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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 7, 2000)
SportsThursday Nebraska doomed with white I’ve got a can’t miss, hit the nail-on-the head, 100 per cent lock. Bet the farm, or at leapt any mad cows you may have running around onthisone.lhist me. David Diehl Nebraska will lose to Northwestern in the Sylvania Alamo Bowl Dec. 30. Yeah, I'm as unhappy to report it as you are to hear it Sadly, this isn't a lock many people who bleed Cornhusker red are going to be pleased with. But please understand me. It’s fate. It’s unavoidable. I'd like to say it's not, but once you see the facts, hopefully yoif, too, may realize fate has had it in for the 2000 Comhuskers since 1993. You see, NU will be sporting its road white jerseys against Northwestern. In the past don ning the tasteless white shirts at a neutral site hasn't exactly meant a red-letter day for the Huskers. Because the Alamo Bowl has employed an alternating home visitor method since its inaugu ral game in 1993, Nebraska has been deemed the visiting team for the Dec. 30 matchup. Last year’s Big 12 team, Texas A&M, was the home team; now the Huskers will be the visitors.' Nebraska just doesn't look good wearing the visiting white jerseys. Thus, following the Deion Sanders /Michael Irvin theory, if you don't look good, you can’t play good. And those jerseys don’t look good for a number of reasons. First off, if NU has stitched on numbers^)n the home red jer seys, why can’t they have them on the white, too? I think the Athletic Department can fork a little more dough Adidas’ way to get some sewn-on red numerals. I mean, you gotta look profes sional on the road. Next, white isn’t exactly intimidating. Say a war-torn Husker has a dirty white jersey scarred with grass and blood stains - while those things wouldn’t even show up on the darker red jerseys, on the whites the opponent sees them as signs of weakness. Finally, those pants gotta go. The red is just too dominant and overwhelming. Toning them down a notch with a stripe or two wouldn’t be a bad idea. So with the formula for look ing bad in place, let’s examine the futility the Big Red has seen wearing the horrific white shirt/red pant ensemble at neu tral sites. mere was the 1998 year or disappointment Nebraska went to Kansas City to play Oklahoma State at Arrowhead Stadium and barely escaped with a seven point win on a last second goal line stand. Later the same year was the Holiday Bowl vs. Arizona, the last time NU wore white in a bowl game. Nebraska packed up its white jerseys, along with a 23-20 loss to the Wildcats. (Bowl game, white jerseys, Wildcat opponent. Can you say foreshadow?) There’s also the 1996 loss to Texas in the Big 12 Championship wearing the white jerseys. UT duped Nebraska in the fourth quarter, and Scott Frost and Co. lost any hopes of playing for a national title with die setback. In fact, the last time NU did play well as the visiting team to a neutral site was against West Virginia in the 1994 Kickoff Classic. To further prove the adverse effect white has on the NU pro gram, look at 1992. Nebraska wore both white jerseys and pants and look what happened. NU lost to Washington, Iowa State and squeaked out a 10 point win against Missouri. NU dismantled Oklahoma by 24 points when they went back to the red pants. You see, the color white, cou pled with fate, has it in for the NU program. Maybe white is filled with hate stemming from years of frustration playing second fid dle to that damn scarlet. I dunno. I don’t have the answers, I just know the problem. So don't look at me on this one. It’s all fate’s fault Nebraska will lose. Not mine, fate’s. You know, the guy on the lottery commercials. Ice-cold shootina dooms Huskers on the road BY LINCOLN ARNEAL Nebraska’s third straight road loss wasn’t pretty. Nebraska only shot 32 per cent from the field and commit ted 19 turnovers to doom the offense on its way to losing to Washington 69-57 in an ugly 40 minutes of basketball. Both teams combined to make just 31 percent of their shots in the game devoid of effi cient offense. “We have to shoot the ball,” Washington Nebraska 57 NU Coach Sanderford said on his post-game radio show. “We cant’t win basketball games if we don’t score 70 points. We scored 57 tonight. We have to find a way to score 70 points to win basket ball games.” The Huskers, who are now 4 3 on the year, made only two field goals in the last six and half minutes, as turnovers