TRIAL POSTPONED
A PRETRIAL HEARING FOR St. Louis Rams rookie running back Lawrence Phillips, charged with misdemeanor drunk driving, was postponed yesterday until Sept. 30. Phillips, who is free on his own recognizance, was arrested on June 15 in Los Angeles County after police allegedly saw him speeding in a gold Mercedes Benz with a flat tire. His blood alcohol content was about twice California's legal limit.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPORTS
Lawrence Phillips
KANSAS FOOTBALL UPDATE
Kansas football opens its 101st season tonight against the Ball State Cardinals at Memorial Stadium. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. Gates will open one hour before gametime.
This game will not be televised in Lawrence. With this game, head coach Glen Mason will have coached more games than any other Kansas football coach.
THURSDAY. AUGUST 29.1996
SING ALONG
PACKERS RECEIVE ROBERT BROOKS has recorded a song that celebrates his practice of leaping into the stands after opening to downbeat. On
scoring a touchdown. On
Jump in the Stands,
Brooks raps: "The Bay owns the best
fans in the land/So, my man,
won't you jump as high as you can...
/Anyway, fans hate when we jump in the
stands/But every man can't
stands/But every man can't be a Packer fan." The single has been No.
1 in requests since WIXX-FM in Green Bay, Wis., began playing it three weeks ago.
SECTION B
Chamberlain says Jordan isn't best player in history
NEW YORK — Wilt Chamberlain is willing to debate who is the greatest player in NBA history. He doesn't think it's Michael Jordan.
"I heard Michael Jordan once say that he thought he was the greatest player of all time," Chamberlain said in a television interview to be aired Friday night.
"I say to Michael, until they start changing the game because you are so great, then I don't think you should be giving yourself such accolades. In fact, your game, Michael, has been enhanced by some of the things the NBA has done.
Chamberlain made the comments in an interview for a Classic Sports Network special called Those Who Changed The Game.
"My game, it went the other way. They (the NBA) tried to stop me."
The Associated Press
The special, which also includes interviews with Joe Namath, Bobby Orr and Lou Brock, will be televised at 8 p.m. tomorrow.
Pitcher to lead softball team
What do you see when you see a soft ball?
Most people see a smooth, white, stitched object, but a softball player may have a different perspective.
"When I see a softball, it's an adrenaline rush," said pitcher Sarah Workman,
orlando, Fla.
sophomore." It reminds me of flashbacks of my whole entire life."
"I am really expecting Sarah to be the work.
The Kansas softball team will depend on Workman to lead the squad with dominant pitching.
Sarah Workman
horse," said Tracy Bunge, Kansas soft ball coach.
During the Fall 1995 season, Workman was 11-0 and earned team records for 10 complete games, 74.7 innings pitched, 45 strikeouts and five shutouts.
She remained strong through the first half of the spring season this year, starting with a 9-4 record. However, she slipped to 5-8 during the second half.
"We were a roller coaster team," Workman said. "You never knew what was going to happen. I think mainly we weren't a team. We were just nine individuals trying to play, and it doesn't work that way. That's not what sports are about."
Workman got back to the basics this summer. She worked on her mechanics with Jim Webb, a softball coach at Lake City Community College in Florida.
— Kansan staff report
KU player on national team scores in win against Cuba
Kansas freshman basketball player Lynn Pride scored 13 points and grabbed seven rebounds for the USA Basketball
Women's Junior
— Kansan staff report
Pride, a 6-foot-1 guard/forward, played high school basketball at Sam Houston High School in Arlington, Texas.
National Teach
Tuesday, with a
49-68 win
against Cuba in
Chetumal, Mexico.
Pride was one of five U.S. players to score double figures en route to the team's first win in the Confederation of Pan American Basketball Associations (COPAAB) Women's Junior World Championship Qualifying Tournament. The team features the country's top women basketball players who are younger than 19.
Football ready for contest
Season opener pits Jayhawks against Ball State Cardinals
By Dan Gelston
Kansan sportswriter
In four years, a lot has changed between the football programs of Kansas and Ball State.
It's been four years since Kansas defeated the Cardinals 62-10 in Lawrence in the only series meeting of the teams.
That year Kansas would go on to win the Aloha Bowl, while Ball State won just five games.
