SPORTS UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, February 9,1994
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William Alix/ KANSAM
Forward surmounts leg injuries in stride
Kansas junior forward Alana Slatter attempts a jump shot against Missouri. Slatter scored 3 points and grabbed 1 rebound Sunday in the Jahyhaws' loss to the Tigers.
Kansas junior forward Alana Slatter warm up before the game against Missouri. The Jayhawks lost Sunday to the Tigers 77-78.
By Matt Siegel
Kansan sportswriter
Most students look forward to the summer. It's a time to relax from classes and everyday hassles that accompany attending college. However, junior forward Alana Slatter dreads the summer for personal reasons.
"I'm a sports fanatic," she said. "All watch is basketball or football. The toughest part of the year for me is baseball during the summer. I hate baseball, and there aren't any other sports on television."
However, Slatter didn't have much time to watch television this summer. She was busy rehabilitating her right knee after undergoing arthroscopic surgery at the end of the 1993 season. She spent the entire summer lifting weights and running to strengthen her knee. Her rehabilitation was progressing as planned until a preseason practice.
"My mother is extremely superstitious," she said. "She thought it was bad luck that I chose to wear No. 13. But I always used to say in high school, 'I'm bad luck on the court —
"I got hit in a scrimmage," she said,
"From then on, I had swelling that kept occurring and wouldn't go away.
They drained my knee and had me sitting out of practice for three days, and then the doctor came back, and he took a look at it. I had just been going to class, and it was swollen again."
So Slatter decided that she would have a second arthroscopic surgery Nov. 11. The injury sidelined her for more than a month and she missed the first five games of the season. Slatter is averaging 5.6 points and 3 rebounds a game in 14 games. She has increased her scoring output to 7.1 points a game in Big Eight Conference play.
Although she has returned, Slatter said she never had expected to return fully to her pre-injury condition. She said that she could not do certain leg exercises and that even today she felt she needed to gain more strength in her legs and knee.
The injury was especially frustrating to Slatter because she had worked hard during the summer to get back into playing form. When it looked as if she was ready to return, she stumbled on some more bad luck. Or was it?
for the other team."
The 6-foot forward didn't start playing basketball until the seventh grade and then only because her friends were playing. She liked it enough to continue playing at J.J. Pearce High School in Dallas. She soon became a star, averaging 22 points and 8.9 rebounds a game her senior year and was named the No. 2 player in the state by the Dallas Morning News.
Slatter then had to make a decision. She said that she had known that she had wanted to leave Texas. She was recruited by schools such as Stanford, she said, but she liked Kansas coach Marian Washington and her program.
At Kansas, Slatter has helped Kansas become a top-echelon team. Last season, she led the team in scoring twice. After averaging 14 points a game in the conference tournament, she was selected to the all-tournament team.
"She is just a really aggressive player," senior center Lisa Tate said. "She is an offensive threat."
Slatter, who is majoring in business and business administration, said that she had no regrets about leaving Texas but that she wished she could have gone back for one thing.
"I was born in San Antonio, and ever since I was little, my dad would bring me back Cowboys souvenirs," she said of the Dallas Cowboys. "Growing up, I always liked them, and then we moved there. I wish I could have gone to any of their games."
Now if only the Cowboys played during the summer.
Basketball standouts elected to Hall of Fame
By Trudy Tynan The Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Louisville coach Denny Crum's election to the Basketball Hall of Fame yesterday came as no surprise to his college coach.
"He was born to coach," former UCLA coach John Wooden said. "Even at the time that he was playing it was evident he was going to be an outstanding coach. I've never been able to say that about another player."
Two other coaches, Chuck Daly of the New Jersey Nets and Cesare Rubini, who had a 322-28 record and 10 Italian championships during his 31 years coaching in Milan, were also voted into the Hall today.
Elected as players were Carol Blazejowski, the shooting star of the women's game in the 1970s, and Harry "Buddy" Jeannette, a standout backcourt player in the 1930s and 1940s.
Blazejowski was nominated by the women's committee, Rubini was tabbed by the international committee and Jeannette by the veterans committee.
They will be enshrined May 9.
"I feel like I'm in a dream," said Blazejowski.
"This is a very, very special moment."
During her four years at Montclair State, Blazejowski had a 31.7 point average, which made her the most prolific scorer in women's basketball history. The only college player to score more points than "The Blaze" was the late Pete Maravich.
"It's no secret it was a struggle at times," said Blazejowski, now a director of consumer products for the NBA. "But this is the biggest accomplishment of any player's career."
Daly's coaching career began in 1955 at Punxutawney, Pa., High School and included NBA and Ivy League titles and Olympic gold.
In 1893, Daly took over the Detroit Pistons, which had never had back-to-back winning seasons, and led them to NBA championships in 1989 and 1990. He also guided Pennsylvania to four Ivy League titles in the 1970s. But he never had it so easy as when he led the Dream Team to the Olympic gold medal in Barcelona.
"I feel like I've never retired from basketball," said Jeannette, 76, who now lives in Nashua, N.H., with his wife, Bonnie. They met in Warren, Pa., when he was the pro Rookie of the Year in 1938.
Jeanette played on nine championship teams in four cities—Detroit, Sheboygan, Fort Wayne and Baltimore —during his 10 year pro career.