and poor shot selection plagued their offense. Steph Jones tied the game at 52 with 6:56 remaining. Washington then finished the game with a 17-5 run. Washington guard Megan Franza was shooting a dismal 4 20 before the run. She then pow ered the drive, scoring 12 points in the last six minutes. Franza, an All-Pac 10 selec tion last year, had 21 points to lead a Washington offense that struggled shooting making just 22 of 72 shots. The game consisted of a sloppy first-half full of bad shooting for both teams. NU was 9-33 from the field, and Washington was 9-37 shooting. Rebounds killed NU early, as they were out rebounded 35-18 in the first half. “I told our kids coming in that we need to block out and couldn’t give them second and third shots,” Sanderford said. Sanderford tried to find the right combination of players. Jones, K.C. Cowgill both saw their first starts of the year. He said he started Cowgill to give an offensive spark to a team that lacked offense in a loss to Creighton. Cowgill responded by leading NU in scoring with 10 points in 30 minutes. Cowgill and her teammates couldn’t provide enough spark in the second half as the cards, as well as the shots, didn’t fall right for NU. "The thing with our team is we didn’t make plays when we had to,” Sanderford said. Campbell leaves JUCO system forNU BY JOSHUA CAMENZ1ND Dave “Soupy” Campbell had a good life. As the coach of Western Nebraska Community College, Campbell was respected by his peers, and his family loved Scottsbluff and the western part of the Comhusker State. Campbell was offered jobs elsewhere, three to four as he recalls, but he turned them down and waited for the right oppor tunity to come. That time came when an old friend, recently hired Nebraska Coach Barry Collier, came calling with a position open on his staff. Campbell said life, as good as it was, instantly became better. "I am as happy here as I have been in coaching,” Campbell said. Campbell, who is Collier’s top assis tant, didn’t hesitate to accept the offer from the longtime friend. Collier recalled the first time the two met 20 years ago. “I was coaching at Idaho as an assis tant, and he brought his New Mexico Military team to a tournament,” Collier said. “I sat and listened to him tell stories for hours.” Those stories turned into a friendship, and Collier knew exactly who to consult when contacted by NU Athletic Director Bill Byme about the opening. “I called Soupy to talk about the job here and learn about the team and so forth,” Collier said. “I have had previous discussions with him about working on a staff of mine someday, so that was kind of a natural that he was in Scottsbluff.” Once Collier was hired as Nebraska’s new coach, Campbell soon found he would be spending his days in Lincoln. "I brought him in for die interview and didn’t let him go home,” Collier said. Campbell, who had 353 wins in 13 sea sons at WNCC, said working with Collier was an easy fit “He (Collier) is solid in his conviction and very disciplined,” Campbell said. “I am 7 think I understand what is expected, and I know what I expected when I had assistants -1 didn’t always have one. But when I did have one, I was very demanding, and you have to understand that the head coach has to answer to a boss and it trickles on down.” Dave “Soupy" Campbell Nebraska basketball assistant very disciplined as well, and our philoso phies meshed.” The pair’s strict stance on managing their teams is evident through their pasts. Neither is afraid of disciplining a player in lieu of a big game. Collier might have sacrificed a win in the season-opener at Oral Roberts by sus pending center Kimani Ffriend and guard Rodney Fields, while Campbell has riot hesitated to sit out players with the junior college national title on the line. “Whether its administratively or on a basketball team, you have to have disci pline,” Campbell said. Campbell said his stance was one he had learned from assistant stops at Clemson, Tulane and Duke, as well as coaching jobs at Pittsburgh-Johnston, the College of Southern Idaho and the New Mexico Military Institute. As a coach, Campbell sports a 585-236 record. But he doesn’t see the downshift back into an assistant role giving him prob lems. “I think I understand what is expected, and I know what I expected when I had assistants -1 didn’t always have one,” Campbell said. "But when I did have one, I was very demanding, and you have to Please see CAMPBELL on 11 Steven Bender/DN Nebraska men's basketball Assistant