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Show November 6, 2002, THE DAILY HERALD, (www.HarkTheHerald.com), Provo, Utah Wednesday, Page B3 COLLEGE ATHLETICS The Dairy Herald NOTEBOOK - SALT LAKE CITY -Marty Johnson's senior year just keeps getting worse. The Utah running back g suffered a knee injury two months ago that helped send his teame mates into a losing streak. Now he could face charges of drunken driving and stemming from an incident last month. Johnson was arrested Oct. 27 for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol, crashing into a car parked across the street from Stadium and leaving the scene of an injury accident. Former season-endin- six-gam- hit-and-r- Rice-Eccl- es Arce-neau- x kicked off the team for an undisclosed violation of team rules a week earlier also was arrested for allegedly trying to cover for Johnson. Coach Ron McBride said Monday he was aware of the arrests, but could not comment further. Typically, Johnson would be suspended from the team following such an arrest, but he has not played or practiced since he was hurt during the Utes' victory over Indiana on Sept. 7. He was the nation's leading rusher when he was hurt in the game against the Hoosiers. Police said they responded to a report of a crash at about 2:30 a.m. Oct. 27. An x officer discovered holding a set of keys at the scene and asked him what had happened. Arceneaux, 21, initially refused to answer, a Salt Lake City police report said. But after police put him in handcuffs for allegedly obstructing their investigation, he cooperated. He told the officer that the keys belonged to Johnson's Jeep, and that he had seen Johnson crash the Jeep into a parked Chevrolet Blazer. Johnson allegedly gave the keys to Arceneaux following the crash, and then d fled. But as police one of witnesses whom suffered minor injuries when struck by the Johnson returned Blazer to the scene, according to the report. Right now, By STEPHEN VINCENT Most Mountain West coaches agree: LaVell Edwards Stadium is the best stadium in the MWC, but they disagree as to why. "I like the BYU stadium because it's fun to go down and beat them down there," Utah coach Ron McBride said. "We went to BYU this year, and had 60,000 people, and I just thought, 'Wow! This is really great'!" UNLV coach John Robinson said. "If you have a good team when you go in there, it doesn't affect you. If you're a bad team, boy, it really . today. Guard Isaac Herring (ankle) practiced iV 6 Tues- day. KURESA PLANS: Freshman offensive lineman Jake Kuresa said Tuesday he'll reach a decision on his mission plans within the next week. Kuresa said for a couple of personal reasons, he'd like to play a season and then leave on a mission. Kuresa is redshirting this season. EXTRA POINTS: BYU has attempted 34 n conversion this season, more than any other MWC team. BYU has converted 14 of them and its success rate of 41.2 percent is on fourth sixth in the MWC. But BYU is down in its past two games. Coach Gary Crow-to- n said he has not changed philosophies. BYU fourth-dow- n conversions just didn't need to try as much in recent weeks, he said. ... Poppinga fourth-dow- that people would t, said. The coaches disagree about which stadium is the toughest to play in. "It depends on who's hot at the time. I think a small, cozier stadium where the crowd is right on top of CLOCKED OUT EARLY: UNLV assistant head overtime coach John Jackson left the Rebels 49-4- 8 win over Wyoming on Saturday with about three minutes left in the regulation. Jackson left to fulfill a commitment to Forum Boxing, which is owned by his former employer, you and is very, very loud probably gives the home team an advantage." Long said. ing a game against Wyoming to attend a boxing match he helped promote. John Jackson, who oversees UNLV's running game, left with three minutes remaining in Saturday's 49-4- 8 overtime victory to attend the Marco Antonio featherweight fight Jackson, head of NOTEBOOK say our place is, but if things are going well for BYU, that's a pretty tough place to play," DeBerry said. The second choice seemed to be Qualcomm Stadium, where San Diego State plays. But