He was the Most Valuable Player in the old National Basketball League three times and once in the American Basketball League and later coached at Georgetown before returning to Baltimore as coach and general manager of the Bullets. He retired in 1967.
Crum's election came as his 18-2 Cardinals are enjoying their best season since the 1980s, when they made four appearances in the Final Four and won the national championship in 1980 and 1986. The Cardinals reached the Final Four two other times under Crum in the 1970s.
During his 22 years in Louisville, his record is 536-194. Only Wooden and Hall of Famer Dean Smith of North Carolina have coached more Final Four teams.
"He was the most inquisitive player I ever had and always learned," Wooden said of the San Fernando, Calif., native who graduated from UCLA in 1958. "He wanted to know why and how we did everything, from the mechanics of the game to why the coaches worked with certain players the way they did."
Wooden, 84, the only man to be elected to the Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach, said Crum's promise with a clipboard had been immediately evident when he arrived at UCLA.
The combination produced three of UCLA's seven straight national championships before Crum left for Louisville. In his first season, the Cardinals reached the semifinals of the 1972 tournament before being eliminated by the Bruins, who went on to win tourney.
As a player, Crum was "not outstanding at all, but a pretty good point guard," Wooden said. "He had good hands and was a good passer. As a shooter, he was above average, but not outstanding.
Crum served as Wooden's graduate assistant and freshman coach from 1958 until 1960. Then, after a stint in high school and junior college, Crum returned as Wooden's top assistant and chief recruiter in 1968.
"I think his ambition from the very beginning was to coach. And I got him back as an assistant as soon as a I could."
"It was a strange feeling because I had recruited all those players that beat us for UCLA," Crum said.
Track leaders look to stretch successes from past meets
By Andrew Gilman Kansan sportswriter
With his sparkling gold ring and matching gold earring, senior distance runner Michael Cox talks about superstition.
"Every year, on the first day of practice, I wear as much black as possible," he said. "It goes back to my high-school days. Black was one of our team colors. We were the Pirates."
His past performances would seem to indicate that he is doing something right. Cox, who is from Hannibal, Mo., has put together an impressive career with the Jayhawks. He placed ninth last year in the mile run at the NCAA indoor championships and placed first in the mile run at the 1993 indoor Big Eight Conference championships. This season, he has put together four first-place finishes, including victories last weekend in the mile and the 3000-meter run at the Kansas-Kansas State-Missouri Triangular Meet.
Cox and the rest of the Jayhawks will look to improve when they compete at the Cornhusker Invitational on Friday and Saturday.
Kansas will compete at the KSU Invitation on Feb. 18-19 before going to Oklahoma City to compete in the Big Eight Championships on Feb. 25-26.
"This meet is a lot like the Kansas Relays," assistant coach Steve Guymon said. "It's their big meet of the year."
"I expect the team to preform well," Guymon said. "The men's team is eager and hungry to prove that we've got a good program."
Kansas will look to Cox and senior middle-distance runner Dan Waters for leadership this weekend.
Cox will be running the mile and Waters will be competing in the 800-meter run.
"The mile is going to be a quick race," Cox said. "There will be an intense crowd."
Cox, who has provisionally qualified for the NCAA meet this year with a time of 4:04.8 in the mile run, will be competing at the NCAA championships unless his time is beaten.
Regardless of his times so far, Cox knows
that this weekend will be an excellent opportunity for him to improve.
"There will be a lot of guys to push me at this meet," he said. "That will help my times. I'd like to run close to four minutes, and I'm planning on winning."
Waters also realizes the importance of this weekend's meet.
"This is our toughest indoor competition of the year," he said. "There will be some really great competition there from both coasts."
Waters was a Big Eight champion in the 800-meter run in 1992 and was a member of the 3,200-meter relay team that placed fifth at the NCAA championships in 1991. But Waters said he was impressed by the unity on the team this season.
"There are no strict divisions on this team," he said. "Obviously you get closer to the people that you work with, but I'm friends with everyone on the team."
"We know it's a total team effort, and we all encourage each other well. There's a lot of divisions on other teams, there's a lot of tensions. We don't have them."
"When it comes to down to that last event, everyone is there watching." he said.
Cox agreed.
But the coaching staff also plays a role in keeping the team together. Waters said.
"Coach does a lot of talking." Waters said of Kansas coach Gary Schwartz. "But he always asks us what we think. He listens to us and then makes the best decisions on our behalf."
Both Cox and Waters said they hoped to make big improvements in the Big Eight championships.
Although Waters and Cox have made individual contributions, both are more concerned with the team's performance.
Waters, who has not qualified for the NCAA championships, will look to make that sten this weekend.
"I'm not looking toward the outdoor season," he said. "I want to concentrate on the indoor season."
"This year we have a great combination of old guys and new guys working together," Waters said. "We have some great team leaders."
Tom Leininger/KANSAN
Senior distance runner Michael Cox was an All-American Big Eight champion in the mile last year.
Volunteers needed for Kansas Relays
The 69th annual Kansas Relays need individuals to help out.
Volunteers are needed for the student relays committee, which will be involved with premeet and headquarters organization, officials and other areas. If students are interested in volunteering, they should go to room 143 in Allen Field House or call the track and field office at 864-3486 by March 1. The Kansas Relays will be from April 23 to April 26.
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