H
Out of the red: Athletic department cuts badt
■The department has tightened its col
lective beitto help counter a 250,000
overdraft last year.
BY DAVID DIEHL
If you're ever the last one to leave
the basketball offices at the Bob
Devaney Sports Center, the athletic
department has a message for you.
Don't forget to turn out the lights.
Since the 1999-2000 fiscal year for
the Nebraska Athletic Department saw
unanticipated expenses drive its budg
et into the red, its programs are feeling
some of the effects.
This includes shutting off every
light in the basketball office, said
Director of Basketball Operations Mike
Broughton.
“The last person to leave shuts the
lights off, too," Broughton said. “That
may be something people chuckle at,
but it’s a big expense.”
Departmentwide and throughout
several of the 24 athletic programs at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
modifications have been made to keep
costs lower during the 2000-2001 fiscal
year, which ends June 30.
NU Athletic Department’s Director
of Business and Finance Gary Fouraker
- said among other adjustments, minor
renovation projects around UNL had
been postponed, travel parties for
teams had been reduced and teams
had been warned to carefully watch
every dollar to make up for last year's
overflow.
Fouraker reported in September
2000 that NU’s Athletic Department
was $250,000 over its $39 million budg
et, mainly because of an asbestos dis
covery that cost $200,000 to fix during
renovation of the Bob Devaney Sports
Center. Less-than-expected revenue
from men’s basketball ticket sales in
1999-2000 also contributed.
“The directive came from Bill
(Byrne, NU's athletics director),”
Fouraker said. “We’ve worked with the
coaches and heads of departments and
in our own office. If we see something,
we’U point it out to them, but a lot of it
relies on the (coaches).”
The athletic department began
modifying its spending practices last
spring, Fouraker said.
The tighter budget has forced NU to
put off improvements to facilities,
mostly of minor proportions compared
to the size of the overall budget,
Fouraker said.
For instance, planned improve
ments to replace the lighting and
bleachers and to paint the ceiling of the
Devaney Center track area have been
put off, said NU Director of Facilities
John Ingram. Smaller projects, such as
replacing volleyball scoreboards in the
NU Coliseum and a waterproof project
in a portion of Memorial Stadium, have
been put off until next year, he said.
The plan, Ingram said, is to have the
entire department do just what is
essential to stay within the demands of
a tighter budget.
"There were some things we had
the ability to put off that we did,”
Ingram said.
Hence, athletic squads now some
times bus their student-athletes and
coaches to events instead of chartering
a plane.
Craig Busboom, business services
manager, said teams were not being
explicitly directed what to cut, it was
just a department effort.
Pat Logsdon, director of football
operations, said there was always an
effort to keep costs down.
“We always make an effort
to be as economically
efficient as we can.”
Pal Logsdon
director of football operations
“We always make an effort to be as
economically efficient as we can,"
Logsdon said.
While she didn’t mention any spe
cific changes for the football team
since the recent tightening of the budg
et, Logsdon said the Huskers travel by
bus to their conference road games at
Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State.
The Nebraska men’s basketball
team, according to Director of
Please see BUDGET on 9
Weather pushes
practices indoors
■UnlikeSouthern baseball and
softball teams, the Huskers have
the disadvantage of winter.
BY DOUGLAS SHEPPERD III
Baseball and softball go hand
and hand with warm weather,
but in Nebraska, warm weather
doesn’t always cooperate with
the baseball and softball pro
grams.
The cold weather state of
Nebraska doesn’t provide the
best atmosphere for practicing
baseball and softball during the
first two months of the year, so
the baseball and softball teams
have to imnrovise.
“The cold weather gives our
baseball and softball teams a
huge disadvantage compared to
some of the other universities,”
said Bill Byrne, Nebraska’s athlet
ic director. “They are getting a lot
more practice outside than we
are, and that gives them an edge.”
With it being cold, the only
option for the baseball and soft
ball teams is to travel. Since Feb.
9*, the NU baseball and softball
teams have been competing on
the road with teams that have
twice as many games under their
belts.
Baseball Coach Dave Van
Horn knows that his team is
somewhat behind in practice
time outside.
“We have excellent indoor
facilities, but there is a major dif
ference running down a flyball,
hitting and throwing outside
than there is inside,” Van Horn
said. “We just try to simulate the
game the best we can with what
we have.”
Atmosphere change is the
most important difference
between indoor and outdoor
playing.
Softball Coach Rhonda
Revelle stressed the different
field and weather conditions
between practice time and game
time.
“There are just some things
you can do outside that are much
better than doing inside,” Revelle
said. “Probably the biggest is
having an open sky for a back
ground, or being able to catch a
flyball in the open sky and being
We play a pretty
competitive schedule,
and we may be
behind some of the
teams because they
have already had
quite a few home
games, but we just try
to pick up any win
that we can during
February,”
Dave Van Horn
NU baseball coach
able to run on the dirt”
While the baseball and soft
ball teams practice inside
throughout the cold weeks of
Nebraska, most Southern oppo
nents have had all of their prac
tices outside.
Van Horn said another disad
vantage to the cold weather was
that most of the opponents the
Huskers face were playing on
their home field.
“We play a pretty competitive
schedule, and we may be behind
some of the teams because they
have already had quite a few
home games, but we just try to
pick up any win that we can dur
ing February,” Van Horn said.
The baseball team's first
home game is March 9, while the
softball team’s isn’t until March
30.