the coaches identified the drawbacks to Qualcomm Stadium as the crowd size, being away from campus, and the dirt infield that covers part of the field during the Padres' season. "Qualcomm is a very attractive, pretty dynamic stadium," San Diego State coach Tom Craft said. "It holds quite a capacity and that may be somewhat of a drawback because it is so big and so open You can put 35 or 40 thousand in there, which would pack a place like Colorado State, and it looks like our stadium is almost empty. I don't think you close colget the feeling of a tight-knilege atmosphere." "I've heard people say back years ago, Wyoming was the worst place in the whole world to ever play a game," Robinson said. "The wind was blowing; the cowboys were yelling and they were lassoing you." "The best stadium in the league for recruiting purposes is BYU because it's the biggest, it gets the biggest crowds, it's on their campus," New Mexico coach Rocky Long said. "We have so many people (at LaVell Edwards Stadium); we average over 60,000, and the setting's great," BYU coach Gary Crowton. "Probably the loudest stadium is whenever things are going good for BYU, and their fans start beating on the metal bleachers," Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry that play. "I would hope hurts." REPRIMAND: A UNLV assistant football coach will be reprimanded for leav- DAN IXNDmie Daily Herald First start: BYU linebacker Mike Tanner works out during a practice session in October. Tanner got his first start against San Diego State this past Saturday. Patrick Ridge can be reached at pridiellheraldextra.com. California Sports Inc. When Jackson left to go to UNLV, he agreed with California Sports owner Jerry with the organiBuss to continue working part-tim- e zation. The two jobs never conflicted until Saturday. "(Jackson) made an error in judgment but it's treen settled, so it's not an issue as far as we're concerned," Robinson said. Robinson joked that he had punished Jackson by making him run laps. Robinson belittled the reporting of the incident "Someone happened to see him from the press and wrote it as though he had done some dastardly deed," Robinson. "Oh, by the way, heard you left early a few minutes (from your job) last week. You snuck out 10 minutes to five. And I gotcha." TROPHY: Air Force trav- COMMANDER-IN-CHIE- els to Army to try to claim its sixth consecutive Commander in Chief Trophy. "It's the No. 1 goal in our program, to retain the Commader in Chief Trophy," DeBerry said. DeBerry hopes the possibility of the trophy will loshelp snap the Falcons out of their three-gam- e ing streak. BOWL UPDATE: The race to fill the Mountain West's four bowl commitments continues, and the conference still looks unlikely to fill them. Wyoming joined Utah as MWC teams that have been mathematically eliminated from the postseason. BYU (4-- 5 overall, 3 MWC) seems the team most likely to join Air Force and Colorado State as teams from the conference. The Cougars need to win two of their final three games and have perhaps the easiest road of any of the four teams still trying to qualify. The Cougars have home games and New Mexico (4-against Wyoming (2-), ). and a road game against Utah (2-UNLV also needs to win two of its last three, but has conference clashes with Colorado State (8-4-). The Lobos need to and Air Force (6-win three of their four remaining games but still have road trips to BYU and Colorado State loom3-can't afford to lose ing. San Diego State (3-another game, and the Aztecs still have New Mexico, Air Force, Colorado State and Hawaii on the schedule. UVSC volleyball faces rival, tournament Forum Boxing, UNLV coach and athletic director John Robinson said the Jackson apologized. A letter of reprimand will be put in Jackson's file. Barrera won a unanimous decision against Tapia. might mean for the weekend. "Hopefully we can keep building on that. This is a good team, and it's good NOTEBOOK for us to be able to play well against good teams. "I think if we're able to do that, we should be able to take that momentum into this weekend to prepare for one more match." UVSC beat both Snow College and Dixie State this