The Greenville News from Greenville, South Carolina • Page 47

(Dlf CwttUilleJfaW GREENVILLE PIEDMONT a- Outdoors Sunday, September 6, 1981 Section Tnsieirs wmsr mt WoflffoireL 45 By Chris Smith The Greenville News i CLEMSON Wofford wasn't exactly the playful little mutt so many expected Clemson's Tigers to paw about Death Valley, afterall. Those little Terriers had sharp teeth; and for every swipe the Tigers took Saturday afternoon, Wofford bit back. Wofford's spunk, which smothered Clemson's season-opening crowd of 60,000 as heavily as the Clemson quarterback Homer Jordan hurdles his way to a touchdown during the Tigers' victory fk xi. MiM. 4 1, Statistics S.Cor.

Wake First downs 19 12 Rushes-yards 61-271 19-47 Passing yards 155 220 Return yards 73 24 Passes 9180 23342 Punts 532.4 536.8 Fumbles-lost 2-0 l-l Penalties-yards 9-69 3-15 S. Carolina 7 610 0 23 Wake Forest 0 0 6 06 Attendance 29,300 Wofford 17 51-165 128 6 11-23-2 3-0 Clemson 21 54-285 186 71 8-16-2 3-1 First downs Rushes-yards Passing yards Return yards Passes Punts Fumbles-lost Penalties-yards 6-55 8-81 Wofford :....3 0 0 710 Clemson 3 14 14 1445 Attendance 60,000 overbearing heatand humidity, may always be hidden beneath the outward ease of the Tigers' 45-10 victory. But for a while Saturday, the Tiger had to struggle to keep its tail from slipping between the hind legs. "Yeah, we may have blown them out," Clemson Coach Danny Ford said afterward, "but they ran us ragged in the first half with their misdirection. They kept us off balance, and we got trapped pretty bad.

"Wofford had the best game plan to go against us of any team since I've been at Clemson." That plan called for Wofford's wingbone offense the wishbone with a wing to utilize the aggressiveness of Clemson's linebackers. "After viewing the Clemson films," Wofford Coach Buddy Sasser explained afterward, "we felt like we could take advantage of Clemson's pursuit. Their lineback-' ers are quick and they react in a hurry. We had to take advantage of that by using misdirection plays and inside traps." And for at least the first quarter, the strategy worked to near perfection. The Terriers took the opening kickoff and moved 73 yards on a time-consuming, 13-play drive.

Though the Tigers finally checked Wofford at the seven-yard line, the march resulted in a 24-yard field goal by Don Hairston. So with the season nearly seven minutes did, Clemson had yet to touch the ball and was trailing its small neighbor, 3-0. "We anticipated on defense, but just didn't react quick enough," said Ford. "Our linebackers overran a bit and the tackles were getting trapped." It would take the Tiger defense at least a quarter to finally hone in on Wofford's slants and fakes. Clemson's offense, meanwhile, needed several series to loosen up.

Its first possession resulted in a game-tying, 52-yard field gc il by freshman soccer transplant maid Igwebuike. But the offense tself moved only 19 yards; senior fl. nker Perry Tuttle did most of the lam-age with a 38-yard kickoff retu n. Though Wofford did not score again in the first half and wouldn't until just 3:42 remairsd in the game its offense continu 3d to By halftime, the TerMers had accumulated 101 yards ru and 100 passing, and had penet a ted Clemson territory five more til les. The Tigers, meanwhile, de an overabundance of offensive experience, was finding Wofford's defense uncooperative in their attempt to establish early domination.

It wasn't until junior quarterback Homer Jordan teamed with Tuttle for a beautiful 80-yard touchdown pass that Clemson caught fire. See Clemson, Page 3C juries, but their running attack was anemic, 30 yards on 30 carries. Their only touchdown was on a blocked punt, and in an unusual stroke of cruelty, that was called back because they had 12 men on the field. It will go down, if they can keep it down, as one of the most humiliating afternoons in the history of Tennessee football. Not only was it the worst margin of loss for the Vols since 1923 (Vanderbilt 51, Tennessee 7) but Georgia's third string scored more on a non-play in the last 20 seconds than the Vols did in 58 plays the entire afternoon.

The game did about as much damage to a big time program as an opening game can. What it did for Georgia only time can tell, but Dooley admitted he knew of one vote the Bulldogs would get for the top 10. If Majors has a vote, that makes at least two. By Mike Hunt The Greenville News WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. Though tainted by nagging errors and numerous delay penalties, South Carolina's two-quarterback problem turned out to be not such a problem at all Saturday night.

On their way to a 23-6 opening-night win against an outmanned Wake Forest team, the Gamecocks' doubleback attack of Terry Bishop and Gordon Beckham accounted for both USC touchdowns (Beckham with a 49-yard pass to De-Wayne Chivers and Bishop with a three-yard run), passed for 155 yards and ran for 104 more, and were outshined only by a crushing Carolina defense and the right foot of Mark Fleetwood, which knocked home three field goals. In a plan designed to start Bishop and follow up with Beckham, Jim Carlen got what he wanted: experience for both green juniors under game conditions and, more importantly, a win on the road. Although quite pleased with the latter, Carlen was not exactly thrilled at his team's tendancy to hold up the game while getting in its new offensive sets, or the holding calls which helped amount to 69 yards of penalties. "I knew this would happen," said Carlen. Statistics Tenn 11 30- 30 122 0 14-28-1 8-39 2-1 Georgia 30 67-369 194 57 14-19-0 1-35 3-1 5-59 First downs Rushes-yards Passing yards Return yards Passes Punts Fumbles-lost Penalties-yards 3-45 Tennessee 0 0 0 00 Georgia 7 7 10 20 44 Attendance 79,600 We knew there was room for improvement last year (when the Bulldogs were 12-0), and I can see where we've made big improvements.

is a lot faster than last year," said Walker, whose team squeezed out a one-point win over the Volunteers in 1980. "They have a lot of pursuit." Indeed, the Vols had plenty of opportunities for pursuit. Georgia flexed its muscles for 87 offensive plays, only one of them a punt, as it piled up 563 yards of total offense. The Bulldogs punished with 30 first downs and 369 rushing yards on a day when the Vols were collecting just 152 yards of total offense. The ball was pitched to Walker on 30 of those plays, and the result was 161 yards before he left the By Abe Hardesty Piedmont sports editor Athens, Ga.

