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The University Daily Kansan
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Inside: The soccer team said goodbye to seven seniors yesterday during Senior Day ceremonies. SEE PAGE 3B
Inside: Nebraska and Kansas State sit atop the Big 12 after big wins against conference foes.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2000
SEE PAGE 4B
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Soccer splits season's last home games
By Yoshitaka Ebisawa sports@kansan.com Kansan sportswriter
Even a special day like Senior Day couldn't stop the Kansas women's soccer team's inconsistency.
For the seventh weekend in a row, Kansas split its weekend games. The Jayhawks defeated Texas Tech 1-0 Friday at SuperTarget Field in Lawrence but fell to Colorado 1-0 yesterday — and couldn't celebrate Senior Day with a victory.
The irony is that Kansas played poorly in Friday's game but still won, and played well in yesterday's game but suffered a shutout loss.
"For the second half, we played really well," said Kansas coach Mark Francis after yesterday's game. "I think we did everything except score."
Although the Jayhawks outshot Colorado 17-11 and created more scoring chances than the Buffaloes, Kansas' only big mistake in the game decided the winner.
Kansas State defensive tackle Mario Fatafehi strikes a celebratory pose after recovering Smith's fumble on the third snap of the game.
Photo by Nick Kruga/KANSAN
In the 32nd minute, a back-pass to goakeeper Layla Young was stolen by Colorado forward Melissa Carmell, who touched it past Young and hit it to the Kansas goal.
"The goal we gave was terrible." Franchis said. "It was a miscommunication or no communication in the back."
"We played well. It's just very disapointing to lose on a bad mistake."
Emma Di Cesare,
a senior defender
and the team's cap-
Emma
Di Cesare
senior defender and co-captain
More information
For more soccer
See page 38
tain, said emotions about Senior Day didn't prevent Kansas from winning.
"It was emotional, but at the same time, we did have a big game to play," she said. "We played well. It's just very disappointing to lose on a bad mistake."
The situation was reversed in Friday's game — a big win with sloppy performances.
"It was ugly." Francis said of Kansas's performance against the Red Raiders. "Today, we were about 60 percent."
When it seemed that the game would go into overtime, two Kansas senior players stood up.
From the beginning, Kansas kept attacking the Red Raiders' goal, outshooting them 15-8. The game, however, remained scoreless until the final minutes and became more and more physical as both teams got frustrated. The teams committed a total of 23 fouls.
K-State blows out Kansas
See SOCCER on page 3B
Ryan Lynch, Lenexa senior,
plays his tub at Saturday's
football game. Lynch will
graduate this semester after
spending 10 years at the
University. Photo by Brad
Dreier/KANSAN
By Jason Franchuk sports@kansan.com kansas sportwriter
Ryan Lynch has played his tuba enough, and seen enough Kansas football, to know that change does not always come easily.
In his 10th year as a University student and band member, Lenexa native Lynch knows that "I'm a Jayhawk" will be played regularly at sporting events.
Lynch will not be around to find out whether the Jayhawks can sing a different tune against Kansas State any time soon — after the Wildcats shellacked them 52-13 Saturday at Memorial Stadium.
Kansas looked like a start-up band when the game started. The team nearly lost the conductor of its offense, senior quarterback Dylan Smith, when he was leveled on the game's third play. Smith rolled out to pass and never saw Chris Johnson charging at him. Smith fumbled, leading to K-State's first touchdown, and he missed two series to get X-rays.
"I was hoping it might turn out different," he said after performing at halftime, when Kansas trailed 38.0.
"It made me kind of nervous," Smith said.
There were plenty of reasons for Kansas to be apprehensive. Kansas State quarterback Jonathan Beasley ran an eclectic offense that kept Kansas guessing. Beasley completed 12 of 18 passes for 235 yards and one touchdown before he was removed in the second half.
K-State rushed for 217 yards, including nine rushes for 22 yards by David Allen, who returned for his first game since injuring his ankle in the season opener against Iowa.
Kansas coach Terry Allen summed up Kansas State's performance bluntly.
"We got beat by a very good foot-ball team," he said.
Unlike Kansas, at least Lynch and the band had fun. Even when the game was far from winnable for the Jayhawks, and wisecracks rang from the purple crowd that surrounded the band, Lynch kept his humor.
It's his last season, so he's going to enjoy every game — regardless of the outcome. Besides, he's also in the basketball band, which will tune up Friday at Late Night with Roy
More information
More information For more Kansas football See page 4B
Williams.
Lynch stuck around Lawrence to earn two degrees. He has one in civil engineering, which he earned in 1955 — Kansas' last successful football season.
"That was a fun year," he said. "It'd be nice to get football back to that level here."
He was at Kansas in 1992, when Kansas last defeated the Wildcats. Nobody, Lynch said, could have expected to see such a discrepancy between the two programs created since then. Of course, not many college students get to analyze so many years in person.
It doesn't seem Kansas will defeating the Wildcats anytime soon. The 'Hawks have lost the last three games against K-State 54-6, 50-9 and now 52-13.
Lynch said he wouldn't wait another 10 years for a turnaround — at least not as a student.
"I'll be in the stands," he said. — Edited by Clay McCusition
Longhorns edge by Hawks in five games
By Sarah Warren
sports@kanson.com
Kanson sportswriter
Despite positives, 'Hawks still lose fourth straight
Bv Sarah Warren
After seeing both school's football teams get thumped Saturday afternoon, the Texas and Kansas volleyball teams seemed to keep things as close as possible Saturday night when Texas came to the Horejsi Family Athletic Center.