past weekend to lock up the opportunity to play host to the tournament. "It's going to be very similar," Atoa said. "We've just barely played both of them, and so whoever ends up winning, I think we're in a pretty good position to be prepared for that one. What matters is us being up for the match, which our girls will be." UVSC has had to deal with By BRIAN HASSLER Herald Correspondent OREM Despite having already locked up homecourt advantage for the Region 18 South District Tournament, the UVSC women's volleyball team will have one more challenge before that Saturday tournament match against the winner of a Snow College-Dixi- e State contest. That challenge comes in the form of Salt Lake Community College on Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at SLCC. Both teams are nationally ranked, ) with UVSC (11-entering the game ranked third in the nation and 27-SLCC (10-closing out the d season as the regular team in the country. 1 look forward to us being consistent, as we've done the last half of the LOSING GROUND: Someone finally made Northwestern running back Jason Wright lose yardage. Northwestern announced Tuesday that, due to an error in its stats, Wright actually had 196 yards rushing Saturday, not 219. He'd been given credit rush that was really a for a 23-ya23-yafrom quarterback Brett pass Basanez to receiver Ashton Alkens. The 196 yards are still a career 2, Ten offenhigh for Wright the g sive player of the week. And it was enough to put him over the 1,000 this season, making him yard-mar- k rusher in only the eighth 1,000-yar- d Northwestern history. Wright finished with four rushing touchdowns, including the game-winne- r, yards in and. 285 41-3- 7 victory over Indiana. 3, 24-4- 9) ninth-ranke- season," UVSC coach Sam Atoa said about what the Wolverines could aim for in the SLCC match, and what it rli note, as both teams were undefeated on road trips last weekend. team finished the week The with a 3-- 0 record after victories over Scottsdale (57-48- ), Cochise (75-64- ), and Chandler-Gilbe- rt (6548). Next up for the women's team is a trip to St Geprge this weekend and games orrThursday, Friday and Saturday. Men's coach Dk Runsaker opened up his UVSC victory over me Luke coaching career with a 97-3- 8 AFB team in Arizona. The men will be in Salt Lake this weekend for the Rockies Challenge. Continued from Bl offense that Cleveland said they just installed over the weekone-i- n end. It worked well. Araujo grabbed eight rebounds in 17 minutes off the bench. On one sequence, he blocked a Vogel shot then denied a baseline drive with quick footwork. "We have to let (Araujo) play with his instincts," Cleveland said. "If he can defend and rebound and post up close enough to hit that drop-stejump hook, hell attract a lot of attention just through his size. "Once he does prove he can score down there, it will be difficult for one person to guard him. But we have to go slow with him." BYU was the fourth Utah school EA Sports has played. It lost to Weber State and Utah State and beat Utah. None of those three schools held EA Sports below 92 points. Woodberry and Araujo said BYU's defense needs immediate improvement. Some came in the second half, when the Cougars held EA Sports to 43 percent shooting. Araujo said only the y new guys, like him, and Luiz Lemes, are behind in Cleveland's system. "I feel like we're getting better every day," Woodberry said. "Something improves every day. Defense is the main area where we want to get improvement. Today, we really came after them in the second half." p Wood-berr- BYU EA 89, 1 1 PEOODS Interiors. UNLIMITED 285 E. State St Pleasant Grove, UT 785-305- Vuk S4604 S01 S02-S4J- 0 6 SPORTS 84 Ft F0 PLAYER 4 6 McFall 6 Smith 0 11 23 Bradford 16 Thomas 66 Vogel 00 M&emore 04 Crosby 04 Harvey 24 Mingo Team 3 Totah FO PUYES 12 84 11 R FT 11 89 Hansen Bigekx Howard 02 Woodberry 511 Jensen 26 Lemes 0- 04 3 04 04 11 Nashrf 25 Allen - Araujo Team 27 BYU (Vogel Crosby Bigelow Hansen 24--2 3 37 ' EA SPORTS Technicals: 5 6 BYU (Hansen). Smitti Bradford Bower Jensen Attendance: 5,112 - n 62 goats: McFall BYU Nashlf EA Sports Harvey (Woodberry Allen Lemes