BASEBALL Umpire John McSherry dies after suffering a heart attack, Page 6. NCAA Kentucky wins national title, Page 4
SPORTS
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, APRIL 2,1996
KANSAS BASEBALL
SECTION B
Jayhawks will try to jump out of slump
Pitching, play must improve for team to match early success
By Dan Gelston
Kansan sportswriter
Student fans get own section
On March 18, the Kansas baseball team was experiencing its greatest emotional high of the season. The Jayhawks had just defeated then-No. 7 Arkansas, improving their record to 12-6.
They looked like they could beat any team in the country.
There will be a student section at Hoglund-Maupin Stadium, beginning with tonight's Kansas baseball game against Oklahoma State.
But since then, the Jayhawks have seen their good fortune and confidence plummet to a season low. Kansas has dropped seven of its last nine games, with six of those losses to Big Eight Conference opponents.
For Kansas to start winning again, Kansas coach Bobby Randall said the team must return to the three elements that contributed to its early season success
— solid starting pitching, a fundamentally sound game and confidence.
When the Jayhawks, 14-13 overall, 4-7 in the Big Eight, open a two-game series today with conference-leading Oklahoma State, 21-7, 1-1, they will try to get back on the winning track before their temporary derailment becomes permanent.
"It surprised me how quickly our confidence eroded when we didn't play well," Randall said. "We got a little more down on ourselves than I would have liked
Kansan staff report
The section will be called the Jayhawk Bullpen. Upon admittance to the game, which is free to students with a KUID, students will receive a card that will be punched during the game. The first 200 fans whose cards are punched three times in April will receive free Kansas baseball T-shirts. The first 50 students admitted to each game in April will receive free packs of sunflower seeds.
Kansas plays Oklahoma State at 7 tonight.
when we weren't getting the results we wanted."
The results that the Jayhawks didn't want were the disappointing performances by the starting pitchers. Senior Clay Baird and juniors Aric Peters and Josh Winger started last weekend's series with Missouri, and none made it out of the fifth inning. They combined to give up 21 runs, 18 of them earned, in 9 1/3 innings.
"We absolutely need to pitch more effectively," Randall said. "Our pitchers are not very experienced, and they got shell-shocked by Missouri."
Wingerd and freshmen Les Walrond and Chris Williams have pitched well as relievers but have failed to duplicate those performances as starters.
"I don't know why that is," Williams said. "Maybe we don't feel as much pressure coming out of the bullpen, but that's really not an excuse. I mean, I've started my whole career, so I guess I don't know what the answer is.
"But things are starting to come around for me and I think all of us. We're growing and learning."
Randall also said he was dissatisfied by the way the team was playing overall.
"When we play like we can, we can beat anybody. We've done it; we've proved it," Barrett said. "Maybe we got so relaxed we thought we could just throw our gloves on the field and win."
But Barrett said Kansas was confident and focused.
"If you worry about losing, you'll lose," he said. "We're not going to worry about losing to Oklahoma State."
Kansas will play the Cowboys at 7 tonight at Hoglund-Maupin Stadium.
Kansas sophomore pitcher Tim Lyons fires a pitch during the Pittsburg St. game earlier this year. The Jayhawks baseball team's pitching has struggled this season.
Richard Devinki / KANSAN
Gina Thornburg / KAMSAN
Junior first baseman Jaqué Wenger reaches out for a pitch during the second game of a doubleheader against Texas A&M. Kansas lost the game 8-2.
Out-of-state team is closest rival
Missouri holds edge in the competition with Kansas softball
By Jenni Carlson
Kansan sportswriter
The Kansas softball team has no in-state rival, mostly because Kansas State does not field a team.
But the Jaynaws don't have to look far for a nemesis. Kansas will make the 170-mile trip down Interstate 70 to Columbia, Mo., today to face its biggest rival, Missouri.
"I want to beat them so bad," Kansas senior pitcher Beth Robinson said. "You walk on the field and can sense the tension. With no other school do we have that kind of rivalry."
The teams will play a doubleheader starting at 2 p.m. at University Field.
Robinson said the Kansas-Missouri rivalry had been going strong since she started playing in 1994 but probably had been around for much longer.
Since 1978, Missouri has been one of two Big Eight Conference teams to have a winning record against Kansas, holding a 33-27 edge. Oklahoma State also holds a slight 36-31 edge on the Jayhawks.
Last year, the Tigers swept four games from the Jayhawks. The games were battles, though, as three were decided by two or fewer runs, and one went into extra innings.
Kansas will play its third and fourth contests in the Big 12. The Jayhawks, whose overall record stands at 18-10, opened conference play Sunday. They split a double-header with Texas A&M, 4-1 and 8-2.
