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Page 8 University Daily Kansan, December 2, 1980
BEN BIGLER/Kansan staf
Victor Mitchell, playing his first game in Allen Field House, goes up for two of his 10 points against Pepperdine last night. He also grabbed 10 rebounds to lead the Jayhawks in that category, which was expected when he was recruited out of an Amarillo, Texas, junior college last season.
'Hawks win 6th straight
Rv PATTI ARNOLD
Associate Sports Editor
Wayland Baptist gave the KU women's basketball team more of a battle last night than in the championship game of the Queen's Classic last Saturday night, but the end result was the same. Kansas came away with its sixth straight victory. 72-68 last night in Plainview, Texas.
as has been the case all season, KU was led by Lynette Woodard, Tracy Claxton and Megan Scott, all of whom scored in double figures. Claxton had 15 points and Scott with 14 points.
KU wasn't playing up to par in the first half, and Wayland took advantage that, being down by 20 points, was a big mistake.
KU Assistant Coach Sandy Bahan said last night that the team was slowed by illness to five Jayhawks, among them Claxton said Scott. But Wavley wanted revenge, too, she said.
Besides making 15 points, Claxton, a 6-foot freshman, added 15 rebounds to put her season on hold.
"THEY WERE READY for us tonight," Bahan said. They wanted to make up for our beating them the other night. We had five girls who well, so in the first half we were pretty flat."
Woodard added 10 rebounds, two blocked shots and four steals.
Even though KU was off in the first half, they got back on track in the second period.
THE JAYHAWKS TOOK a key paper printed on
their practice uniforms and put it to use.
Intensity.
"Once we got the intensity we were better," Bahan said "it took us longer to adjust to the noise."
"We got to where we could hit, but we just couldn't pull away like we did the other night."
One reason KU couldn't pull away was the fact that Waylands' Kathy Booth, a 5-foot-9 forward, hit 15 foot jump shots 10 times. Jamie Horacek, a 6-foot 10 player 18 points to keep the game close for the Queens.
The starting lineup of Woodard, Clarton, Scott, Connie Means and Mary Myers took care of most of KU's scoring, but Chris Stewart added four points and had five assists.
Once again, Shebra Legrant did not play for KU. She injured her knee in practice before the season began. Legrant, who's forte is the inside game, could help KU score better.
KANSAS WAS OUTBOUNDED by
waters from LEGER and KU's in-
powering in missing without Leger RD.
Woodard's 27 points upped her career total to 3,062, and moved her to within 241 points of the national women's scoring record. Woodard has 170 points this season.
According to Bahan, KU battled not only Wayland Baptist, but a rowdy crowd and strict of order.
"We're real proud of the girls because they were so nice and considerate with the officiating and the crowd." she
The Jayhawks will see if they can continue their winning at home Wednesday when they host Northern Oklahoma College in KU's first home game of the season.
Rogers grabs Heisman
By United Press International
The 6-foot-2, 225-run running back from South Carolina was a runaway winner for the Heisman Trophy yesterday. He beat out Hugh Carpenter in the final round and the Heisman running back Herschel Walker of Georgia.
For George Rogers, football was a way to escape the dreary life he knew as a youngster—poverty, washing dishes and sleeping three to a bed.
"I thank the entire coaching staff for helping me and the players for playing so hard behind me," Rogers said yesterday. "I'm kind of surprised I won it. I thought I had a real good team." The coach said that that might be my downfall. Usually the Heisman Trophy goes to a team with a better record."
Rogers' mother relied on welfare to help support her five children, three boys and two girls. His father, George Washington Rogers, Sr., is a convicted murderer who was divorced from his wife a decade ago. After serving nearly 40 years in prison, he joined a woman friend, the senior Rogers was paroled in time to see his son play in the Georgia-South Carolina game Nov.1.
The story of Rogers and football began when he was eight. After crying on the sidelines because he had fouled up a play in a school where he was given a second chance by his coach.
Rogers, 21, knew in the third grade that he had talent with a football, but he had to overcome difficult odds to go on to win the nation's highest individual collegiate football honor.
"I think it's very difficult for a defensive lineman to win the award because he's not in the spotlight," Rogers said. "A running back can make things happen whereas a defensive lineman has to wait for the action to come to him. I would say if Hugh Green didn't win it, it might be a long time before a defensive player ever wins it."