South County's Only Secure Dementia Care Facility a lleterson The SHOPSiTf iW. BASKETBALL UVSC's men and women's basketball teams opened their seasons on a good BYU OSteve i Vnittnity A'tntt injuries as the season winds down. "I think we're doing OK, not great. I think that there's certain things that we hope for the girls to get better," Atoa said. "So that's definitely something we have to look at. I want them to be healthy for these matches that are going to be crucial." "Every single kid on the team can contribute. When we have all of them playing great, it's hard to beat us. Hopefully we'll be able to continue to improve." CT "Utah's Favorite Shopping Village at the Mouth.of Provo Canyon" Amnoan Tradrttom Cofectwn Beautiful Dining by Steve Peterson Interiors & Special order on sale NOW! In-sto- ck tt ' Take a 3D-To- , leads the MWC in sacks (eight) and tackles for a loss (14). ... BYU's 403 yards of offense Saturday were its highest output since Oct 4 at Utah State. ( serves as Barrera's promoter. 4S01 North INJURY REPORT: Offensive tackle DustJn Rykert (knee), linebacker Paul Walkenhorst (knee), cornerback Gilford (leg, knee), corner-bac- k 0'Nell Howell (knee) and wide receiver DavM Ctirlstensen (abdominal muscle tear) did not dress for practice Tuesday. Poppinga (ankle) dressed, but did not do much. BYU reported Walkenhorst's playing status is decision. Howell and Gilford had a game-tim- e fluid drained from knees and are expected to play. Christensen's injury could keep him out for another week. Rykert is expected to practice means Colorado State is the toughest place to Herald Correspondent inter-viewe- Angeles-base- d ment we had last week." Coaches agree Edwards Stadium best Arce-neau- Los Gilford obviously helped. Taking an early lead relaxed NOTEBOOK the team. BYU's front seven generated pressure and stopped the run, enabling the secondary to hang back. Schmidt said linebacker Colby Bockwoldt was outstanding, and defensive end Brady Poppinga "came to play." And BYU allowed only one play that went for 20 yards or more. These are all sure signs of a successful defense. But linebacker Mike Tanner, who led BYU with 11 tackles Saturday, noted a different attitude permeating the locker room last week. "It was kind of interesting," Tanner said. "There was an exciting feeling all week. I don't know if for me it was just knowing I was going to get to play a lot. But in the locker room and all week long in practice, there was just an exciting feeling. "Before we walked out on the field, we talked about the good feeling we had about going out and trying to prove things to people, the kind of defense we have. It was unreal to see the execution the front line had, the defen ing for the right buttons to push again for Saturday's game against Wyoming (4 p.m., KSL). All of the sudden last Saturday, every Cougar played more consistently than he had seen all season. Why, however, isn't entirely clear to the coach. "I think we didn't make as many mistakes," Schmidt said. "And we were home. They were flying around and playing hard. We got a little momentum. ... I wish I could figure out what button I pushed." In allowing 246 yards Saturday to San Diego State, BYU surrendered the fewest yards to an opponent since Game 9 of the 2000 season, when BYU limited Wyoming to 237. San Diego State's 10 points Saturday were the fewest BYU has surrendered in a 2002 game. San Diego State was in catchup mode most of the day, and played a large part of the game without its best receiver, J.R. Tolver. BYU safety Aaron Francisco knocked him out of the game early in the first quarter. Even when Tolver returned in the second half, he did not appear to be a primary target. The Associated Press cor-nerba- Jernaro PROVO BYU defensive coordinator Ken Schmidt is search- Ute back faces more problems teammate Anthony the return of wz sive backs had." Tanner said he saw on film mistakes he made. Repeating Saturday's performance against Wyoming basically comes down to one factor, Tanner said. "We have to keep the excite- Realigning the linebackers and By PATRICK R1DGELL 798-150- 0 Of Our Facility At www.hearthstone-fflanor.co- |