Games two, three and four were each two-point decisions, dragging the match out into five games. However, the Jayhawks dropped their fourth-straight match, losing 11-15 to the Longhorns in the fifth game. It was the third of that streak to go into five games.
"Rally can go either way," said Kylie Thomas, sophomore middle blocker. "It's the mistakes you make that can finish it for you."
And with the rally scoring used in game five, the team who has the better numbers, like Kansas, doesn't always win.
With Saturday's heartbreaker, Kansas dropped to 11-6, 2-6 in the Big 12 Conference, while the Longhorns improved to a seemingly mediores 4-10, 3-4.
"We had a higher hitting efficiency, more blocks, but they played well in the end," Kansas coach Ray Beachard said. "They stepped it up a bit in game five."
"Their record certainly isn't an indication'of their team if you look at some of their previous opponents," Bechard said. "This is a team that won at Baylor."
Kansas failed to do the same, starting its four-game losing streak.
And although the Jayhawks dropped the match, the 'Hawks
Ray Bechard
"We had a higher hitting efficiency, more blocks, but they played well in the
KU volleyball coach
still had one of their biggest matches of the season. Amy Myatt, senior outside hitter, recorded a career-high 34 kills—just three less than Kansas's fivegame kills record set by Judy Desch in 1985.
Meanwhile, junior setter Molly LaMere broke her own record in the five-game set assists category by recording 84 for the Jayhawks.
Senior middle blocker Danielle Geronymo recorded Kansas' first triple-double since joining the Big 12 in 1996, by pulling out 21 kills, 18 digs and 11 blocks against the Longhorns and long
time friend Katia Lara, a Texas outside bitter.
Three Jayhawks, in addition to Myatt and Geronymo, recorded double-figure kills. Outside hitters senior Nancy Bell notched 16 and freshman Sarah Rome had 14, while Thomas smacked down 12 of her own.
But what made the difference in the Kansas/Texas squeaker wasn't Kansas' ability to make the kills, but rather the play of a formerly injured Longhorn.
"Gipy Duarte was the difference. She had 22 kills," said Beachard of Texas' junior outside hitter from Lima, Peru. "She's coming off an injury but she really came back tonight. If Texas would have had her in some of their earlier matches this year, she definitely would have made a difference."
Kansas will hit the road to take on Missouri at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Columbia, Mo.
— Edited by John Audlehelm
Kansas senior middle blocker Danielle Geronomy serves up a shot against Texas at Saturday night's game. Photo by Aaron Lindbergh/KANSAN
Sports Columnist
Derek Prater
sports@kansan.com
Jayhawks rolled over for Wildcats
A quick history lesson:
In ancient times purple dye was extremely rare and thus very expensive. Only kings and noblemen could afford its use, and therefore purple became the color of royalty.
Nowadays, to Kansas fans' chagin, the color can be generated easily through chemical processes and is available in mass quantities to the dull denizens of Manhattan.
The sole method for obtaining purple dye was to extract it from marine gastropod mollusks — basically, tiny shellfish. So to color, for instance, a single king's robe, thousands and thousands of these shellfish were harvested from the sea and crushed for their colorful innards.
That purple — which now denotes football royalty in the state of Kansas — is sustained not by crushing shellfish, but by crushing cream-puff football teams.
We here on Mount Oread love to disparage K-State's football greatness by reciting the litany of non-conference ninies that Wildcat coach Bill Snyder lines up every year. But, and I hate to point this out, no team has rolled over for the Wildcats more readily the last several years than our own Jayhawks. And this weekend was no exception.
The 'Hawks looked more defenseless than shellfish sans shells in Saturday's 52-13 crushing. They put up no more fight against K-State than did Louisiana Tech (54-10) or North Texas (55-10).
Even the most optimistic Kansas fan didn't really think the team could actually win this one. Kansas coach Terry Allen had spoken more about "closing the gap" between the two programs. The gap appears wide open.
Allen insists that Kansas has better athletes than in previous years. To some degree, that's true — although K-State's team speed made the 'Hawks look as though the new turf was sticking to their cleats.
But the real problem is simple: K-State's coaching is vastly superior to ours. Allen just can't compete with Snyder's monomaniacal approach to the game. Snyder is relentlessly meticulous and has unsurpassed football acumen, as evidenced in his team's execution.
Kansas' execution, on the other hand, has rarely been sharper than that of a butter knife. Turnovers, missed blocks, kicking gaffes, etc. have plagued the 'Hawks even in their wins. And it doesn't help that the offensive play calling has all the imagination of this year's presidential debates.
"We run draw plays and prayers," one astute observer pointed out at Saturday's game.
Anyone who has watched Kansas this year is familiar with the draw-play reference — certainly opposing coaches are. The prayers were Dylan Smith's long pass attempts that required divine intervention just to avoid a desperate interception.
And desperation may be the theme for the rest of this season. It's unlikely that Allen's team will be favored in any game for the remainder of the season (with the possible exception of Oct. 28's game against Texas Tech). A 29 record with a big goose egg in the conference should be unacceptable to all the boosters who invested in turning this team around.
Playing jester to the purple here in Kansas is one thing, being the doormat to the entire conference is something else.
Prater is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
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