Revelle knows playing at
home can give an extra boost to
the home team.
"A large part of our schedule
consists of away games due to
the cold weather,” Revelle said.
“Once we begin playing at home,
we can’t dwell on home field
advantage.”
With both the baseball and
softball teams facing tough
opponents in the South while die
weather warms, both coaches
know that, come NCAA
Tournament selection time,
there are no excuses.
“I don’t think a coach should
ever make excuses because once
she does, the players will have
that kind of attitude and start to
make excuses," Revelle said.
Nuggets of Greichaly
Two sports, big hair and other assorted musings
Story by Samuel McKewon Photo by Derek Lippincott
“This is notjust... one of those things. This
- please - cannot be that. No, these things
happen all the time.”
- Narrator, “Magnolia"
“Girl, I didn’t know you could get down
like that.”
- Destiny’s Child, “Independent
Women”
When ambition goes wrong in the imme
diate, it’s like that moment in "A Wrinkle in
Time” when the string folds up and the ant
creeps its way toward inevitable conclusion
within nanoseconds.
Ambition usually travels to ambition’s
other, darker side - the destination of the
two-lane cement paved with good, earnest,
self-serving intentions. But when it goes.
wrong - when the ambition serves toward an
ill-fated project that isn't going to work, and
wasn’t going to work in the first place, well, it
gets there faster. You look stupid.
How this brings me to Greichaly Cepero
and her mushroom cloud of hair (which goes
like this: ziiiiiiiiip! poof! tumbling down in
paper confetti pasta) and what that means, I
haven’t the fog to fool you. In my slight and
merely average reporting, which should at
least have something of interest above and
beyond “the common player feature,” I was
not able to adequately discern a need for you
to know anything about her.
But, oh, the toil to deliver a story! You
press on, seeking a chocolate nugget of truth
that will melt in the brain. Writing is, after all,
an exercise of subterfuge, a means of gliding
the reader on a course unbeknownst to them
for as long as possible until that course has
run out, at which a quote wraps the bow
around the whole creation. A discernible,
happy end.
They write books about how to do this.
You know, having thumbed through a how
to-do-this book once or twice, that this story
will not follow those conventional guide
lines.
And so, with that, a collection of
thoughts, if you will, the fragmented, unlike
ly way of approaching a narrative, the cop
out supreme, the connection of a player to a
program doing a spiral down the hole of
mediocrity.
Just imagine a cheap hotel, nearly
PleaseseeCEPEROon9
Iowa State proving itself better than preseason predictions
■ The Cydones have performed
beyond expectations,shooting
up from 25th to 6th this season.
BYDIRKCHATELAIN
Underrated would be an
understatement
Iowa State was 25th in the pre
season Associated Press poll.
They were barely picked in the
top third of the Big 12. They col
lected 32 wins a year ago and
were a few questionable calls
away from a possible national
championship.
But that was with All
American Marcus Fizer. ISU was
n't supposed to be this good.
“To be honest with you, I
think we’re all a little bit taken
back that they've remained on
such a high plateau,” said Kansas
State Coach Jim Wooldridge,
whose team lost to the Cyclones
H M A
my ah
two weeks ago in Ames.
Back in November, it
appeared that 2000-01 would be
a rebuilding year. About the time
that conference rival Kansas was
rising in the top five, Division II
Morningside was taking the
Cyclones to overtime. Iowa State
wasn't even rated two months
ago.
But, gradually, the pieces
came together. Along the way
came an exhausting four-over
time loss to Missouri that could
have destroyed momentum.
ISU hasn’t lost since. The
turning point may have been the
buzzer-beating win at Nebraska.
“I think our club did get a little
closer together in their belief of
each other (after the victory over
#
NIT),” Cyclones Associate Coach
Leonard Perry said.
The real eye-opener was the
win at Kansas on Feb. 5. Iowa
State, which is sixth in the latest
AP poll, has dethroned the
Jayhawks on the Big 12 pedestal
when it appeared nobody ever
would. They've defeated KU five
straight times. They’re now the
team to beat.
Who knew?
The Cyclone roster looks like
Jamaal Tinsley and the Ames no
names. They don't have the
McDonald’s All-Americans.
Tinsley might be the only ISU
player that would start for the
Dukes of college basketball. But
Iowa State wins games the old
fashioned way.
"They’re my favorite team in
the league,” Wooldridge said.
“They play well together. They’re
smart. They’re tough. They’re
everything that coaches enjoy
working with.”
r
Cyclones Coach Larry
Eustachy, suddenly regarded as
one of the best coaches in the
country, has ISU on a roll. And
he's pushing all the right buttons.
Eustachy has handed the
team over to Tinsley, the Brooklyn
playground legend. And they are
- rising in the top 25 faster than the
Hilton Coliseum decibel level.
“Tinsley does whatever he
needs to do for them to win,”
Missouri Coach Quin Snyder
said. Snyder said Tinsley was his
pick for Big 12 player of die year.
“Whether it’s score, rebound,
defend, pass, whatever it is, he
gives them what they need,"
Snyder said.
Tinsley, a finalist for the
Wooden Award, hasn’t been the
only weapon. ISU, 22-3 this sea
son, has found production where
nobody knew it existed. On
Saturday against Kansas, fresh
Please see CYCLONES on 9
DN File Photo
Iowa State center Paul Shirley celebrates after the Cyclones' last-second win over NU on
Jan.20.ISU hasn't lost since and has all but locked up the Big 12 regular season title.