The rags-to-riches story of Rogers has the quality of a soap opera, except that this story is
"I was washing dishes, stacking sacks of cement for $18 an hour," he said, "I wanted to go to school, but it was hard to look at everybody eating and you didn't have any lunch."
"Finally he put me in with not much time left," Rogers said. "They pitched me the ball and I took off running and scored."
After the third grade, Rogers didn't get back on the field for nearly seven years. He went to live with his aunt in Duluth, Georgia, and rushed for more than 900 yards in his first season. His junior year was even better, when he had 2,300 yards and the attention of several scouts.
Rogers remembers how his mother did no, always have enough money for his school lunch. "I would go to the store," she says.
Booty's bombs in 2nd half launch KU over Pepperdine
Rogers gives credit to Green's attempt to
prepare the first defensive player to win the
Heist.
Somewhere along the line, something physical or something mental or something divine dictated that Booty Neal would always be a substitute. If he ever had the chance to get out of that role, he ruined it last night in Kansas' 81-67 victory over Peppered University.
"I felt that what we were trying to accomplish was something new and unusual . . . I'm not disappointed," Green, Pitt's All-America defensive end, said. "There are two different levels for offensive and defensive players. It is slated for an offensive player to win, but when a defensive player is second, that means people feel he is a very comparable player."
But Green wasn't disappointed in finishing second.
Sports Writer
The Jahwacks lost a 14-point lead in the first half and went to the dressing room ahead only 35-33 in their first home game of the season. For the first eight and one-half minutes of the second half, the game stayed close. Then Darnell Valentine got his third foul and Head Coach Ted Owens looked down the bench. He called for Neal with the Jahwinks leading only 43-42.
Two radar-range Neal jumpers later the Jayhawks had a lead that they kept building on until the end. Turning the game around probably won't get Neal a starting spot Wednesday against Michigan however. He played too well off the bench.
By KEVIN BERTELS
Green is considered to be the leading candidate for Lombardi Award as the nation's best defender.
Green and Rogers will get a chance to show just how good they can be against each other when Pitt meets South Carolina in the Gator Bowl Dec. 9.
"Some players do well off the bench," ows said. "Body nots need much time to warm up."
THE CROWD ROAED every time Neal touched the ball and he never held it for long. His teammates looked for the hot-handed Neal and expected a shot when he not the ball.
"The crowd is a great help, and my teammates are even a bigger help," Neal said. "They look for me to shoot. I just have to show good judgment and nick a good shot."
What constitutes a good shot for Neal still remains, even though. Owens tends to understate the ability of him.
Neal himself hasn't set a limit yet
"Booty obviously has good range," he said
"When I'm open, I shoot," he said. "If I feel it, I shoot." It's got to be a good shot."
Neal missed his only shot of the first half, but in a five goal goals in the final 12 minutes of the game.
a dunk at the end of a fast break. He had 16 points, trying his career high.
Neal's spectaculareplay overshadowed the consistent play of Tony Guy, who was the Jayhawks leading scorer for the second game with 23 points. He had 22 points at Reno Satur-
"GUY GOT HIS POINTS quicky, as has been his style.
"I'm just out there to make everything go." Guy said. "I know if I get the ball and I'm open I can hit it. I don't try to create shots, but I try to help the team by taking good shots. When guys like Booty and David Magley are putting it in, I just set it to them."
"They just told me to go down to the corner because the defense would go to Booty," Crawford said. "When Booty got the ball, all I had to do was stand there and get shots."
John Crawford also benefited from the hot hand of Neal. When the defense hurried to guard Neal when he got the ball, Crawford waited in the corner and hit three buckets late in the second half for the Jayhawks. His four first-half baskets combined to give him 14 points.
David Magley scored the first basket of the game just as he did Saturday. He finished the game with just six points but had four assists, second on the team after Valentine.
VICTOR MITCHELL, KU's junior college transfer center, playing before his first Allen Field House crowd, would have liked to have some nice words with the officials, too. He was hit in the line and had four fouls, two that he got in collisions that he thought were offensive fouls.
With 6:32 left in the first half, it looked as if the game would be a runaway. KU's man-to-man defense was forcing turnovers and the Jayhawks jumped out to a 29-15 lead.
Pepperdeen then switched to a different zone defense and it took the last of the first half and the first 10 minutes of the second for KU to find the cure. A last-second basket by Valentine before halftime was all that kept the game from being tied at the intermission. Owens stated the facts very succinctly at halftime, according to co-captain Guy.
