10B
Wednesday, February 12, 1997
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Other Carolina teams recognized
The Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Clemson's Harold Jamison grew up in South Carolina – and grew to hate North Carolina basketball.
"I basically grew up thinking that South Carolina (basketball) was nothing," Jamison said. "Now it's arrived, no doubt."
For the first time Monday, three South Carolina teams made the AP top 25 — Clemson at No.7, South Carolina at.
No. 12 and the College of Charleston at No. 25.
"This is a good basketball state," said Clemson coach Rick Barnes. "There's just a perception that we're all about football."
Fans packed football stadiums to capacity even before Clemson's 1981 national championship. Basketball was left to Tobacco Road, where North Carolina, Duke and North Carolina State won titles and dominated the region.
But tobacco is a cash crop in South Carolina too, and now so is basketball.
The biggest victories and the toughest tickets to get this season are for basketball. A total of 141 tents dotted Clemson's campus before the Tigers' clash with Wake Forest, as students were camping out for the best seats. Students lined up the last two weeks at South Carolina to sweep up available tickets. The College of Charleston's
Clemson (19-4) has beat top 10 teams Kentucky and Duke and also topped Maryland twice.
And why not?
South Carolina (17-5)
skinned the Wildcats 84-79 last week in overtime, and with Saturday's victory against Florida, it ran its Southeastern Conference record to 11-0. Charleston (21-2) has the country's
3,052-seat arena has been sold out since January.
longest winning streak at 15, along with marque victories against Arizona State and Stanford.
"It takes time to have name recognition," said Charleston coach John Kresse, who had winning streaks of 6, 16 and 21 during the last three seasons.
"This is like the little guy getting invited to the Inaugural Ball—it doesn't happen a lot," he said.
Clemson has been in the top
10 for nine straight weeks and moved to seventh after an 80-68 thumping of Maryland.
South Carolina's streak followed unlikely home losses to North Carolina-Ashville and Charleston Southern. But coach Eddie Fogler, who turned around programs at Wichita State and Vanderbilt, kept his team calm.
"It's nice to be in this position," Fogler said. "It's more fun going to work; it's more fun coming to practice."
Virginia's backcourt returns after struggles
AP Sports Writer
Rv Hank Kurz Jr.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Curtis Staples and Harold Deane give Virginia one of the nation's best backcourts, but this season hasn't been as easy as they, or the rest of the Cavaliers, expected.
Both had the knack for making the big shot, both played in-your-face defense.
They were expected to pick up where they left off for the 1996 season. But with 1995 stars Junior Burrough and Cory Alexander having left for the NBA, it didn't happen.
rogether they had helped lead the Cavaliers to a 25-9 record and a run all the way into the regional finals of the 1995 NCAA Tournament.
Both Staples and Deane struggled, shooting much less than 40 percent, and the Cavaliers
staggered to a 12-15 record, their lowest victory total in 19 seasons.
"We kind of played like it was all up to us." Staples said.
sadness said.
"It was terrible, watching everyone else play in the postseason. It's a feeling we don't ever want to experience again," he said.
With more support and less pressure to match the previous season's feats, Staples and Deane finally are living up to their long-ago billing. Their mission this year is to debunk doubts from last year.
Once again, Staples is a streak-shooting sniper, a refined version of the fearless freshman who helped carry the Cavaliers two years earlier. He averages 13.8 points and 4.4 rebounds per game and is hitting 43.4 percent of his shots.
Deane is doing his thing too, keeping every
one involved in the offense and still taking control in crunch time.
He averages 13.6 points, nearly five assists and two steals in a team-high average of 36 minutes per game.
With the unranked Cavaliers 15-8 before last night's game against Duke, both players said lessons learned last season helped bring about Virginia's resurgence.
"We're just playing smarter this year. It's all mental," Staples said. "We're not taking bad shots, just letting the game come to us."
Deane, who took most of the big shots — and most of the blame — last season, said it was nice having more help this season.
was nice having more help to absorb "This year, it's a situation where everybody can contribute. Last year, it was only six or seven guys, and me and Curt being the top scorers. It was hard for us to get shots, so we
had to make shots," he said.
"This year we don't have to shoot those shots."
shots. Neither leads Virginia in scoring. Sophomore Courtney Alexander, who is averaging 16.7 points per game, leads the team. Power forward Norman Nolan also has been featured more on the low post.
In the clutch, though, the ball still seems to wind up in the hands of Staples or Deane. In a recent victory against Florida State, Staples scored all 20 of his points in the second half, and Deane, who scored 14 in the first half of that game, added six more in the final 3:34 to keep the Cavaliers in front.
"They're still looking for opportunities to score or make the play, but they're allowing it to come to them and playing with more patience," said coach Jeff Jones.
Two-time Daytona 500 winner not worried about Sunday's race
Driver's confidence stems from history
The Associated Press
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Sterling Marlin is taking it on faith that he will be a contender in Sunday's Davonia 500.
His confidence is based on history.
this confidence is based on history. The 39-year-old Tennessean's record at NASCAR's two biggest and fastest tracks — Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway — is awesome.
He has won five of the last nine races on the only Winston Cup tracks where NASCAR requires a restriction plate on the carburetor to keep the cars from going too fast. He also has 16 top-five finishes in his last 26 starts on the two big ovals.
That's why a relatively poor showing this week in qualifying at Daytona hasn't put Marlin, the 1994 and 1995 Davetta 500 winner, in a funk.
In Saturday's opening qualifying round, Marlin qualified his Morgan-McClure Chevrolet 28th among the 51 drivers who made attempts. Marlin went a bit slower and slipped to 35th yesterday in the second and final round of time trials.
