J A Y H A W K
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Football
Inside Sports today
The Kansas women's soccer team opens its season at 4 p.m. today against Illinois State. Head coach Dan Magner makes his debut for the Jayhawks. SEE PAGE 4B
Thursday's game - Kansas vs. Alabama-Birmingham
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WWW.RANSAN.COM FOOTBALL
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College football
FRIDAY AUGUST 29 1997
Smarrow's games:
Big 12 Conference football
12:30 p.m. Akron at No. 6 Nebraska
2:30 p.m. No. 14 Miami at Baylor
5:30 p.m. Oklahoma State at Iowa State
6:30 p.m. Texas Tech at No. 5 Tennessee
A: Top 5 college football
3:0 p.m. southern Mississippi at No. 2
Florida
11 a.m. North Carolina at No. 13 Syra
11 a.m. North Carolina at No. 13 Syracuse
11:30 p.m. Houston at No. 16 Alabama
OSU to play first game with 10 fewer teammates
Despite opponent's losses Iowa State concerned
The Associated Press
DES MOINES. Iowa — Try as he might, Iowa State coach Dan McCarney probably won't be able to avoid it.
When Iowa State opens the football season against Oklahoma State in Ames tomorrow night, the focus won't be on who is playing for Oklahoma State, but who isn't.
Ten Oklahoma State players have been declared academically ineligible and another has been suspended for disciplinary reasons. Five were starters for coach Bob Simmons' team.
McCarney's challenge is keeping his players thinking about what they have to do and not who'll be lining up across from them.
"Our whole focus is the improvement of this football team and the strides we make," McCarney said. "Oklahoma State is a fine program. They have a lot of good players and an excellent coaching staff. We have to be ready to play because Bob Simmons' teams always are. We've got to make sure we're at a peak performance.
Iowa State quarterback Todd Bandhauer said the Oklahoma State suspensions won't change the Cyclones' preparation.
Besides, McCarney noted, "We've got enough challenges here at Iowa State without worrying about problems at other schools."
"We're not getting caught up in all that," he said. "It can develop into a distraction and I'm not going to let that happen with this football team."
Six Oklahoma State players were declared ineligible Friday, including starting tailback Andre Richardson and linebacker Raymond Cato, who led the 196 team in tackles.
"Obviously, we were surprised they lost so many players," Bandhauer said. "But we're really not focusing on who they lost, we're focusing on playing Oklahoma State. We're concentrating on our game and what we're going to see."
- Four others were dismissed earlier this month, including starting cornerbacks J.B. Flowers and Alvin Porter. Terrance Richardson, a starting wide receiver and Andre's brother, was suspended for the season in a disciplinary move.
"All of us have a lot of challenges," McCarney said. "One.of the toughest jobs we all have as head coaches is to academically motivate and superise and try to get the best out of our kids in the classroom, too. It's a tough job, an extremely tough job."
But McCarney said even with the suspensions, Oklahoma State will be a formidable opponent for the Cyclones, who were 2-9 last season and gave up 539 yards in a 28-27 loss at Oklahoma State.
"There's no shortage of players at Oklahoma State," McCarney said. "They've done as good a job recruiting or better over the three years we've been here. We're still going to have our hands full Saturday night."
"We very much anticipate good players taking the field for Oklahoma State at every position on the field."
Regarding his own team, McCarney said four newcomers will play for sure tomorrow night and two others might see action.
Freshman Carl Gomez will be the punter and freshman linebacker Reggie Hayward will play as a backup. Another freshman, Breon Ansley, is a second-team cornerback and junior college transfer William Perryman will see action at tight end.
McCarney also said freshman Andy Stensrud might get some time at tight end and walk-on Chris Anthony, a freshman wide receiver from Pleasant Valley, might be on some special teams.
Runaway Jayhawk
Eric Vann, senior running back, tries to push past corner back Dainon Sidney of Alabama-Birmingham during last night's game in Memorial Stadium. Vann scored on the play for the Jayhawks' first touchdown of the season. Photo by photo Krieger/KANSAN
Jayhawks blazing in opener
Interceptions special teams drive shutout
By Kelly Cannon
kcannon@kansan.com
Kansan sportswriter
The second time Alabama-Birmingham visited Memorial Stadium ended much like the first — scoreless for the Blazers.
