Page 6-The Michigan Daily- Sports Monday - March 23, 1992 BASKETBALL NOTEBOOK Cowboys look to Blue with hot shooting hands by Albert Lin Daily Basketball Writer ATLANTA - Michigan's opponent this Friday at the Southeast Regional in Lexington, Ky., advanced past the second round in record-set- ting fashion. Oklahoma State broke a four-year-old tournament record by shooting an astounding 80 percent from the field in defeating Tulane, 87-71. The Cowboys hit 28 of 35 field goals, including five of their six 3-point at- tempts, to break North Carolina's 1988 record of 79 percent (49 for 62), set against Loyola Marymount. "I've never had a team, even when I was coaching high school basket- ball, shoot 80 percent," Cowboy coach Eddie Sutton said. "I don't think it's gonna happen very often." Oklahoma State's Corey Williams, Byron Houston and Sean Sutton combined for 72 points on 23-for-28 shooting. The 6-foot-7, 250 pound Houston was able to score at will inside the paint, but with the play of guards Williams and Sutton, he was not needed as often. "We tried to rush them, make them panic, make them shoot faster, slow them done. We threw a zone at them - it didn't matter," Tulane coach Perry Clark said. "They showed a lot of maturity and poise, and if they play that way the rest of the way, they will be an awfully tough team to beat" This is Oklahoma State's second consecutive trip to the Sweet 16. Last year, the Cowboys lost to Temple, 73-64, in the regional semifinals. For the Green Wave, advancing to the second round marks an incredi- ble turnaround from just three seasons ago, when the school had no team because of a point-shaving scandal. SHORT GUYS: The East Tennessee State team may be the shortest in the country. The Bucs can throw an entire five at you that stands under six feet. That made for some interesting matchups against Michigan's 6-3 Jimmy King and 6-8 Jalen Rose. Fisher told the media at Saturday's press conference that Rose had al- ready informed him he was going to trade places with Chris Webber, and go down low while Webber played the perimeter. That never really transpired yesterday, but there was still some mo- ments when the height differential seemed almost comical. "It's not like I'm bragging, but they were short," King said. "I wanted to go in and post up, but you have to realize that Chris and Juwan, that was theirs today. They were taking it to them. So I just had to keep feeding them the ball and they would do the job." SHORT CUTS: What appears to be a dangerous trend on the Michigan basketball team has started. Freddie Hunter was the first to do it. Rose followed suit before the March 8 victory over Indiana. And Friday afternoon, Webber joined his two teammates, walking onto the Omni floor sporting a newly shaven head. Webber said that while he and roommate Rose were watching a game at the team's hotel prior to arriving at the Omni, a player pump-faked his de- fender into the air, took the ball up for a dunk and drew a foul. Rose re- marked, "You haven't done that in a long time," which got Webber think- ing. He said he took a short nap, woke up and remembered playing more aggressively when he had a clean-shaven head in high school. So he de- cided it was time to unveil the new, "meaner" Chris Webber. "It was just psychological, just to have fun," he said. "This is something I'm gonna look back at and laugh. You know, I had a bald head a long time ago. My father wanted me to get my hair bald, so I went ahead and did it. Now it's time to go to work." Fellow frosh Juwan Howard originally said he would join Rose and Hunter for the tournament, but he changed his mind. And it appears no one else on the team will be following this trend, even if the Wolverines keep winning. "No!" Ray Jackson responded before a reporter even finished asking him whether or not there was a pattern starting. "I'm keeping mine," he smiled, fondly rubbing the top of his head with his right hand. Coach Steve Fisher said he is already part of the trend. "I'm already bald," he said, pointing to his head. "I think I'm gonna keep mine, because once I lose it, I'm not gonna get mine back." TALK, TALK, TALK: The Michigan-Temple game didn't feature as much yapping as usual for a Wolverine contest. Webber did some talking at Temple forward Mark Strickland about a statement Owl coach John Chaney made during Thursday's press confer- ence. Chaney said, "If Webber stays in the garage (the lane), we'll have to force them to lob over us." Webber was told Temple said they would make him stay in the lane, so he took it upon himself to give Strickland some good-natured ribbing. "I was saying the quote to him that I heard in the paper," Webber said. "After, he just started laughing. And I went to camp with Frazier (Temple center Johnson, who is listed at 265 pounds). I was just teasing him-I said 'You gained some weight,' or something. It wasn't the kind of talking where we were going at each other; we were just having fun." But Chaney didn't take too kindly to it, more particularly to how it af- fected his players. During one time-out in the first half, as his players pro- ceeded back onto the