The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 10

0 i yy f---n -ny- ly Miiimii a THE COURIER-JOURNAL SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1996 EDITOR: HARRY BRYAN PHONE: 582-4361 FAX: 582-7186 SCORES LINE: 582-4871 Peon State slams tee door 4 Cards put themselves in Unhappy Valley early UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. You march into Beaver Stadium and keep the Penn State offense out of the end zone for the final three quarters of the football game. Pretty good, you think. You send defenders flying into Penn State running back Curtis Enis, and although the kid gets his 104 yards, he runs for less than half of what he got against Southern California. Now your adrenaline is racing.

i if a--' i you complete a pass on a fake punt. You pluck a pair of interceptions. You have Joe Paterno and 95,670 of his fondest admirers squinting into the misty, charcoal afternoon after you work a tricky 41 -yard swing pass and become the first offense in seven quarters to score a touchdown RICK BOZICH SPORTS COLUMNIST t- ASSOCIATED PRESS Penn State fullback Aaron Harris dragged Rondel Marsh into the end zone on an 11 -yard pass on the final play of the first quarter. Lifeless Kentucl gets 24-3 burial from Cincinnati 7 Miscues cost of any shot at huge upset By ASHLEY McGEACHY The Courier-Journal UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. "Train Personnel" was the call, and although L-Train provided a hole large enough for the the caboose derailed.

L-Train, otherwise known as University of Louisville defensive lineman Leland Taylor, crossed the tracks to offense in the third quarter yesterday with the Cardinals trailing Penn State 21-7 but gaining momentum. On fourth-and-one from the Nittany Lions' 30-yard line, Taylor went in to block for sophomore Otis Floyd, who had carried the ball the previous three plays. Although Taylor provided a significant hole between right guard and tackle, Penn State's Gerald Filardi abruptly smothered Floyd for a 1-yard loss. Buried with him were the Cards' hopes of knocking off seventh-ranked Penn State, an eventual 24-7 winner on a soggy, dreary afternoon at Beaver Stadium on which the teams combine for six turnovers and a blocked punt. "I was well past the first-down marker, and I turned around and he was still in the backfield," said Taylor, whose block against Kentucky the previous week allowed Floyd to leap into the end zone.

"I knew the two guys I blocked didn't get him, but someone else unfortunately did." "That was a very big play in the game," said of coach Ron Cooper, whose team fell to 1-1 while Penn State improved to 2-0. "I told the team, 'No matter who you're playing against, you have got to be able to get See NITTANY Page 8, col. 1, this section vows since Liz Taylor's last trip to the altar. "We thought it would happen and it didn't," senior safety Leman Boyd said. "We played a very, very poor football game," UK coach Bill Curry said.

"I don't know why," said quarterback Billy Jack Haskins. Perhaps he should ask the Bearcats, who clearly know how to bounce back from a loss. They too were humbled last week by a Tulane team widely regarded as the worst in Conference USA. And they too pledged to make amends. Their word, unlike UK's, was good as gold.

The Bearcats forced two fumbles, blocked a punt, rolled up 347 total yards and held UK to just 173 their best defensive outing in seven years. Cincinnati did not play great, but it did perform with a level of grit and gumption that UK, for some reason, could not match. "It was a matter of pride," linebacker Hassan Champion said. "Everybody was focused," said receiver Robert Tate. "We put the time and effort in and executed." Compare and constrast those remarks with Smith's synopsis of UK's emotional commitment yesterday.

See BEARCATS Page 8, col. 1, this section Open title Corretja, Sampras reached the final with a masterful 6-3, 6-4, 6-7 (9-11), 6-3 victory over No. 4 Goran Ivanisevic. "I'm happy with the way I played today," said Sampras, who vomited during his 4-hour quarterfinal match against Corretja. "I felt fine." "I gave him too many presents, and you can't do that against Sampras especially if he serves like he served today," Ivanisevic said.

The winner of today's final will earn the No. 1 ranking. "I'm right there; I'm looking forward to it," said Sampras, who has beaten Chang 10 times in 17 career meetings. INDEX 24 The clock is down to zero for Curry CINCINNATI It's time. Time for Bill Curry to go.

