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TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
INTRAMURALS
Students show off talent in games at the Rec
RYAN SCHLESENER
rschlesener@kansan.com
twitter.com/UDK_intramurals
"Danny and the Miracles," "Mario's Miracle," and George Brett's "Pine Tar Game." These are just a few of the most famous, or infamous, moments in sports history, just to name a few.
But not all special moments in sports have to happen in the biggest games or biggest leagues. There are game winning shots, underdog stories, and angry outbursts in every league, in every city, all across the country.
From little league sports to the pros, or from Division 1 athletics to intramurals, anyone who has been involved with sports has most likely witnessed a special moment, be it positive or negative.
Phillip Schmitt, a referee for KU's Intramural Sports, recalled some of the most memorable moments he has witnessed throughout his tenure.
Schmitt said he remembers one game in particular that happened in the "Elite 8" of the league. With a two-point lead,
and only 30 seconds remaining on the clock in overtime, the ball was brought down by a player who had been having a great night from beyond the three point arc.
"The kid had been nailing threes all night long," Schmitt said.
Instead of making the safe play and running out the clock, the player, who had the hot hand all night drove down the court and pulled up for a contested three, and drained the shot to seal the victory.
This may sound like a familiar scenario to KU basketball fans.
In the 2010 NCAA tournament, with 36 seconds left on the clock, and still 30 seconds on the shot clock, Ali Farokhmanesh sunk a three-point dagger that sealed the Northern Iowa upset over KU in the second round.
The player in the intramural game hit a similar shot in an almost identical situation. While his shot didn't earn him national recognition, it is still a shot that he and his teammates will most likely remember for quite some time.
Close games coming down
to the wire are commonplace in intramural sports, due to dividing teams into two leagues: competitive or recreational.
Matt Beck, Director of Intramural Sports said, "We try to keep our leagues as competitively balanced as possible. If you play in the competitive league, you can't play in the recreational league"
The separation of talent is sometimes evident toward the end of games, when it may come down to a clutch score, or a key defensive stop to win the game. In fact, just this year, the flag football championship game was decided on a game winning catch in overtime.
Just because it's not Division 1 or professional athletics, doesn't mean special moments won't happen in intramural sports. Spring sports leagues began play last night, and according to the ku.athleague.com calendar, events in either racquetball, basketball, are scheduled Sunday through Thursday nights every week throughout most of February.
Edited by Max Lush
Josh Hilger, a junior from Lawrence, shoots during a friendly game at Ambler Student Recreational Center. Sunday marked the official opeing of the Spring Intramural season for several sports.
TRAVIS YOUNG/KANSAN
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Duke defeated in Durham
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DURHAM, N.C. — Nobody beats No. 5 Duke like this. Not this badly, and not on its home court.
Well, nobody except for No. 3 Connecticut.
The Blue Devils had their 34-game winning streak at Cameron Indoor Stadium snapped in decisive fashion, missing 19 consecutive shots over roughly 12 minutes in a_61-45 loss to UConn on Monday night.
The Huskies, the last team to beat Duke here when they did it in 2010, frustrated the Blue Devils with their defense.
Duke shot a season-low 24.6 percent against a UConn team determined to take away the lane and force the Blue Devils into a jump-shooting team.
As a result, freshman star Elizabeth Williams finished with 10 points on 3-of-15 shooting. Leading scorer Chelsea Gray had 11 of her 13 points in the first half but was 1 of 7 after the break for the Blue Devils (17-3), who had won 11 straight overall.
Their two previous losses were by a combined nine points, but they finished this one 17 of 69 from the field.
"We took a lot of shots, and I think, hopefully, we're going to learn a valuable lesson when we watch the film," coach Joanne P. McCallie said. "We broke out of what we do effusively. We were too one-on-one-oriented, and we paid a price for that."
Bria Hartley scored 15 points and Caroline Doty added 11
points for the Huskies (20-2), who shot 45 percent and overcame 21 turnovers by forcing 15 from Duke.
"This particular group, I'm surprised, but we're a really good defensive team. ... It's difficult for teams to get comfortable against us, because you might have a different kid guarding you every time down the floor," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "But the effort was unbelievable. We kind of pride ourselves on that. We think we're the best defensive team in the country, and kids buy into that. And they're not an easy team to defend."
Maybe not, but at times UConn sure made it look that way.
Williams' layup with just under 18 minutes left was the Blue Devils' last basket until Haley Peters hit a 3-pointer with fewer than 6 minutes remaining. Duke finished with only eight assists on its 17 baskets.
"It's a great lesson for our team. A great lesson on what not to do offensively, and how not to, I guess, rush yourself and do some things that we" shouldn't do, Mc-Callie said.
Duke trailed by 14 late in the first half before putting together a 12-3 run that bridged the break. The Blue Devils forced five turnovers in the first six minutes of the half, and Williams helped Duke close to 34-29 with a free throw with 17:19 left.
before Tiffany Hayes added a bucket in the lane, pushing it to 50-33 with just over 7 minutes left, and Duke didn't get closer than 12 the rest of the way.
