison, who had two interceptions in Sunday's game, will turn 33 next December, when McGinest will turn 34.
One member of the Patriots unlikely to return is cornerback Ty Law, who missed the second half of the season with a broken foot after quarreling with the team over his contract in training camp.
And while Belichick indicated that the team will spend the next few weeks renegotiating contracts for salary-cap purposes, Law's deal is unlikely to be among them. With rookie Randall Gay and second-year player Asante Samuel at cornerback, the Patriots obviously did well without him; after Eugene Wilson left the Super Bowl just before halftime with an arm injury, they played the second half with Harrison as the only regular starter in the secondary.
That's how the Patriots work — they always find someone to fill in without losing a step.
nid someone to Branch, who had 135 yards in receptions and tied a Super Bowl record with 11 catches, was the game's MVP, but it could have been any one of a number of players: Harrison; linebacker Tedy Bruschel; or Mike Vrabel, who played linebacker, defensive end, had a sack and also caught a touchdown pass for the second Super Bowl in a row.
Or, of course, it could have been quarterback Tom Brady, the MVP in the Patriots' first two Super Bowl victories, who played his usual steady game.
"Every time we play, it's a total effort from everyone," said Branch, an emerging star who had a 60-yard touchdown catch and a 23-yard TD run in the AFC title game in Pittsburgh. "It's a total organizational effort from the top down."
Some of the top of the organization will be missing with Weis and Crennel gone. Belichick said that he had been too busy working on the Super Bowl to start considering replacements, although it's a sure bet he has some in mind.
Then he brushed off all the talk about a dynasty.
"Every year is a new year," he said. "We start at the bottom with the other 31 teams."
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
LSU women rank highest in AP poll
BY CHUCK SCOFFNER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LSU swept all 44 first-place votes from a national media panel, and the top six teams remained the same in the AP women's basketball poll.
The Lady Tigers (21-1) were No. 1 for the second straight week and eighth time this season.
No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Duke each received a first-place vote last week, but LSU got them all this time.
Baylor climbed one spot to seventh after beating Top 25 opponents Kansas State and Texas Tech. The victory at Tech was Baylor's first in Lubbock since 1982.
North Carolina, Michigan State and Connecticut each moved up one place to com-
plate the Top 10. A 57-44 loss at Connecticut dropped Rutgers from seventh to 11th.
Iowa State, the surprising leader in the Big 12, went from 19th to 14th for the biggest jump within the poll. The Cyclones (18-2), who already have matched their victory total for last season, routed Colorado and beat Texas last week.
Texas fell four spots to 17th
Self
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and freshmen Alex Galindo and C.J. Giles have been out with injuries for the last four games.
Robinson, especially, is a guy who played a key role early in the season but has found himself far down on the bench recently. In the last minutes of the Baylor game on Jan. 25, Self tried to insert Robinson in the final minutes of the 86-66 victory, but Robinson declined to go into the game. He admitted to being frustrated, but he said he simply wanted to allow his teammates to get some playing time.
On the flipside, juniors Jeff Hawkins and Moulaye Niang, along with freshman forward Sasha Kaun, have squeezed their way up the bench. Senior guard Mike Lee has been the one dependable reserve player for the Jayhawks all season.
Another difference in the Kansas rotation is that the starting five have been more aggressive offensively, leaving fewer opportunities for the reserves to excel. Against Missouri on Jan. 31, Kansas' starters scored 71 of the Jayhawks' 73 points. In Saturday's contest against Nebraska, the starters scored 61 of 78 points and played 166 out of 200 possible combined player minutes in a game.
"Players understand,' Okay, I am going to play this amount of minutes," Miles said. "They're not worried about how many minutes they are going to play. They know what they need to come in and do."
Senior guard Aaron Miles said shortening the bench was good because it helped players identify their roles.
Now, the question is whether the rotation will stay the same for the rest of the year. Self said he expected Giles and Galindo to return to the line-up in the next couple of weeks. Both played well for the Jlayhawks before they got injured.
Self didn't say where those guys would fit into the revolving Kansas bench, but he said the current situation was not permanent.
"The nine we are playing now could be a different ten." Self said. "I feel that we will play better if we play nine, maybe 10 at the most."
MEN'S BASKETBALL NOTES
Junior Forward Christian Moody, who has been nursing a sore left ankle since the Kentucky game Jan. 9, rolled the ankle again on Saturday.
Moody said that he hurt almost every day, and that there is a chance that he may not be 100 percent for the rest of the season. He said he knew what he needed to do to be effective on the court despite the injury.
"It affects my jumping." Moody said. "I've had to rely on boxing out harder and use my body more because I can't get up as high."
* Gelbey did, not travel with, the
Camino did not travel with the team to Lincoln, Neb., for the Jayhawks' match-up against the Cornhuskers.
He has played less than two combined minutes in Kansas' last four games because of an injured groin muscle. Galindo said that he received treatment and did a cardiovascular workout on Saturday instead of traveling with the team.
Kansas coach Bill Self said he hoped Galino would return before Saturday's game against
"I think we will get Alex back sometime this week for sure." Self gaid.
- For someone who said he was definitely going to play against Nebraska, Giles didn't look the part when he showed up in street clothes accessorized with a pair of crutches on Saturday.
Wednesday, Giles said he was certain that he would play against the Cornhuskers, but yesterday he told the media that after participating in some half-court drills last week, his injured right foot swelled up and he couldn't practice anymore.
Yesterday Giles said that he would try to go half-court again, but he still claimed that his foot was healthy.
"There ain't nothing wrong with it, really," Giles said.
But Self had a different opinion.
"He can do the bicycle and that's about it," Self said.
During the last three games, Niang has slowly moved himself into the Kansas rotation. He played eight minutes against Texas and six against Missouri. On Saturday, he added another eight.
Niang's most minutes prior to Texas was 11 against Texas A&M, but he had accumulated only eight minutes over the course of six games between that contest and the game against Texas. Moody said that Niang's quick feet on defense make him valuable when the Jayhawks face quick post players.
"Moulaye knows that's his job, to get out there and us his quickness to guard some of the quicker four players," Moody said.
Edited by John Scheirman
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 8TH