Coach Dave "Soupy" Campbell watches the Huskers during practice Tuesday at the Devaney Center.This season marks Campbell's first as assistant coach at UNL. He spent the past 13 years as coach at Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff. Groce sneaks up on record books ■ The Husker comerback broke the pass breakup record against Colorado. BY JOSHUA CAMENZIND Nebraska comerback Dejuan Groce has been a relative unknown to most on the outside looking in up to this point. So when Groce quietly broke former Husker cor nerback Ralph Brown’s sin gle-season pass breakup record in NU's final game of the season against Colorado, it came as no sur prise little fanfare followed. The 5-foot-10 corner back is part of a Nebraska defense that ranks sixth nationally in pass efficiency defense and looks to improve upon that when it takes on Northwestern in the Dec. 30 Alamo Bowl. As Groce tries to improve on his record number of breakups against the Wildcats, his coach, Frank Solich, said Groce’s 17 caught him off guard this season. “I think that is quite an achievement, and he kind of snuck up on that,” Solich said. “I think he kind of did it silently. You could tell he was having a good year as the season went along and made some big plays for us coming down the stretch. “Before you knew it, he had the record.” Groce, who came into the CU game with 14 breakups - one shy of DN Rle Photo Nebraska comerback DeJuan Groce corrals a Colorado receiver in the Nov. 24th game. Groce set the Nebraska sea son record for pass breakups in 2000 with 17. Brown’s record of 15, said he too was aware of the possibility of breaking the record only after some late reminding. “I had no clue until somebody told me,” Groce said. Groce, a sophomore, acknowledged much of his early success as a Husker was because of Brown, who left NU last year as the career breakups leader with 50 in his four-year career. “He has helped since I have been here, so I give a lot of the credit to him,” Groce said. But Groce, like Brown and current Huskers Keyuo Craver and Erwin Swiney, played early and often in his two-year career, which allowed him to learn on the field. That experience, Groce said, was the best way to learn. “It just gets us prepared for the next season and the games ahead,” said Groce, who just wanted to play this season and found himself starting for the first time against the Buffaloes. “When you first get out there, you are just running around and don’t know what you are doing because you are so caught up in the moment.” The sophomore, who redshirted in 1998, had 24 tackles last season and totaled 26 this year. Groce, who owns only one interception in his career, said coming up with the turnover instead of the deflection was one area of his game he wants to improve upon. "It’s just about having more confidence and going after the bail instead of the breakup,” Groce said. Young Buckeyes 'getting better' during tourney BY SEAN CALLAHAN After its five-set marathon win over South Carolina, top-ranked Nebraska wasn’t exactly rewarded with the easiest regional for this weekend’s third- and fourth-round NCAA volleyball tourna ment. Coming to Lincoln for Friday and Saturday’s third- and fourth-round matches will be No. 5 Arizona (27-4), No. 12 Brigham Young (26-6) and No. 15 Ohio State (26-6). The Buckeyes, who will play the Comhuskers on Friday at 7:30 p.m., are the highest ranked opponent - NU has faced since its Sept 10 match with No. 3 UCLA Meanwhile, OSU is coming off a recent victory over No. 9 Minnesota and also has knocked off No. 4 Wisconsin during the regular season. Like the Huskers, Ohio State starts four sopho mores and boasts a hitting attack that features five players averaging three or more kills per game. OSU Coach Jim Stone said he felt pretty confident in his young team. “We've had some bouts of inconsistency that you’d expect to see from a young team like that,” Stone said. “I like our team. I feel it’s a pretty competi tive group. “I think in general it’s a young team that’s still get ting better. We’re on the learning curve, and every experience is a good one for us." A new experience for the Buckeyes will be seeing the Coliseum crowd. It will be unlike anything the Buckeyes have seen this season. Stone said he thought his team would not be intimidated by the crowd of4,000 that usually packs the rustic venue’s seats. Instead his team will feed off of it, Stone said. “Competitive players thrive for these kind of Please see OPPONENTS onll