"It looked like we didn't know
what we were doing, but we thought we could run faster," Marlin said of the decision to run in the second round instead of standing on his first-round lap. "We ran faster this morning without any help, but we just changed some stuff and it slowed us down."
He blames the slow start mostly on his team's failure to react quickly enough to NASCAR's latest rule change, which forces teams to use heavier springs on the car's rear end.
Inspectors hang 75 pounds on each side of the rear of the car as it goes through inspection. If the rear end drops below a specified point, the team must take the car back to the garage and put on heavier springs.
"We got caught with our pants down," Marlin said. "When we tested down here (in January), we knew about NASCAR's rule change and thought we could just add 20 pounds and be fine.
"Instead, it took about 100 pounds in the rear springs, and every 25 pounds of springs, you slow down about two tenths (of a second). All the testing you did with the shocks you had went out the window," he said.
Still, Marlin is confident that once the racing begins in tomorrow's Twin 125-mile qualifying races, he will be back in the hunt.
"We know what the deal is now," said Marlin, who will start 22nd in a 26-car field for the first 125-miler. "I think we can inch our way up to the front."
Since he was eighth in points last year and is virtually assured at least a provisional starting spot at the rear of the field, Marlin isn't overly concerned about making the 500 or about being competitive.
"I feel like we can run fast in the race," he said. "That's all we can do. If we don't run fast in the race, we've got to go home and go back to the drawing board. Our car always seems dominant on the speedways. If we're missing something, we'll have to go back to Talladega and test and see what it is."
One big change for the Kodaksponsored team this year is the departure of longtime crew chief Tony Glover, who has been replaced by veteran Tim Brewer.
"It came together for Tim and me right away," Marlin said. "We worked together some when we were both at Junior's (Johnson) and Tim was crew chief for Geoff Bodine. We worked together some in testing, and we get along just fine.
"Nobody on this team is panicking," he said. "We plan to race good Sunday."
Skater remains on ice despite increasing age
The Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tonia
kwiatkowski's ankles are hurting.
Her new boots haven't broken the way she expected, and she has got an ice bag on each leg to ease the aches from practice.
The one thing she does not feel is her age, despite celebrating her 26th birthday today, a day before her 10th appearance at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
"I feel good about my skating, and the reason I keep going is because I love what I'm doing," Kwiatkowski said yesterday. "That's the most important thing. You have to love what you're doing, and my goal is to make the '98 Olympic team."
Kwiatkowski, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, said she isn't hanging onto a sport where she has never finished higher than second nationally and an Olympic berth has been just an elusive dream.
"The past couple years have been really good, and I think this is a continuation of that. I feel really good. ... I've been training hard. I'm skating well. I'm ready for this week," she said.
Her confidence stems from the fact that for the first time in years, she's not dealing with problems or injuries.
spiking herself in the ankle while trying to avoid a collision with Tony Harding during practice.
Her father had a mild heart attack two days before the 1993 nationals and needed doublebypass surgery. She finished third.
During those years, she also was majoring in psychology and communications at Baldwin-Wallace College, from which she graduated in 1994.
"I think the past couple of years, ever since graduating from college, I've been able to concentrate more on my skating," she said.
She finished fourth in 1991 after
Proof that she hit her groove came last year, when she had her best finish at nationals — second place behind Michelle Kwan.
A touch of Irish in downtown Lawrence 944 Massachusetts 832-8228
She followed that by finishing eighth at the world championships.
Now she's ready to challenge Kwan for the national title. Kwiatkowski's new long program, set to Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, is different from anything she has ever done — technical yet emotional.
Red Lyon Tavern
How she skates Friday could be affected by her right ankle, which has been drained twice, most recently Monday.
She needs about 10 minutes after slipping her feet inside her boots before feeling comfortable.
The Associated Press
Byrdsong did not attend the news conference announcing his firing, effective at the end of the season.
He released a statement quoting the Bible: "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance."
Basketball coach fired for losing
Byrdson said in the release that he would let the players decide whether he coached the Wildcats' final seven games. They play tomorrow at Ohio State.
Several Wildcat players spoke in support of Byrd-song. Northwestern's most talented freshman, forward Carvell Ammons, said he was likely to transfer because of the firing.
"Coach Byrd was 100 percent of the reason I came here," Ammons said. "I'm going to talk to some schools, and if everything works out, I won't be back at Northwestern next year."
Byrdson received national attention in February 1994 when he left the Northwestern bench during a game at Minnesota and wandered into the stands. He slapped hands with Gopher fans and their mascot and took a seat. After a leave of absence, Byrdson returned as Northwestern's coach.
Taylor said he would begin looking for a replacement immediately. He said he was announcing the move now because Byrdsong had said he wanted his status clarified. Byrdsong has one year remaining on his contract.
Saturday's 56-44 loss to Wisconsin dropped the Wildcats to 6-16, including 1-10 in the Big Ten. They are tied for last place with Penn State.
Byrdson became Northwestern's head coach in May 1993. He is 33-72 with the Wildcats.
Before coming to Northwestern, Byrdsong spent five seasons as head coach at Detroit Mercy. His overall record is 86-159.
His only winning seasons were his last at Detroit in 1992-93, when his Titan squad went 15-12, and his first at Northwestern, when the team was 15-14 and played in the NIT in March 1994.
EVANSTON, III. — After four seasons with the Big Ten's doormat, Northwestern coach Ricky Byrdsong is being shown the door.
"The university believes the program needs to be headed in a different direction and that it is appropriate to make a change at this juncture," said athletic director Rick Taylor. Taylor said he was disturbed by the team's lack of progress and decided to act after the coach complained that his uncertain future was hammering recruiting.
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