BEST BETS
Billiards
Ultimate 9-ball challenge,
ESPN(34), 6:30p.m.
Sports
Emerald
Top UO stories of 1997-98
1. BILL DELLINGER’S RETIREMENT:
The man who continued the Oregon track tra
dition begun by the other Bill's, Hayward and
Bowerman, hung up his spikes after 26 years
as the men’s head coach. The former Dude and
Olympian announced his departure, effective
after next fall’s cross country season, just two
weeks after the announcement of...
1A. RON FINLEY’S RETIREMENT:
Finley single-handedly supported Oregon’s
wrestling program through 28 seasons,
recording more than 300 career victories and
guiding 20 Oregon men to All-American hon
ors. The former USA Wrestling coach of the
year was a member of four world champi
onship teams.
3. OREGON 31. NO. 6 WASHINGTON 28:
The football team’s Nov. 8 win in Seattle broke
the Huskies’ two-season conference home
winning streak. Akili Smith completed 15 of 25
passes for 193 yards and three touchdowns,
including the game winner with 2:33 left in the
fourth quarter to a diving Pat Johnson.
4. OREGON 97, NO. 6 UCLA 81:
For the third time in four seasons, the men’s
basketball team welcomed a nationally ranked
Bruins team to McArthur Court and sent them
away empty-handed. Oregon hit six straight
three-pointers, the first three by junior Terik
Brown, beginning at the 6:37 mark of the sec
ond half, then nailed 15 of 16 free throws down
the stretch to ice the victory and the Bruins.
The win was the biggest of Ernie Kent’s first
season as head coach of his alma mater.
5. OREGON 68. NO. 7 ARIZONA 66:
uregon point guard Natalie Hughes sank a 15
footer with 2.6 seconds left to give the
women’s basketball team its second win over a
nationally ranked opponent in as many weeks.
The tide turned two nights later when fresh
man forward Brianne Meharry, until then one
of the team’s MVPs, tore her ACL just 40 sec
onds in to the Arizona State game. That injury,
combined with center Jenny Mowe’s medical
redshirt, severely hampered Oregon’s post
season chances, as they eventually lost to Rut
gers in the first round of the NCAA Tourna
ment, 79-76.
6. OREGON 41, AIR FORCE 13:
The football team kicked off the Pacific-10
Conference’s 5-1 showing in the postseason
bowls by thrashing the Falcons' “white" de
fense in every way imaginable. Johnson
scored on a 69-yard pass from Smith on Ore
gon’s first play from scrimmage, tailback Sal
adin McCullough scampered to a 76-yard
touchdown run on the second and Air Force's
vaunted triple-option offense was allowed just
152 yards rushing by the young, but stingy,
Oregon defense.
7. OREGON 10, NO. 19 IOWA 9:
Lindsay Welch’s grand slam in the bottom of
the seventh inning lifted the Oregon softball
team to the championship game of the College
World Series’ Midwestern Region and the
Ducks’ highest postseason finish since 1989.
No. 5 Nebraska ended Oregon’s season the
next day with a hotly contested 9-7 victory that
featured five lead changes.
8. AKILI SMITH’S SUSPENSION:
Smith was back in the news two months after
the football season ended when the quarter
back was accused first of beating up a bouncer
at the Mill Camp Saloon in Springfield on Feb.
1, then arrested for drunken driving by Eugene
police two weeks later. The suspension, im
posed for an indefinite time period by head
football coach Mike Bellott! for “violation of
team policy,” was conveniently lifted just one
day after the Ducks' spring practice season be
gan April 6.
9. NCAA GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS:
Both the men’s and women’s golf teams ad
vanced to nationals in the same season for the
first-time ever. The men tied for 27th in their
first appearance at the championships since
1990. The women placed 14th in their fifth vis
it to nationals in the last six seasons.
10. SALADIN MCCULLOUGH 93 YARDS,
ARIZONA WILDCATS SPECIAL TEAMS 0:
McCullough got the Oregon football season
started on the right foot, then the left, then the
right... eventually taking the Ducks’ first touch
of the season, after Arizona kicked off, 93 yards
in the other direction for a touchdown.
