Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 61

LJ Today's television highlights: 1 p.m. Football: Baltimore at Pittsburgh 2 p.m. Baseball: Cincinnati at Houston 4 p.m. Football: Chicago at Miami 4 p.m. Baseball: Detroit at Boston Sunday, Sept.

23, 1979 SPORTS PEOPLE IE INSIDE OF SPORTS HORSE RACING OUTDOORS DETROIT FREE PRESS lance. 24 Top 20 teams wins on la How th Top 20 teams ki the Associated Prsss major college football poll fared in Saturday's games (this year's records in parentheses): 228-6720 Sportsline For the latest sports scores and results. mm MSU -21 st (3-0) (2-0) (1-0) (1-1) (1-D By CHARLIE VINCENT Free Press Sports Writer EAST LANSING Just when it appeared the Michigan State Spartans couldn't win the Little Ones, they summoned up the offensive resources that had lay dormant all afternoon and squeezed past Miami of Ohio, 24-21. The Spartans, ranked eighth in the nation and 15-point favorites to manhandle the Redskins, came within one play of seeing their winning streak snapped at nine. Miami led 21-17 with just 2:07 remaining, when they had to punt, setting the Spartans up 54 yards away from the touchdown they needed to pull this one out.

Quarterback Bert Vaughn's passes fell incomplete on the first three downs and by then the clock had wound down to 1:32. But on fourth down flanker Eugene Byrd broke open over the middle and Vaughn's desperation pass, the last chance the Spartans had, floated softly into his arms at Miami's 28. First down! Only 92 seconds remained on the clock and the overflow crowd of 78,582 the seventh largest in Spartan Stadium history was on its feet as Vaughn pitched back to Derek Hughes. BYRD DELIVERED a bone-rattling block at the corner and Hughes turned up field, setting sail for the Miami end zone, only to be bumped out of bounds by Kirk Springs at the one. An offside penalty against MSU delayed the inevitable only a little longer.

Then (3-0) (3-0) (2-0) (2-1) 1 SOUTHERN CAL beat Minnesota. 48-14. 2 ALABAMA beat Baylor, 45-0. 3 OKLAHOMA beat Tulsa. 49-13.

4 TEXAS beat Iowa 17-9. 5 NOTRE DAME lost to Purdue, 28-22. PENN STATE lost to Texas A JM. 27-14 7 NEBRASKA beat Iowa, 24-21. I MICHIGAN STATE beat Miami (Ohio), 24-21.

MISSOURI beat Mississippi, 33-7. 10 HOUSTON did not play. 11 MICHIGAN beat Kansas, 28-7. 12 WASHINGTON beat Oregon, 21-17. 13 PITTSBURGH lost to North Carolina, 17-7.

14 FLORIDA STATE beat Miami (Florida), 40-23. 15 ARKANSAS beat Oklahoma 27-7. 16 OHIO STATE beat Washington 45-29. 17 PURDUE beat Notre Dame. 28-22.

11 SOUTHERN METHODIST beat North Texas 20-9. 19 NO. CAROLINA ST. beat West Virginia, 38-14. 20 UCLA beat Wisconsin, 37-12.

(3-0) (1-1) (3-0) i gSOIflG (2-0) Vaughn tossed a six-yard touchdown pass to tight end Mark Brammer to finally salvage what had been a very, very desperate afternoon for the Spartans. "I didn't feel in practice all week that we had intensity and that's the way we performed today I didn't see anything out there that really excited me very much," Rogers said. "But I think the character (3-0) (2-1) Spartan fans, put aw (3-0) the Rose Bowl brochures (3-0) AP Photo by DALE ATKINS Miami of Ohio receiver Mark Hunter zig-zags away from Michigan State's Alan Davis on Saturday. (2-1) See MSU, Page 5E 28-7 Defense does it for U-M. Erratic offense bothers Bo it lias a long way to go' By MICK McCABE Free Press Sports Writer ANN ARBOR For years the University of Michigan has attracted over 100,000 fans every week to watch the Wolverines' offense grind out victory after victory with an attack that put the ball in the air only on punts.

This season the Wolverines are still attracting capacity crowds, but this time around they're showing up to watch the talented U-M defense pound opponents into submission. Again Saturday the defense was spectacular as the Wolverines blitzed Kansas, 28-7, before 103,698 fans for their second win in three games. The U-M defense, anc- Boilermaker only 25 yards rushing and a ray 0 hoUlltC mere 79 passing. Kansas (0-2) managed only six first downs fisJi Pa irC 4 Is and didn't record a first down until the second quarter. THE U-M offense, however, was a different story a horror story for Schembechler.

