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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Kansas takes on West Virginia in Big 12 Championship
STELLA LIANG
sliang@kansan.com
The Kansas soccer team (7-10-2, 2-5-1) will be close to home for the Big 12 Championship in Kansas City, Mo., tonight. As the No. 8 seed in the tournament, the Jayhawks will face top-seeded West Virginia (13-3-2, 7-1) at Swope Soccer Village.
West Virginia is the regular season champion of the league and had a perfect conference record until its loss to Texas Tech on Oct. 27.
Kansas earned the last spot in the tournament with its 2-1 victory against Oklahoma Friday. After the match, coach Mark Francis said the team would move momentum on its side following the hard-fought victory and the threat of exclusion from the tournament.
"I told the girls, we've played everybody in the conference and we've seen what everybody has, and I think every game we've played in the conference, we've been in the game," Francis said. "We've had opportunities to win the game."
He said that in this tournament, his team can definitely advance further.
"The tournament is one-and-do ne and we have every opportunity to go in there and do well," Francis said.
Junior midfielder Jamie Fletcher led the team to victory against Oklahoma with her two welltimed goals. She scored the first goal of the game and another goal that put the match away for good in the last three minutes.
Fletcher earned conference honors for her performance. On Tuesday, she was named the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week. Before the match against Oklahoma, Fletcher had tallied the most shot attempts on the team, but had only scored one goal. On Friday, Fletcher said she was optimistic
about the tournament.
"I think we actually have a really good chance to win the Big 12 tournament, so all we had to do was get there and see what happens." Fletcher said.
In the regular season matchup against West Virginia, the Mountaineers defeated Kansas 2-0 in the midst of one of the Jayhawks' extended scoring droughts. West Virginia scored early, with both goals coming in the first 15 minutes of the match. The Jayhawks kept fighting, but could not recover.
"The tournament is one-and-done and we have every opportunity to go in there and do well."
MARK FRANCIS Coach
In their first two seasons in the conference, the West Virginia Mountaineers have made a splash in the Big 12. They also won the regular season title and were seeded first in the tournament last year.
They did not fare well in post-season play last year. They faced eighth-seeded TCU last year and were blanked by the Horned Frogs 0-2. TCU went on to compete in the title game where it fell to Baylor. Kansas also lost its first-round game last year, falling 0-2 to Texas Tech.
If the Jayhawks get past the Mountainers, they will advance to the semifinals, which will be against the winner of today's Baylor and Iowa State match. The semifinals will take place on Friday and the title game will be played on Sunday.
Edited by Emma McElhaney
Senior forward Caroline Kastor (10) and junior forward Ashley Williams (9) dribble the ball during the Nov. 1 game against Oklahoma University, where the Jayhawks won 2-1. Kansas' first Big 12 Championship game will take place tonight in Kansas City, Mo., against West Virginia.
BEN LIPOWITZ/KANSAN
Olympic torch will launch into space with Russian rocket
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — For the first time in history, the Olympic torch will be taken on a spacewalk.
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics torch will be sent to the International Space Station on board a Russian spacecraft this week and astronauts will then carry it outside the station. Here's a look at the Sochi torch.
Russia's booster rocket, Soyuz-FG, will carry new crew to the International Space Station. For the first time, it will carry an Olympic torch to space as part of the ongoing Olympic torch relay. The rocket is scheduled to blast off on Thursday.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE SPACE CHARIOT
The torch will travel into Earth's orbit with the next space station crew, who blast off early Thursday from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Russia's Mikhail Tyurin, NASA's Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata of Japan are heading to the space station on a Russian Soyuz rocket that has been emblazoned with the emblem of the Sochi Winter Games.
FLAMES IN SPACE
For safety reasons, the torch will not burn when it's onboard the space outpost. Lighting it would
consume precious oxygen and pose a threat to the crew. The crew will carry the unlit torch around the station's numerous modules before taking it out on a spacewalk.
A TORCH FIRST
The Olympic torch has flown into space before — in 1996 aboard the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis for the Atlanta Summer Olympics — but it has never yet been taken outside a spacecraft.
HANGING IN THE COSMOS
The torch will stay in space for five days until the returning crew takes it back to Earth next Monday, when Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency plan to land in Kazakhstan.
HANGING IN THE CUSINOS Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy, who are part of the space station's current crew, will take the torch into open space Saturday when they venture outside the station. Kotov says they are planning to take video and photos of the torch, hopefully when the space station flies over Russia and the southern resort of Sochi can be seen in the background.
JUST PART OF THE JOURNEY
The four-month Sochi torch relay, which started in Moscow on Oct. 7, is the longest in the history of the Olympics. For most of the 65,000-kilometer (39,000-mile) route, the flame will travel by plane, train, car and even reindeer sleigh, but 14,000 torch bearers are taking part in the relay that stops
at more than 130 cities and towns. Last month, the Olympic flame traveled to the North Pole onboard a Russian nuclear-powered ice-breaker. Later this month it will sink to the bottom of the world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal. In February, the torch will be taken to the peak of Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 meters (18,510 feet) — the highest
mountain in Russia and Europe.
AND THE CLIMAX
The torch will be used to light the Olympic flame at Sochi's stadium on Feb. 7, marking the start of the 2014 Winter Games that run until Feb. 23.
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