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