"This is exactly what we anticipated," Schembechler said of his offense. "We're young and we're not executing and not blocking. We're making too many mistakes. In a game like this we should be totally dominant. We should be able to score when we want to.

I don't consider that good. "I think we can be a pretty good team but we're not going to be if we keep playing like we are erratic. The difference is our defense is smart. They've all been there before. Our offense has a long way to go.

It's not hopeless because we have some talent. But we can't continue to make mistakes. "We had 468 yards (total offense) and 92 (actually 93) offensive plays. Now tell me that isn't ridiculous. We had 92 plays and only four touchdowns.

Is that a 28-7 game, I ask you?" SINCE HE asked, the 1 lth-ranked Wolverines seemed to be in command from the opening kickoff as freshman Anthony Carter returned the ball 42 yards to the Michigan 44-yard line. The Wolverines took the ball on the opening drive and marched it right down the field, throwing only twice, before Stanley Edwards went over from two yards out for a 7-0. EAST LANSING Whoever started the rumor Michigan State is headed for the Rose Bowl? The guy's a big tease. The Spartans remade their map Saturday. It now is more than 2,000 miles from here to Pasadena.

Now the Rose Bowl seems at least a year away. They have not developed as well and quickly as hoped. During the summer their weaknesses were obvious as they sought to replace key players from their renaissance team of 1978. The replacements have shortcomings. That had been all too obvious in the first two weeks of this season, and it became almost tragically so here Saturday as the Spartans blew a 17-0 lead then fought the clock and themselves to avert an upset in the final 85 seconds.

They beat Miami of Ohio, 24-21, and when coach Darryl Rogers had a moment, he cast his eyes to the ceiling and smiled, one of those "Thank you, Lord" smiles. It was that close a call for the nation's eighth-ranked team against a minor league power. Little Miami managed merely one first down in the entire first half, yet it came alive in the second half and scared the breath from the Spartans. Face it, Michigan State simply is not as good a team as its anxious, ambitious followers would like to believe. With as fine a set of pass receivers as one is likely to find in the college game, the Spartans have trouble getting the ball to them.

Their scheme and emphasis is on passing the football and covering gobs of yardage in swoops. But alas, Rogers does not have available a true and steady passing arm, and so you begin to fear they will fall because of Vaughn throws hot and cold It all but happened to them against Miami. Bert Vaughn, a rangy sophomore who has inherited the quarterbacking job, was short, high, wide and everything but handsome as he repeatedly misfired on his passes. Rogers suspected Bert might be like that, hot one week, cold the next. It goes with inexperience.

But though that might explain the shortcoming, the shortcoming is nonetheless real and one the Spartans will have to live with, for however long. "We had a terrible offense," said Rogers. "We get three fumbles and an interception coming our way in the first half and you'd like to think a team would take advantage of that and put the game away." The Spartans could not, and as happens so often when a team squanders its opportunities, it must fight for life and maybe rue its wastefulness. breakdown was in the Spartans' passing game, Vaughn misfiring gruesomely and often. When that happens, MSU is really in a bind because so much of their design and intent is tied to passing.

Rogers tried to absolve Vaughn, somewhat, saying his receivers weren't doing all that great a job shaking free of Miami defenders and giving Bert a decent target. They dropped a few, too. "Poor Bert, he really got blasted a few times after he threw the ball," said Rogers. "They were good, clean shots, and at halftime I briefly considered replacing him. I had expected he would have 'up and 'down' days." It wasn't simply Vaughn's erratic passing that all but beat the Spartans.

"We had a general breakdown," said Rogers. "I thought we had bad practices all week, and when you practice bad, you generally play that way." Was MSU looking ahead? Was it because the Spartans were playing Miami, from the smaller, lesser prestigious Mid-American Conference? "You mean were we looking ahead? To whom?" the coach said. "Sure we have more intensity in games within our own conference, but I've always felt there are good football players at every school." Miami, the team that sent Bo Schembechler on to the University of Michigan, proved it had enough to challenge these Spartans, and doing that, the Redskins. opened serious question as to the worth of Rogers' team. For weeks Rogers has insisted MSU would need time to repair and prime itself to be a valid title contender in the Big Ten again.

He has just about run out of time. The Spartans are 3-0, but the record can be misleading. They do not look like a team prepared for what lies ahead in the next five weeks. Next week, for instance, comes Notre Dame, a traditional rival now and always threatening. Then the showdown With Michigan, a trip to Wisconsin, followed by pivotal tests against conference powers Purdue and Ohio State.