It's been a great run Wait a minute. No it hasn't. It's been an incredibly disappointing run, stumbling through the same potholes of ineptitude year after year. And here in the seventh year, with the University of in If L.x'-J- jr I I Ify Kentucky off to what objectively can be called its worst start in 106 years of football, it is time for the run to end. This is the 13th time in school history that the Wildcats have limped out of the gate 0-2.

But never have the Cats been outscored by more than the I I PAT FORDE SPORTS COLUMNIST against the Nittany Lions. Pretty impressive, you scream. What was the score of this upset? This was no upset. This was business as usual in Beaver Stadium: Penn State 24, Louisville 7. The only thing upset here were the Cardinals and their coaching staff, who understand they could have driven away from Happy Valley with more than a souvenir program.

"We let this game slip right through our fingertips," of safety Rico Clark said. It slipped through Clark's fingertips on a fumbled punt. It slipped through the Cards' line when Penn State blocked a punt for its third touchdown. It slipped off quarterback Jason Payne's hand as he threw three interceptions. In 11 games last season of turned the ball over 20 times.

In two games this season of has dropped everything but the pregame coin toss. Seven turnovers in two weeks. Yesterday there was a blocked punt, an interception at the goal line and a roughing-the-kicker penalty. Betty Crocker might hug a team that can make turnovers that quickly. Ron Cooper, the Cardinals' coach, does not.

"When you're playing against a good football team like Penn State, you can't flinch," he said. Louisville flinched. This was not a 60-minute flinch, like the ones the Cardinals have delivered in previous ABC-TV appearances against Texas and Tennessee. But the early jitters lasted long enough to make victory impossible on a day when Penn State begged to be beaten. The record shows that visiting teams that win in Beaver Stadium do not lose the football, and they get ahead quickly.

Louisville lost the ball four times and fell behind by three touchdowns. In the first 22 minutes the Cards did everything but serenade Penn State's 1986 squad, which was commemorating its national championship. Penn State drove 49 yards for its first score. Got the second one five plays after Clark fumbled a punt on the of 23-yard line. Got the third one by blocking a punt.

It was Penn State 21, Louisville 0. The Cardinals needed to take three deep breaths and forget about those national championship flags flying over Beaver Stadium. Better learn to pretend you're in Cardinal Stadium, fellas, because soon you'll be visiting Michigan State and North Carolina, too. Those are the games that must be won to elevate this program. Instead of having the nerve to believe they could whip Penn State, the Cardinals simply looked nervous.

"Maybe," Payne said. "Possibly. I'll have to watch the films to see how nervous people looked and if that led to the mistakes. I think most of us were just excited." Credit the Cards with this: Instead of rolling over the way they have in previous defining-moment games at Tennessee (45-10 in 1993) and Texas (35- and 22-point defeats in 1993 and '92), they outplayed Penn State for the final 38 minutes. They exposed Nittany Lions quarterback Wally Richardson (11 for 33 with two interceptions and a bunch of boos) as a guy who can't deliver a national title.

They played to win, not to look good, with passes on two fake punts. Even went for it on fourth-and-one from the Penn State 30 in the third quarter while trailing 21-7. Didn't get it when halfback Otis Floyd was smothered for a 1-yard loss. Didn't get much by running it all day, gaining only 50 yards. But again the Cards suggested they have the defense to beat top-20 teams if they stop gift-wrapping the football.

"I'm upset," Cooper said. "The team's upset." And this was a day Penn State could have been upset. Rick Bozich's column normally runs Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays in Sports. You can reachhim at 582-4650. combined 45 points that the University of Louisville and Cincinnati have beaten them by in 1996.

That's Louisville and Cincinnati, not Florida and Tennessee. Here in the year UK least could afford such a start. Losing to the Cardinals by 24 points was embarrassment enough for UK. Being bullied 24-3 by the Bearcats, who were freshly embarrassed in their own right last week by Tulane, is the last clear signal athletic director See CURRY'S Page 8, col. 1, this section By MARK COOMES The Courier-Journal CINCINNATI Friday night at the team hotel, University of Kentucky defensive coordinator Rick Smith spun a yarn that was less of a bedtime story than a cautionary tale.