That's when UConn took over and began stretching its lead with 3-pointers. The Huskies hit four — two by Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis — in a 9-minute stretch
"They did a good job of clogging the lane a little bit, and sometimes we would take too many dribbles," Gray said.
Stefanie Dolson added 10 points and Kiah Stokes had 11 of her 12 rebounds on the defensive end for UConn.
The Huskies entered with the nation's toughest defense by shooting percentage, holding opponents to 30 percent. They forced the Blue Devils into their worst shooting night by far — their previous low was 32 percent in a loss to Notre Dame.
"That's how you want to play on the road," Hartley said.
The Huskies have dominated this series lately, winning five in a row since the Blue Devils' overtime win in 2006. They routed Duke twice last season — including a 36-point loss that ended the Blue Devils' unbeaten start to 2010-11 and a 35-point ramp in the NCAA tournament with a Final Four berth on the line. UConn's last visit to Cameron was a 33-point rout in January 2010.
"I hope this team thinks we can beat anybody, and there's something wrong with them if they don't," McCallie said. "And they're really going to regret when they see this film (Tuesday)."
But unlike all those meetings, this one remained a game into the second half.
ROTATION PAGE 8
too few either, arguing that the size of the rotation doesn't always matter.
"But that '08 team, we played seven a ton of minutes," Self said. "You look at that team and we had seven starters. I don't quite feel that way this year. I feel like we have six."
He was presumably speaking
of Conner Teahan as the extra starter, whose 20.8 minutes per game nearly double the action seen by forwards Kevin Young and Justin Wesley.
With only one bench player seeing considerable action, starters are being relied upon much more than in the past. At the same time, Self hasn't been happy with his team near the end of a shot clock after playing defense for
sometimes 30 seconds or longer. One theory for the breakdowns on defense is fatigue.
"I would say the percentage of people scoring against us is far higher in the last seven to eight seconds of a possession than it is in the first 27," Self said. "We don't finish possessions."
Edited by Taylor Lewis
NFL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Super Bowl amps up security
INDIANAPOLIS — From pick-pockets and prostitutes to dirty bombs and exploding manhole covers, authorities are bracing for whatever threat the first Super Bowl in downtown Indianapolis might bring.
Some — nuclear terrorism, for instance — are likely to remain just hypothetical. But others, like thieves and wayward manhole covers, are all too real.
Though Indianapolis has ample experience hosting large sporting events — the Indianapolis 500 attracts more than 200,000 fans each year, and the NCAA's men's Final Four basketball tournament has been held here six times since 1980 — the city's first Super Bowl poses some unique challenges.
Unlike the Final Four, which is compressed into a weekend, the Super Bowl offers crowd, travel and other logistical challenges over 10 days leading up to the Feb. 5 game. And unlike the 500, where events are largely concentrated at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway about seven miles from Lucas Oil Stadium, the NFL's showcase event will consume 44 blocks — about a
mile square — in the heart of the city, closing off streets and forcing an anticipated 150,000 or more NFL fans to jockey with downtown workers for space much of the week.
"This is clearly bigger in terms of the amount of people who will be downtown over an extended period of time," city Public Safety Director Frank Straub said.
Under a security risk rating system used by the federal government, the Super Bowl ranks just below national security events involving the president and the Secret Service, said Indianapolis Chief of Homeland Security Gary Coons. The ratings are based on factors including international attention, media coverage, number of people the event attracts and visits by celebrities and foreign dignitaries, he said. The Indianapolis 500 ranks two levels below the Super Bowl.
The city has invested millions of dollars and worked with local, state and federal agencies to try to keep all those people safe. Up to 1,000 city police officers will be in the stadium and on the street, carrying smartphones and other electronic hand-held devices that
will enable them to feed photos and video to a new state-of-the art operations center on the city's east side or to cruisers driven by officers providing backup, Straub said. Hundreds of officers from other agencies, including the state police and the FBI, will be scanning the crowd for sign of pickpocketing, prostitution or other trouble.
One concern has been a series of explosions in Indianapolis Power & Light's underground network of utility cables. A dozen underground explosions have occurred since 2005, sending manhole covers flying.
Eight explosions have occurred since 2010. The latest, on Nov. 19, turned a manhole cover into a projectile that heavily damaged a parked car and raised concerns about the safety of Super Bowl visitors walking on streets and soaring above the Super Bowl village on four zip lines installed for the festivities.
Since December, IPL has spent about $180,000 to install 150 new locking manhole covers, primarily in the Super Bowl village and other areas expected to see high pre-game traffic.
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FRISBEE FLINGIN'
CHRIS BRONSON/KANSAN
Aaron Cheun, a sophomore from lola, plays a friendly game of frisbee in the open lawn outside the Robinson Center Monday night. Cheun said he wanted to take advantage of the nice weather by spending time outdoors.
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