court, Chaney could be heard yelling, "I don't want you guys talking! Don't say anything!" A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME...: Some local writers had a little trouble with the unique name of Michigan's leading scorer. Two writers were overheard discussing the proper pronunciation, but apparently the Omni's public address announcer never got in on their con- versation. For most of the first half, he called Rose, "JUH-leen. " "That's been happening since elementary school," Rose said. "Every time someone calls me my wrong name, I have to glance over to see who it is because I really don't like it." REDEMPTION: Jackson had a tough game early on against Temple. He missed a three and turned the ball over twice in the first five minutes. Jackson was held scoreless with four turnovers in the first half, but bounced back to grab four rebounds (six total) and score all six of his points - without a turnover - in the second half. Jackson's three baskets were scored in spectacular fashion, but he also had an embarrassing moment. He scored back-to-back hoops on two dunks, one from each baseline. On the second, he came in hard from the left side and threw it down two- handed with Strickland's hand literally in his face. His last basket also was a fine move, beating Mik Kilgore along the baseline and going up strong for a reverse lay-in. Rather than dunking the ball, Jackson opted to lay it in softly. The previous time Jackson had been free, shortly after his consecutive dunks, he took a pass from Webber and went up for a one-handed toma- hawk. The problem? He missed. "I don't know (what happened). They were saying I was up too high, or I tried to cock it (back too far). I don't know," Jackson said. "I think (my third basket) was redemption, that's the only reason I dropped it in," he said. "I was like, 'I can't miss this one.' So I just dropped it in 'nd went Michigan grounds Owls, 73-66 Rose sparks Wolverines to second-half surge by Albert Lin Daily Basketball Writer ATLANTA - People said that eventually, experience would win out over the talented Michigan ball club. But Friday night, the Wolverines proved that sometimes it just pays to have more talent than your oppo- nent. Michigan dismantled Tem- ple's matchup zone and held off the obligatory Owl run to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, 73-66. "The youth of our team is not a negative and a handicap," coach Steve Fisher said. "We think of it as a positive. There are people out there who will say that five freshmen are not tough and experienced enough to handle a situation like this. But I have told them that they are." Michigan maintained the lead for most of the game, but its customary inability to play a consistent 40 min- utes made for some excitement for Temple fans. The Owls tightened up their defense and went on a 12-0 run to take a 57-53 lead. That's when Jalen Rose stepped up. With the Wolverine offense stalled, Rose took it upon himself to get Michigan going. Rose scored in similar fashion on two consecutive plays, beating his defender from the left wing and throwing in two shots off the glass. "The first thing that went through my mind (when Temple took the lead) was that I don't want to go back to Ann Arbor tomorrow night," Rose said. "When you look at it in those terms, you just have to reach down inside and play harder." The Wolverines followed Rose's initiative. After the Owls took an- other momentary lead with 7:44 left in the game, Michigan clamped down, going on a 10-0 run and hold- ing Temple scoreless for the next 6:30. "We knew we had to get back to what we were doing at the beginning (of the game)," Juwan Howard said. "You know you got to keep forward, stay at it. Don't give up." The Wolverines jumped out to a quick 8-0 lead to start the game, keyed by strong defensive pressure. Juwan Howard opened the scoring with a jam on a no-look pass from Jimmy King off the opening tip. Temple tied the score at 13, then Michigan went on a 14-4 run to take a 10-point lead, 27-17. Temple closed to within three with 1:33 left in the half, but the Wolverines closed with three consecutive bas- -cI ''i 0 r FJtNINET oitMsLL.W Forward Ray Jackson, despite tough defense by Temple's Mark Strickland, throws home two Wolverine points. kets to lead at the intermission, 42- 33. "We knew we would come out and play hard," forward Ray Jackson said. "So I wasn't surprised at the lead. I was just hoping we could keep it." With the defeat, Temple's season was over. The Owls were unable to match last year's tournament run, when they reached the Final Eight behind standout Mark Macon. But despite losing, they earned the re- spect of their victorious opponents. "(Being able to come back) is what teams with mental toughness are about," Howard said. "Don't quit, stay at it and fight. I feel they showed a lot of character out there." And Fisher felt Michigan showed character of its own. "We played smart almost the whole game," Fisher said. "Some say our youth causes ups and downs, but we are through with youth. Ups and downs are just a part of basket- ball." E. Tennessee St. upsets Arizona, 87-80. by