Kansas, and its defense in particular, was too much for UAB, which was shut out 24-0 last night in its second meeting with the Jayhawks.
Kansas' first points came early in the second quarter. Kansas was on UAB's 25-yard line on fourth down with one yard to go. Running back Eric Vann pushed ahead three yards to keep the drive alive. Kansas reached UAB's one-yard line but was penalized for an illegal procedure. That set up a field goal by freshman Joe Garcia.
Kansas won the first meeting in 1994.72-0.
"It was about what I expected," Kansas football coach Terry Allen said. "We did some good things defensively. Offensively, we struggled. We'll get better."
A batched punt by UAB set up an 11-yard touchdown run by Vann with 12 minutes left in the second quarter. Three minutes later junior linebacker Patrick Brown intercepted a UAB pass and ran 51 yards for a touchdown.
"I saw some potential in Joe Garcia," Allen said. "He has got some weapons."
All three of Kansas' touchdowns came from UAB blunders.
Brown started the second half in similar fashion, intercepting another pass and returning it 23 yards for a touchdown. Allen said he was pleased with Brown's performance.
"Pat Brown made some big things happen." Allen said. "He did some great things defensively."
Brown's feat marks the third time in NCAA history, and the first time in KU history, that a linebacker has returned two interceptions for touchdowns in one game.
"Our line was not real good." Allen said. "We matured during the game. An offensive line is all about communication and we lost some communication battles."
Offensively, Allen said the team needed work.
Four times during the game, Kansas attempted to get a first down on fourth down instead of punting. The Jayhawks converted one of the four attempts.
A focus for the team was to minimize turnovers, a goal they accomplished.
"We had some ugly plays, but we didn't turn the ball over," Allen said.
"Sometimes you go for those and make it; sometimes you get blazed," Vann said. "A Division I team should be able to make one or two yards. It's a confidence builder, and you hope you get those."
Vann said that the offensive kinks would be worked out as the offense works more with each other.
"We don't want to look ugly." Vann said. "All we can do is go back to films. Perfection is hard to get and no one ever does."
Kansas' next game is against Texas Christian at 1 p.m. Sept. 6 at Memorial Stadium.
Defensive end Dion Johnson tackles Alabama-Birmingham quarterback Jelly after a pass. The Jayhawks beat the Blazers 24-0 last night at Memorial Stadium. Photo by Pam Dishun/KANSAN
Linebacker steals show with first win
By Tommy Gallagher
tgallagher@kansas.com
Associate sports editor
Junior Pat Brown was a running back through high school and wanted to be one at Kansas.
As it happened, he was converted to a linebacker and stole the spotlight during the Jayhawks' 24-0 crushing of Alabama-Birmingham in Terry Allen's first game at Kansas last night.
Brown returned interceptions of 51 and 23 yards for touchdowns as the defense made up for a lackluster offense.
"We knew that the defense would have to carry the team for a while until the offense had built some confidence," Brown said. "We had to get them as many opportunities to score as we could to take the pressure off. So we made the big plays and did what we could to help us win."
Brown's first interception came when he read a screen pass on a third-and-two play near midfield. The second pick came while he dropped back into coverage on the first play of the second half.
Allen said the linebackers were the team's strength going into the season, and that the linebackers responded as he thought they would.
"Pat made the big plays, but we played solid defense all over the field," Allen said. "Things were going to happen on defense, and none of it was going to be negative."
Alabama-Birmingham ran the ball 30 times for just 45 yards. Even more telling, Kansas had
"Making big plays takes the pressure off our offense," senior linebacker Ron Warner said. "If we can play 100 percent of the time like we did tonight, we can step up and do some more things later in the season. But for now, we just have to take each game one at a time."
70 plays and 337 total yards as compared to the Blazers' 54 plays and 150 total yards.
Blazers freshman quarterback Lee Jolly, who had never thrown a pass in his collegiate career before last night, said that the Jayhawks' defense did
more than put pressure on the quarterback.
"There were a lot of times where they would take away the first, even second, receiver out of the play from the start," Jolly said. "A lot of the time I was forced to dump the ball to our wide receivers. They had a tremendous pass rush and you have to give Kansas nothing but credit for the way they played on defense."
But the night belonged to Brown, who said he was content at his position even though he wanted to play another position.