It was billed as the reigning champion against the fiesty, vengeful challenger. But the challenger never showed up. What showed up instead at San-ford Stadium Saturday was the champion Georgia Bulldogs, the largest football crowd in the state's history, and a hopelessly outmatched visitor. It was a visitor that came and played as if it sensed its inferiority early, and one that went back to Tennessee with the school's worst football defeat in 71 years. The scoreboard said that Tennessee's team was beaten by the degree of 44 to 0, but it may have been beaten worse physically and psychologically.

And it could have been worse. So convincing was this opening-day rout that the 79,600 walked away from the hedges wondering if Tennessee was as bad as it looked or if Georgia was as good as it looked. Herschel Walker, Georgia's All-American runner who was a primary reason for the mismatch, says the latter is true. "I think we're a whole lot better. Majors: Flit ptarto Buck Belue game with 13 minutes to play.

Officially, his longest run of the day was 22 yards. His prettiest run was a 47-yard sprint for a touchdown that was nullified by a penalty. Tennessee Coach Johnny Majors, who watched his Vols suffer their worst Southeastern Conference loss ever, agreed with Walker's theory. "They're better than last year We got whipped about every way you can from the kicking game throughout," said Majors. "Walker is a great runner, one of the few that God puts on thte green earth every now and then.

Great backs are few and far between. Walker has speed, size and strength." So dominant was Georgia's supremacy that this game had no ap- See Georgia, Page 3C signal mixup," explained Dooley later. Paulk approached the official for a time out. Dooley tried to wave it off. Too late.

It was already done, so we told him to just call and play and not hand the man the ball," said Dooley. Paulk carried out the orders, and cruised into the end zone all alone. Dooley shrugged his shoulders. "We didn't want him to fall down on the ball," said Dooley, "That would have been worse than any thing." Majors may have been too numbed by then for it to have mattered. He said, "Certainly," he was shocked when he stood on the sidelines a play earlier and read a 37-0 Georgia lead.

"I thought we'd have to have more than our share of breaks to stay in it," he said. "And we got 'Glad ws dtoiirt play them againm "We're doing too much with young players. You can't do all we do with college players and get it down the first game." In the debut of its much-awaited wide-open offense, South Carolina threw screens and flats and shifted and mixed it up and generally kept the Deacons guessing all night. Only at times it was the Gamecocks who were guessing as they seemed confused with the New Deal. "We did a multiple of things," said Carlen, "but we've got to get where we can execute.

We've got a young team. We're not going to beat a good team making the mistakes we did tonight. Al Groh has done a great job coaching these See (ISC Page 2C ball team as we were last year," when the Vols won five and lost six. He continued that last season, "the biggest uncertainty we had was at quarterback. I had more uncertainties this year." Conversely he feels Georgia has "better football players than they had last year." If it had not been for Georgia's erratic kicking game, Dooley might have had to resort to the unfinished concession stands or unopened rest-rooms in the new section of the stadium to have found much fault with Saturday.

Instead, he said, "It makes an old coach apprehensive to have this good a start," but he quickly added that there's a question of "How good is Tennessee?" Based on'Saturday, not very good. It is true the Vols had key in- ATHENS, Ga. After having a perfect record and winning the national championship last season, Georgia's football team may have finally jelled. Last year, Tennessee coach Johnny Majors wrung his hands over the Vols' near-miss 15-16 loss to Georgia, feeling his team was as bejter. k)0khiat'th0 1981 Bulldogs I rirfrMjr must I killing like a month to him, r-v Majors said if Georgia could play any better than it did Saturday, "I'm sure glad we don't have to some.

Still we were lucky it as late as it was." Looking at his situation in the broad view. Majors labeled the Saturday rout, "a heckuva difficult way to start a season. Going into the season, I was concerned about being as good as we were last year. We started off last year with a team that could have been respectable, until we met some adversities, and I've said enough about that." Then Majors picked on one question to sum up what will be music to the ear of Georgians and trauma to Tennesseans. "I don't think it's fair to Vince to say they're better, but yes, I think compared to last year's opener, when Georgia played against probably a tougher defensive team that we had, it (Georgia) is a better football team.

"And it looks like we've got a long way to go to be as good a foot- dan 0 The outcome left a stunned air around the Tennessee camp. Majors quietly nodded that considering the marginconsidering it was the fifth year of his program, Saturday afternoon was his lowest point since he took the job at Tennessee. The last Georgia touchdown was one that Dooley could have lived without, not to mention Majors. Georgia's reserves were at the Ten-nesse one with 27 seconds left in the game. Dooley was glad the clock was running.

But third string Georgia quarterback Jeff Paulk "had a rZ wmm play them again," and otterea, "They have better players than they had last year." Majors admitted he was shocked at the ease of Georgia's 44-0 victory over his Tennessee Vols. Well he should have been. It has been more than 500 games, 58 years, since a Tennessee team was defeated so badly. Jtmtmiuiimai Wai.