Since then Kansas has won another Aloha Bowl, but Ball State has become one of the top teams in the Mid-America Conference. A Las Vegas球 appearance came in 1993, and last year the Cardinals went 7-4 under
first-vear coach Bill Lynch.
"We're anxious to play a football game," he said. "We've had a good camp, a tough camp. The last couple of days we've worked exclusively on Ball State."
Kansas coach Glen Mason said the No. 25 Jayhawks are ready for Ball State in the season opener at 7 tonight at Memorial Stadium.
Kansas senior wide receiver Isaac Byrd said the Jayhawks' best chance at winning was to exploit the defense.
Ball State returns 17 starters with nine on offense and eight on defense.
"Their defensive backs kind of play soft," Byrd said. "They don't like to give up that home run. On offense we've got to try and take what they give us and not try to force anything."
But Ball State yielded just 132.4 passing yards a game last season, good enough for first in the MAC.
That doesn't appear to be a good sign for Kansas junior quarterback Matt Johner, who has seen limited playing time in his career
and has thrown for just 31 yards.
cardinal senior safety Cory Gillard and his 100 tackles earned him a first-team all-conference selection while junior linebacker Howard Simms racked up 82 tackles and was a second-season selection.
Mason said he noticed Gillard immediately while watching game films.
Ball State senior quarterback Brent Baldwin started all 11 games last year, going 119-202 in pass attempts with five touchdowns and eight interceptions for 1,192 vards.
While the Cardinals quarterback situation is settled, the Jayhawks situation is far from finished.
"We've got competition, not controversy, which is healthy," Mason said.
Johrer gets his first career start because senior Ben Rutz has not fully recovered from off-season knee surgery.
Rutz could play if needed and will back up Johner.
A 10-2 season in 1995 has caused expectations to run higher than in previous years.
Kansas junior defensive back Maurice Gaddie said team members realized a lot was expected of them.
"People are talking about us, and that's good," he said. "But I don't think we feel any pressure. We have to play like we did last year."
Mason began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Ball State in 1972 and was the Cardinals' defensive line coach in 1974.
Junior defensive back Charles Davis will redshirt this season. Running backs Julius Bruce and Mark Sanders will not play tonight because of injury but should be ready for the next game.
Kansas is 64-54-7 all-time in season openers. Mason is 5-3 is season openers. Kansas has won five consecutive home openers.
Kansas' next home game is Oct. 12, leaving a 43-day gap between home games that is the largest in school history.
Setting the stage for Kansas
Gordon Ross / KANSAN
25 Kansas football team will face off against the Ball State Cardinals. The Jayhawks were 10-2 last year, and the Cardinals went 7-4 in 1995 under first-year coach Bill Lynch. Please see story above.
Kansas: Don't worry about Whitlock
Gary Gordon (left) and Greg Gilley, employees of Mussco Lighting, set up lights on top of Memorial Stadium. The lights were put up yesterday afternoon for the Jayhawks' first home football game at 7 p.m. tonight at Memorial Stadium. The No.
Welcome to Lawrence, Ball State. And let me extend the warmest of greetings to Ball State alumnus, two-time Cardinal football letterman and Kansas City celebrity sports columnist Jason Whitlock.
That's right, Jason Whitlock. Unless you've been living in a cave for the last year, you know that the exulted Mr. Whitlock has had plenty to say about Kansas football and tonight's game in particular.
As a faithful Jayhawk, I took exception to the distinguished Jason Whitlock and felt it was my duty to defend Kansas football. So, in written
form. I challenged the sublime Whitlock to a face-off column to appear in this very publication. However, the aforementioned letter, dated July 6, went unanswered. Realizing that I was dealing with a celebrity, a second, more venomous letter ensued — but to no avail.
After my failure to get the written word across, I flooded omnipotent Jason's phone lines with a barrage of voice mail messages.
course of action would have been to cut my losses and move on.
But sorry, I'm not going to let the divine Whitlock get off that easy.
The mighty Jason has said that "Ball State's victory over Kansas... is now just a formality."
At this point, the polite and courteous
Yet again, I had no success.
Wait a minute. This expert sports prognosticator Jason Whitlock, who is so famous that he refuses to answer mail or phone calls, couldn't be the same guy who said that last season's Kansas football squad — which had a 10-2 record and finished No. 9 in America — "... isn't very good — a step or two below last year's 6-5 club."