"All of y'all watched Notre Dame play Vanderbilt last night," Smith said. "You saw Notre Dame come out flat." About 18 hours later, Smith saw his story fall flat, too. Like the Fighting Irish, the Wildcats were inexplicably lifeless against Cincinnati yesterday. The Irish however mustered enough pluck to escape with a 14-7 win. UK merely went from flat to flattened.

A record crowd of 30,729 at Nip-pert Stadium saw a sufficiently stoked Cincinnati squad cruise to a surprisngly easy 24-3 victory that forced Smith to put a grimmer spin on his postgame address. "I'm embarrassed for you as men," he said. "I'm embarrassed for our staff. I'm embarrassed for the Kentucky fans. I'm just embarrassed, and (the players) are too." The Wildcats were at a loss to explain the team's lack of inspiration.

They had promised to atone for last week's humbling 38-14 loss to archrival Louisville, but their pledge turned out to be the hollowest set of route to a surprisingly easy 1-hour and 52-minute victory. "When you're the underdog, you have less pressure, you're not expected to win," Chang said. "Andre's a great champion, and it's never easy against him, but this was just one of those days when everything went my way." Said Agassi: "You've got to give him a lot of credit, but by the same token, I felt like I was 40 percent of the player that I have been." Chang will face top seed and defending champion Pete Sampras in today's final. Revitalized, rehydrated and regrouped after his treacherous five-set quarterfinal match against Alex BY SAM UPSHAW THE COURIER-JOURNAL University of Kentucky wide receiver Kio Sanford was tackled by Cincinnati's Don Simpson. The Wildcats were held to 56 passing yards In the 24-3 loss to the Bearcats.

Chang routs Agassi, will face Sampras for US. By ROBIN FINN The New York Times NEW YORK The hype didn't hinder him. Neither did the upgrade. Michael Chang, the world's third-ranked tennis player, doesn't care for Hollywood endings, especially when they don't include him. So Chang, whose frill-free work ethic is the antithesis of Andre Agassi's free-spirited hi-jinks on and off the court, never flinched as he wrote Agassi, the tournament's leading man, out of action at the U.S Open yesterday in straight, merciless sets in a semifinal match.

Chang humbled Agassi 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 on Stadium Court. The second- it was soon apparent that the lull that hurt the Olympic gold medalist was a great help to the businesslike Chang, who skipped the Olympics to stay focused on his Open hardcourt schedule. "I was pretty intense out there," Chang said. Chang, who took a certain satisfaction from playing a dictator's role in a match in which he was designated the underdog, broke Agassi in the eighth game of the opening set. Aided and abetted by Agassi's forehand return to the net at set point, Chang served for the set without a hitch, then, nudged along by another netted forehand from Agassi, went up a break in the second for a 2-1 lead en Cone loses to Jays David Cone, who pitched seven no-hit innings Monday in his return from shoulder surgery, allowed three runs and three hits on his first five pitches last night as the Yankees lost 3-2 to Toronto.

C2 GRAF ADVANCES: Steffi Graf's powerful forehand and superior placement overpowered Martina Hingis in straight sets to reach today's women's singles final. C5 seeded Chang spouted 16 aces, saved all three break points he faced and was the beneficiary of 45 unforced errors from Agassi. "I never really found my game," Agassi said. "I couldn't really hurt his second serve, and that's a big element of my game." Agassi also complained of a lack of "intensity" during the match, but American League Texas 2, Milwaukee 1 Oakland 13, Kansas City 6 Baltimore 6, Detroit 0 Chicago 4, Boston 3 Toronto 3, New York 2 California at Minnesota Seattle at Cleveland, rain INSIDE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL Baseball 2-3 Scorecard 4 High Schools 5,9,11 Golf 10 Outdoors 12 Horse Racing 13 Pro Football 14 Turfway's fine 'Wine' Strawberry Wine, a 17-1 shot owned by Vencor CEO Bruce Luns-ford, overtook favored Kiridashi in the stretch to win the Kentucky Cup Preview by three-quarters of a length at Turfway Park. CI 3 National League Cincinnati 7, San Francisco St.

Louis 8, San Diego 3 Philadelphia 4, Chicago 2 Houston 5, Colorado 4 Atlanta 6, New York 1 Montreal 2, Florida 1 Pittsburgh at Los Angeles.