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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 1999)
Sports A DEVANEY WEEKEND Five events. Three days. National champions. A revenge game. A weary team back home. Home openers. The Devaney Sports Center. Sevigne highlights weekend By Sam McKewon Senior editor When NU high jumper Shane Lavy thinks about it, he figures it might be a good idea to just go ahead and officially qualify for the high jump for the NCAA Track and Field Championships. As it is, Lavy has a provisional qualifying mark of 7 feet, 3% inches. And he’s sure he could get the automatic qualifying mark of 7 feet, 4‘A inches. He just hasn’t bothered trying. In fact, he attempts heights right over the mark, trying for 7 feet, 5 inches or even 7 feet, 6 inches. But if it comes down to it, Lavy said, he intends to officially qualify this weekend in the 25th Frank Sevigne Husker Invitational. And then, he’ll turn his attention to records and such. “I mean. I’d make it to the NCAAs with a pro visional mark,” Lavy said. “But I’ll make the auto matic mark so I please people, get it out of the Please see TRACK on 8 y Sandy Summers/DN NU HIGH JUMPER Shane Lavy hopes to break Nebraska’s 7-foot-6V2-inch high jump record at Saturday’s track meet in the Bob Devaney Sports Center. To do so Lavy will need to beat his best jump by almost an inch. “I’ve been so close before,” Lavy said. “Once I get over it I think I’ll go a lot higher.” Nebraska Men's Basketball Coach Danny Nee knows all too well about winning streaks. So when No. 24 Missouri rolls into ^ Lincoln for Saturday’s 3 p.m. tipoff at the 0Q Devaney Center, Nee further knows that the ^ Comhuskers have a chance to play spoiler in the Tigers’ four-game win streak and get back one on their own. Easier said than done, though. Nee said, recalling NU’s 80-57 defeat at the hands of Mizzou on Jan. 2. “They really shellacked us down in PQ Columbia,” Nee said. “They outplayed us in every facet of the game.” And after opening the Big 12 Conference rv season with their victory over NU, the Tigers (16-4 overall, 7-2 in the Big 12) have further expounded upon their exploits. w Since beating the Huskers, Mizzou has gone 6-2, claimed a crucial 71-63 road victo ry over Kansas on Jan. 24 to start their current four-game drive, and ascended to the second place position in the conference standings. Factoring big for the Tigers have been guards Albert White and Keyon Dooling. “Albert Wftite is playing at an all-confer ence level,” Nee said. “And with Keyon Dooling moving into the starting spot at point guard has made them an explosive, dynamite team. They’re the heart and soul.” For the season, m4 j Eight days ago, the Nebraska women’s bas ^ ketball team was handed its worst loss of the sea ^ son in a 79-58 game at Iowa State. SQ Sunday, those two teams face off again. H Nothing has changed. Everything is the same - y except the venue. No. 16 Iowa State (16-3 over all and 8-1 in the Big 12 Conference) comes to ** Lincoln for a 3 p.m. game against Nebraska (15 t*> 7 and 4-5). “It's good to be home,” senior Con McDill ^ said. “It is a huge game. (Iowa State) is No. 1 or W two in the Big 12, and that is where we want to be.” </5 In order for the Comhuskers to reach that «- level, McDill said they needed to do the little £ things nght. Last week against Iowa State, the Huskers shot a season-low 31 percent from the field. NU’s inability to shoot or rebound, combined with Cyclone guard Stacy Frese's 8-for-8 3 point shooting performance doomed Nebraska. ^ “We need to get a good shooter, a good shot ^ and a chance for a rebound,” McDill said. Those things have not come easy for the Huskers, who have lost five of their last seven games. But the one thing that has been stable for NU has been the Bob Devaney Sports Center advantage. Junior guard Brooke Schwartz said the home crowd should help get the team on a roll that was desperately need White is averaging 16.6 points and 8.5 rebounds per game. Dooling, the defending Big 12 Newcomer of the Week for the second consec utive week is averaging 19.3 ppg since he took over as starting point guard four games ago. Another standout is guard Brian Grawer, who is 40-83 (.482) from 3-point range. -Adam Klinker S c h e d u 1 e Frank Sevigne Invitational 4 p.m. NU men’s/women gym 7 p.m. i....—i Frank Sevigne Invitational 11:45 a.m. NU men’s basketball vs. Missouri 3 p m. r~..-.-'-^-' NU women’s basketball vs. ISU 3 p m. ed. “We need a win, peri od,” Schwartz said. “The losing streak is not fun. The staff and the team have a new attitude.” Even though there are only nine days separating the two games, Schwartz said things were going to be different. “We haven’t written this season off,” Schwartz said. “We are going to fin ish strong, and hopefully it will start Sunday.” -Jay Saunders Men’s Gym Back in the good old days of Tom Osborne and Barry Switzer, football was not the only sport that saw a heated arch rivalry between Nebraska and Oklahoma. Just as the Big Red Machine and Sooner Magic were battling for Big Eight and national titles on the gridiron in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the gymnastics squads grappled for their own. Between 1977 and 1983, NU or OU won every national title. The Sooners took two of their three titles in 1977 and '78. The Huskers proceeded to reel off five in a row, five of eight titles from 1979-1983. “This is an awesome rivalry,” NU Head Coach Francis Allen said. “We used to hate each other. I mean it. We really did. We’re still neck and neck, but it hasn’t been the same ever since the foot ball rivalry ended.” Neck and neck is just about right. In the first meet of the 1999 season two weeks ago, the Rocky Mountain Open in Colorado Springs, Colo., No. 9 NU won the college title, with No. 6 Oklahoma right on its heels, 0.10 points back. The two will square off m a rematch Saturday night at the Bob Devaney Sports Center at 7:30 in the Huskers’ home opener. “We always do well at home,” Allen said, and playing Oklahoma, like it always does, will make the gymnasts rise to another level. They’re all pumped.” Although he says the team looks “pretty darn good” after two weeks of preparing for the meet, Allen said a cou ple of Husker All-Americans were not at 100 percent, namely their two senior co captains, Jim Koziol and Marshall Nelson. -John Gaskins Women’s Gym When asked about sharing the floor with the women’s gymnastics team Friday night - both teams meet Oklahoma in the Bob Devaney Sports Center at 7:30 p.m. - Nebraska Men’s Gymnastics Flead Coach Francis Allen was quick to praise Dan Kendig’s women’s squad. That was until Gloria Brink, the mother of All-American Heather Brink walked in his office. In mid-sentence, Allen said, “Don’t say anything bad about the women’s team. I mean it.” Of course, Allen was joking. He and Brink go back 16 years to when Heather, a lifetime Lincolnite, started in gymnas tics. Frankly, there's not much bad to say about Brink or the rest of the team. Heading into their home opener with No. 19 Oklahoma on Friday, the No. 17 Cornhuskers are coming off a victory over Missouri last Friday, and are earning their keep in practice the last couple weeks. “I think we re going to show them a thing or two,” Kendig said. “We re looking real good. The girls are all excited to be back home, in front of family and friends.” Among those is Brink. At Missouri, Brink fell off the balance beam and ended up finishing third in the all-around, two places lower than what she’s used to. But Kendig said that the unfortunate and rare miscue helped NU come from behind and rally to beat the Tigers. “I think when Heather fell, that made the rest of the girls realize they needed to step it up, and they did,” Kendig said. -John Gaskins