Those who already had booked holiday trips to California, trusting the Spartans would be there, could make alternate plans. It looks at the moment like a long and impossible road. Well, that's the way it looks. The one thing you have to know about football teams is that they can and do change, sometimes drastically and dramatically. Michigan State did that against Miami, and it saved itself because Bert Vaughn himself changed.

When the kid absolutely had to deliver for the Spartans, he did. He did it beautifully with several of the sharpest football darts ever to come from the hand of man and he saved 'em from an embarrassing upset and breathed new life into them. If you say, hey, isn't that the very stuff of which champions are made? I would say it is very true indeed. It is the promise, or at least the hope, the Spartans retain. AP Pholo by LOREN PORTNOW Wolverine touchdown in Michigan's 28-7 win over the Jayhawks Saturday.

Michigan running back Lawrence Reid goes up and over the University of Kansas line to score the second FP Marathon Man needs you After Kansas was stopped on four plays, U-M took the ball at the Kansas 46 and moved in for a 42-yard field goal attempt by Ali Haji-Sheikh, that was wide. U-M's next drive stalled on Kansas' 41 and the next on its own 23. That series ended with a punt that Leroy Irvin returned 60 yards for a touchdown with 13:31 left in the first half. Irvin took the punt and headed to his right behind a prefectly set up wall. When he got to the U-M 30 he raised a finger.

Kansas hadn't even recorded a first down and the score was tied. "I didn't see my left end See U-M, Page 5E By TOM HENNESSY Free Press Sports Editor It has been two months and 22 days since I agreed to make a fool of myself by abandoning my vices and training to run the second Free Press International Marathon. With the possible exception of joining the army, this is the dumbest thing I have ever done. What's more, there appears to be no way to duck the Oct. 14 race, although a number of coconspirators God bless them have made valiant recommendations.

MY MARATHON training began as an' experiment: Could a 43-year-old, grossly overweight, four-pack-a-day smoker whose only exercise was lifting beer cans, training between July 1 and Oct. 14 to run 26 miles, 385 yards? As unprepared as I was for training, I was even more unprepared for the degree of interest readers have taken in this ludicrous experiment. In addition to letters of encouragement and discouragement from various parts of the U.S., there have been periodic inquiries See MARATHON, Page3E One, for example, offered the services of a shadowy entrepreneur who "will break both your legs for $50," a radical and somewhat unthrifty suggestion in view of the fact that there are people who would do the deed free of charge. Another volunteered to procure an elephant for me to ride, rationalizing that it would merely be "a matter of borrowing" the elephant's legs to replace my own leaden pair, while, from the waist up, my body could go through all the gyrations of Frank Shorter in the Olympics. rtiintiiiiiinfiflinn fiiTrrnair THiWtiUMinilM Tom Hennessy "Is he crazy?" WIRE TO WIRE AT DUC Prince wins Mile Champ tops gallant Rice CINCINNATI Moeller High of Cincinnati; the 1977 mythical national football champion which has lost only one game in seven years, was just too much for a hard-trying Brother Rice High sqaud from Birmingham here Saturday night.

Moeller, getting three touchdowns from Eric Ellington, defeated Rice, 33-14, before 20,792 fans in the University of Cincinnati Stadium. Moeller had given up only three first downs in three previous victories this season but the Warriors of coach Al Fra- See RICE, Page 4E plained. "When Prince Majestic came up to me on the outside, I wasn't worried, I knew I still had plenty of horse left." Prince Majestic, who made the only real run at the winner throughout the 1 mile race, had to settle for second money while Sorry Lookin held on for third along the inside. "My horse has run better races than this because I think the race track here is deep," Vasquez went on. "I rode a couple of races earlier in the day and I went all over the race track looking for a difference in the footing See MILE, Page 5E KO win for Hearns 2E By GENE GUIDI Free Press Racing Writer Top The Marc Stables' Sensitive Prince survied the "Graveyard of Favorites" Saturday at the Detroit Race Course, winning the 1 1 5,600 Michigan Mile by a length and a half in wire-to-wire fashion.

The odds-on Sensitive Prince thus became the first public choice to capture the Mile since Native Royalty did it in 1971 and the one of the few favorites to prevail in the handicap's 31 -year history. Winning jockey Jacinto Vasquez was just as calm following the race as he was during the running. "This horse has always got a lot of speed and it don't make no difference what the early fractions are he's out there," Vasquez ex DRC Photo Sensitive Prince, with Jacinto Vasquez up, glides under the wire Saturday to win the 31st running of the Michigan Mile by 1 V4 lengths at Detroit Race Course. iiiiijkuukii.il i.