The two-game set today will be Missouri's first Big 12 Conference action this season. The Tigers, 15-11 overall, were scheduled to face Nebraska last weekend but the contest was canceled because of snow. They last played on Wednesday, defeating Missouri-Kansas
"They've become a huge rival for us," Kansas coach Gayle Luedek said. "I anticipate they'll play us good games again."
After a decisive victory, the six-run loss to the Aggies snuck up on the Jayhawks. An error by sophomore third baseman Sarah McCann kept Texas A&M alive in the fourth inning as it scored four runs.
City 10-1 and 11-1.
"We were asking, 'Where did those last four runs come from?' Kansas junior second baseman Heather Richins said. "They came all at once."
Kansas is hoping for no surprise runs from Missouri. Robinson, who is 8-3, said if the Jayhawk pitchers could keep the other team in check, though, anything could happen.
Rowers win weekend regatta
"I always have confidence that if we keep it within one or two runs, this team can come back," she said.
Team spends break training in Louisiana for the spring season
By Evan Blackwell Kansan sportswriter
All the hard work the Kansas rowing team put in during spring break was apparent in the first dual regatta of the spring season.
After a week of training in Louisiana, the Jayhawks placed first in three of the four races against the University of Tulsa on Saturday in Tulsa, Oka. The races were run on the Arkansas River.
The Jayhawks placed first in the novice eight, the varsity four and the varsity eight events.
Kansas rowing coach Rob Catloth said the victories were satisfying after the week of hard work.
"This was a perfect ending to a great week," Catloth said. "We were aggressive, and I believe we worked out all of our nerves."
After the long winter break between the fall and spring seasons, getting back in the water during spring break couldn't have come sooner for the Jayhawks.
"We got a lot of work done," Catloth said. "We needed the work to get race-ready."
Kansas senior Paige Geiger said posting good times and winning the races in Oklahoma were cru
"This was a perfect ending to a great week. We were aggressive, and I believe we worked out all of our nerves."
Rob Catloth
Kansas rowing coach
sas rowing coac
cial to set the tempo for the new season.
"We wanted to go out and see where we stood," Geiger said. "We found out where we're at right now."
Geiger thinks the Jayhawks are in a better position than she has seen before.
"Our conditioning level is so much higher now than I've ever seen it," she said. "Now that we've taken care of that, we can concentrate on adding some speed with more race experience."
The biggest surprise of the weekend was turned in by the freshmen eight team, which posted a time of
4:55.9 to win the novice eight race. Their time was about 27 seconds faster than the varsity time. Freshman rower Beth Erickson, who was on the victorious Kansas novice team, said the team was surprised, to say the least.
"We didn't really know what to expect since it was our first sprint race," Erickson said. "We just went as hard as we could, and I was expecting a time of around five and a half minutes. When I heard the time of 4:55, I thought they were talking about some varsity boat."
Catloth said he wasn't surprised by the time because he knows what kind of athletes his freshmen are.
"They're going to be really fast." Catloth said. "We've got some really good athletes on the freshmen team."
However, Catloth said the fast time was probably a bit deceiving because of a floating start. Sometimes novice teams have trouble keeping their boats steady at the start line, and the boats drift slightly over the line.
"We really don't know if the freshmen raced the same distance as the varsity." Catloth said.
"There wasn't much else to do in Louisiana but row," Geiger said. "We had a good time, and got to know each other a little better."
Geiger said the week in Louisiana prepared the team to embark on the rest of their spring schedule.
Intramural team falls in semifinals
Free-throw line and turnovers end the team's winning streak
By Jenni Carlson Kansan sportswriter
Kansas lost in the semifinals of the Pizza Hut 3-on-3 Intramural National Championship, but no one is complaining about the 17-15 loss to Evansville on Sunday.
"It was a really good time," Ryan Livermore, Quincy, Ill., junior said. "We played an hour and a half of basketball in a weekend, and the rest of the time we had to do whatever."
Livermore and the rest of the 3-on-3 team — Fred Souder, Bartlesville, Okla., graduate student; Derek Lind, Derby law student; Giulio Latrote, Lawrence junior; and John Payne, Topeka senior — participated in the intramural tournament, which was modeled
after the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
The 64 schools that made the NCAA field were asked by Pizza Hut to send an intramural team to the tournament. Kansas' entry came from the winner of the Schick 3-on-3 tournament, which Souder, Lind and Laratro captured. Livermore and Payne, members of the intramural champion Phi Delta Theta team, were added to fill out the five-man roster.
Livermore said a few schools that were asked to submit teams had weak intramural programs or no team to send. In that case, at-large regional teams were invited.
"It was pretty good competition," Livermore said. "The teams came from schools with big intramural programs, so you knew they had to be good."
The teams gathered at the same regional sites as their Division I counterpart. As a result, the Kansas team played its first two games in Tempe, Ariz. The players'
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