Albert Lin Daily Basketball Writer ATLANTA - Michigan did its part Friday night to set up perhaps the Southeast Regional's most antic- ipated match-up, but Arizona was unable to come through on its end of the agreement. The No. 3-seeded and heavily favored Wildcats were knocked off by unheralded East Tennessee State, 87-80, in this year's biggest (and in some minds only) upset in the first round. The loss marked Arizona's ear- liest exit from the NCAA Tournament since 1987, when the Wildcats suffered a third consecutive first-round defeat. For the Buccaneers, appearing in their fourth consecutive tournament, the victory 'The shots were there, so I took 'em. Coach told us just to play hard and let our offense come to us, and I think we were able to do that tonight.' - Rodney English ETSU senior broke a string of three straight first- round losses. Third-year coach Alan LeForce, who took the reigns when Les Robinson departed for the N.C. State job, had his team running on all cylinders. Playing with a line-up much smaller than Arizona's NBA- sized front court, the Bucs turned to a harassing defense and every little team's best friend - the three-point shot. "The shots were there, so I took 'em," said senior Rodney English, who was the team's leading scorer at arc in the initial stanza, adding only four two-point goals the entire half. The lead proved to be more than Arizona could handle on this night. Coach Lute Olson's Wildcats shot only 36.8 percent for the game, and his front court could never assert it- self offensively against a Bucaneer lineup that frequently included only one player above 6'5". Whenever the ball went into the low post in the second half, one or two Bucs would follow it down and force a quick shot or turnover. "We came out in the second half and competed hard, and tried a smaller lineup," Olson said. "But as typically happens when you expend so much energy coming from be- hind, when you finally get to the point where you can take control, you're unable to put the shots in." Arizona did dominate the offen- sive glass, pulling down 25 to ETSU's 8, but most of those came because the team missed so many shots. "We gambled on their outside shooters. We hoped that if he shot the ball, it wouldn't go in," LeForcet said. "We tried to jam down as much as we could with their big guys, so we couldn't help off of their guards ~and we had to try and take them one- on-one. Push them to a certain spot and contain." "We pride ourselves on playing good defense - it's been the forte., of this team the last two, three years But I would never have dreamed we, could hold them to 38 percent shoot- ing." Bearcats end MSU hopes, 77-65 DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - Anthony Buford scored 21 points as Cincinnati held off Michigan State 77-65 on Sunday in the second round of the NCAA Midwest Regional at the University of Dayton. Cincinnati (27-4), the fourth-seed and ranked 12th in the final national poll, advances to meet ninth-seeded Texas-El Paso in next week's regional semifinals in Kansas City. Herb Jones added 15 points and Corie Blount 14 - all in the first half - for the Bearcats, regular-season and tournament champions in the Great Midwest Conference. Shawn Respert led Michigan State (22-8) with 27 points and Dwayne Stephens added 15. In each of the last two years, Michigan State overcame an 18-point deficit to beat the Bearcats on a shot in the final seconds. In December, Kris Weshinskey capped the comeback on a 3-pointer with six seconds left for a 90-89 victory. This time the Bearcats built a 17-point lead in the first half at 37-20 and Michigan State came back to trail 42-35 at the half and by four twice in the second half. But each time, Cincinnati responded. After the Spartans pulled to 54-50 on a three-point play by Anthony Miller with 11:46 left, the Bearcats countered on a driving basket by Erik Martin, a Jones layup off a steal and Buford's perimeter jumper for a 60-50 lead by the 9:46 mark. Again Michigan State came back, this time on a 6-0 Cincinnati a 25-14 lead midway through the first half. Cincinnati had not won two games in the NCAA tournament since 1975. Michigan State hit just 9 of 32 shots from the field in the second half for 28 percent, while Cincinnati was 11 of 23 for 48 percent. The Spartans' last three opponents had combined for 41.1 percent shooting. Two dramatic turnarounds took place in the first half. Up 16-14 with 11:34 left, Cincinnati went on a 21- 6 run for a 37-20 lead by the 5:38 mark. Buford scored" all the Bearcat points during the 9-0 run to start it, with E Blount scoring eight of the next 12 points. But Michigan State countered with a 12-1 run despite playing without center Mike Peplowski and forward Matt Steigenga, who were largely ineffective in the half with a combined two points and two rebounds, and point guard Mark Montgomery, who picked up his third foul at the 4:43 mark. Cincinnati (27-4), the fourth-seed and ranked 12th in the final national poll, advances to meet ninth-seeded Texas-El Paso in next week's regional semifinals in Kansas City. B Blount, whose career high is 15 points, had 14 in the C