There you have it, prophet Whitlock has spoken!
This couldn't be the same person that predicted, "... it's going to be a long year" for the eventual Aloha Bowl winners.
In fact, this same fellow, who ironically shares the same name as the enormously popular sports genius Jason Whitlock, has put his foot in his mouth before. But I'm convinced these two have no affiliation.
After all, this couldn't be the same sporting wizard who once said that "Mark Williams . . . isn't a throwing QB. Or least not a straight throwing one." By the way, Williams threw for 1,957 yards last season. Looks to me like Williams must have thrown a curve ball with more accuracy than John Smoltz.
It occurs to me that a gentleman named Whitlock also predicted that Missouri would win the Big Eight Conference in men's basketball over Kansas. Sorry. Not only did Mizzou stink it up in the Big Eight, but come tourney time, these Whitlock preseason conference favorites were driving greens rather than driving to the hoo.
Before the Final Four, Whitlock called Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim "a joke." Boeheim took a cast of average ballers and one star to the national championship game and almost beyond. I bet every school wishes its coach was deemed "a joke" by Whitlock.
Jason Whitlock. The fellow who said, "I never thought CBS was right for firing Jimmy 'The Greek' Snyder." Good point. Every station needs a racist giving commentary for its broadcasting team.
So sit tight, Jayhawk fans, with all of these dead wrong predictions and ridiculous commentary; only if Whitlock would have said Kansas would wipe the floor up against Ball State would there be reason to be concerned.
This Whitlock guy advocated that the Chiefs sign former Nebraska sexual assaulter Christian Peter. Maybe the Chiefs should snatch up Peter before the penitentiary league grabs him.
Enough of the personal, let's talk football.
See BILL Page 6B.
By Adam Herschman Kansan sportswriter
Volleyball will open 1996 season in Oregon
Kansas coach Karen Schonewise said she wanted
The Jayhawks lost to Ball State last year.
Kansas coach Karen Schonewise said she wanted to see the team work hard in transition, communication and team movement.
The Kansas football team will not be the only team opening its season against Ball State.
At the Oregon State Tournament this weekend, the Kansas volleyball team also will begin its season against the Cardinals. The Jayhawks leave today for Corvallis, Ore., where they'll play twice tomorrow and Saturday. Purdue, Weber State and Oregon State also will participate in the tournament.
"We're just looking forward to see where we are at this point," Schonewise said. "A lack of communication on the court would be devastating for us. Our expectation is that the team is successful in the areas we've worked in."
This weekend's tournament will be the first of four tournaments for the Jayhawks before opening its Big 12 Conference
Karen Schonewise
schedule Sept. 27 against defending national champion Nebraska in Lincoln.
Along with the loss of seniors Jenny Larson and Tracie Walt, the Jayhawks lost junior outside hitter Leslie Purkepley for the season after she injured her right knee in a water skiing accident.
The juniors, which include right side hitter Kendra Kahler, middle blocker Maggie Mohrfeld and setter Tiffany Sennett, will have to share leadership responsibilities.
"I think we have really good leadership in our junior class," Schonewil said.
Sohonewise has set the Jayhawks' starting lineup for this weekend's tournament. Sophomore Laura Rohde will start at setter. She started last season at outside hitter.
Kahler will start at right side hitter for the third consecutive year. The left side hitters will be sophomore Moira Donovan and freshman Mary Beth Albrecht. Mohrfield will start at middle blocker. The sixth and last starting position will feature either junior defensive specialist Stephanie Blackwell or redshirt freshman middle blocker Anne Kreimer.
Schonewise said Kreimer and Blackwell would be automatic substitutions for each other.
"A lot will depend on the teams they're playing." Schonewise said.
Schonewise said the Jayhawks were lacking experienced depth on this year's team, but she wouldn't hesitate to use her bench. This year's starters, however, would be looked upon heavily.
"The players who are out there are going to need to take care of business," Schonewise said. "We're just really excited to get started and find out where we are at this point and where we need to go from here."
Coming off the bench for Kansas will be Sennett and freshman middle blockers Kristi LaRosh and Amanda Feeves.
"It's just going to take time working the kinks out," Kreimer said. "It's definitely going to be a building year," she said. "We've got nothing to lose."