"He got his point across and that is putting it modestly." Guy said. "He told us in his own way about the importance of being smart."
would be defense that would get us back in the
of course, he said it as nicely as he could."
"I THOUGHT VICTOR played well." Owens said. "I could tell a difference on the boards when he wasn't in. When he was out, they were getting a lot of second and third shots."
Mitchell seemed to be struggling at times, with the officiating not going his way, but in the end his stats did not show it. He led Kansas with 10 rebounds and bolted of 10 shots for 10 points.
"The refs were the only thing that messed me up," he said. "All my life the refs haven't let me play. Because of my size they think I can't move. Those were least恼责 charges."
Playing the first home game is tough, with the players not used to the crowd and feeling pressure to play well before the hometown folk, Owens said.
"First games at home are tough," he said.
"There's no question that we should play a lot better."
JAYHAWK NOTES: Boody Neal's shooting performance came as a surprise to Pepperdine coach Jim Harrick. "Where's he from?" was the first question. "Is he a freshman?" came next and "Where has he been played?" was last when found out that Neal is a senior from Oxen Hill, Md.
Darnell Valentine's 12 points and three of 11 shootings won't get him a spot on the All-America teams, but his 11 assists and five steals will help the defense. He had seven assists in the season opener.
Kansas used only seven players and ended the game with four players with four fouls and two wild cards.
Owens takes career victory No.300 in Javhawks' second game of 1980
By TRACEE HAMILTON Sports Writer
V
Ted Owens may have won the 300th game of his career, but he is more pleased to win his second of the season.
"Three hundred is special, but number two means more to me now." Owens said after his Jayhawks downed Pepperdine 81-67 last night in Allen Field House.
Owens, in his 17th year as head coach of the KU basketball team, has compiled a 300-144 record at the University of Kansas. His stint as Jayhawk coach is second only to that of the flat F.C. Allen, for whom Allen Field House is named. Allen, recognized as the "Father of Basketball Coaching," led KU on the court for 39 years.
Nineteen players have earned All-Big Eight honors over Owens, and he has produced 24 goals in a season.
OWENS BEGAN his KU coaching career in 1965. The Jayhawks were 17-8 that year and finished second in the Big Eight. Since then, Owens' teams have won Big Eight Championships and advanced to the NCAA tournament, finished in the prestigious Final four twice.
Walter Wesley, Dave Robisch and Bud Stallworth.
Owens has been Big Eight Coach of the Year five times, and Basketball Weekly named him Coach of the Year after the 1977-78 season.
Owens, 51, is now the dean of Big Eight basketball. Only the late Joe Cipriano of Nebraska had coached longer than Owens. This would have been Ciriangoro's 18th season.
KU BAKETBALL fans, accustomed to Jayhawk teams with winning records, have been less than sympathetic when KU posts a not-so-great season. When KU finished 13-13 in 1976, "Gong Tied" posters were a familiar sight at Allen Field House.
With all his successes, Owens' stay at KU may seem rosy. Not so.
Last year, when a talented but young Jayhawk team closed its season at 15-14, the cry went up again. After KU fans and alums had successfully staged a "Bony Voyage Bud" campaign a year earlier in an effort to oust then-football coach Bud Moore, many believed that Owens had spent his last night on the Kansas bench.
Bob Marcum, athletic director, issued a vote of confidence for Owen after ACS lost to Villanova.
First, sophomore guard Ricky Ross left the team after reports that he and two other players had used an athletic department credit card to place long distance phone calls. On the same day that Owens announced the loss of Ross, sophomore center Kelly Knight injured his knee in practice. Knight will be out for the season.
Eight tournament. Everything appeared to be fine in crimson-and-blue country until Oklahoma coach Dave Bliss resigned, Owens, who was named captain on the situation, and rumors began to fly.
Owens dispelled both hopes and fears when he announced he would not be leaving KU. And this season did not start any more smoothly than the last ended.
But with two victories under his belt, Owens had won a third, and he had been through so much adversity.
"I thought about it (the 300th victory) a little bit, but I didn't mention it to the squad," he said. Owens said he had not planned a celebration.
"We play too soon," he said, referring to KU's contest against Michigan Wednesday night. "I'm too old to do that."
Kansas Head Coach Ted Owens advises junior forward David Magley during last night's game against Pepperdine. Owens' advice in the past obviously has been good, because he notched his 300th career victory at KU last night with an 81-67 victory.
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