Davis UO’s strongest finisher at NCAAs
After jailing to eighth, Micah
Davis passed four runners in
the final 300 meters of Friday's
steeplechase to finish fourth
By Alex Pond
Sports Editor
Led by Micah Davis’ fourth-place finish in
Friday’s steeplechase, the Oregon men con
cluded their season—and with it the 26-year
head coaching career of Bill Dellinger—over
the weekend at the NCAA Track and Field
Championships in Buffalo, N.Y.
With seven team points, the Ducks fin
ished in 35th place overall. Arkansas won
the title with 58.5 points, while Stanford
finished second with 51 points.
Davis, one of three Oregon men compet
ing in the meet, concluded the steeplechase
in his fastest time ever, eight minutes, 41.95
seconds, and earned All-American honors
for the second straight season.
NCAA
Trai
leld
Championship
“I’m happy with my
race,” Davis said, “but
I'm also a bit disappoint
ed. I wanted to do better,
but you can only rehash
a race a million times in
your mind. What’s done
is done.”
Davis, Oregon’s 12th
All-American in the
steepiecnase in me past 10 years, led the first
half of the race before falling back to eighth
with less than a lap to go. However, he
passed up four runners in the final 300 me
ters, then held off Portland’s Bryan Bothwell
NICK MEDLEY/Emerald
Marie Davis, who received All-American honors forfinishing sixth on the 3,000 me
ters at the NCAA Championships, runs against WSU earlier this season.
for the fourth-place finish.
The Spokane, Wash., na
tive said his strategy was to
just keep the leaders with
in reach heading into the
final lap, which he wasn’t
quite able to do.
“I let them get too far
away from me,” he said. "I
should have responded
DAVIS
sooner when they went around me and then
I probably could have been within striking
distance with a lap to go.
“It was kind of a weird race and I was in it
and out of it mentally. There were parts of
the race where I was right there and parts
where I wasn’t there. I guess the best part of
my race was the finish. I had a really strong
Turn to MEN, Page 20A
Three women
come home
All-Americans
Marie Davis was the third UO
woman to earn All-American
honors with a fifth-place
finish in the 3,000 meters
By Rob Moseley
Sports Reporter
With two All-American honors by Ore
gon women already secured, the Ducks'
Marie Davis entered the 3,000 meters at this
weekend’s NCAA Track and Field Champi
onships in Buffalo, -—
N.Y., with Oregon’s NCAA
best chance for a top
three finish and possi
bly even a win.
Davis started strate
gically, staying near
the back of a 12-deep
group of leaders so as
to avoid expending
energy by providing the others with some
one to draft behind.
“I wanted to be in position for the win,
and I was,” Davis said. “It was the kind of
race where it was tough to judge where you
should be because it was so tactical."
Tracy Robertson and Jessica Koch, both
members of the eventual national champi
on Arkansas Razorbacks, took the lead in
the second half of the race, and Davis took
advantage of the ability to draft to move into
third.
But when the bell rang for the final’lap,
Turn to WOMEN, Page 15A
Pac-10 proves to be kina of NCAA conferences
I-- m ilmiii.i.l
Tim
Pyle
There is a popular notion on the East Coast that
goes something like this:
“This is the center of the world. Everything
that is important happens here. That’s why
we’re all in such a [insert expletive here] hurry all the
time. If you think otherwise, I will mercilessly tailgate
you—actually, I’ll do that regardless of your opinion. ”
I learned this from living in New Jersey for a summer,
during which I was repeatedly asked interesting ques
tions about Oregon. Among the greatest hits were in
quiries about marijuana laws (all the Jersey natives think
there are none here), how big the farm I lived on was (I’ve
never lived on one) and whether Chinese restaurants had
made their way to our neck of the woods.
The East’s chest-thumping does not relinquish in
sports, either.
In the collegiate sports world, the commonly held belief
on the other side of the country is that only conferences
east of the Rocky Mountains are among the nation’s elite.
True, the Big East, Atlantic Coast, Southeastern and Big
Ten conferences boast an abundance of quality competition
and top athletes. However, one conference outshines them
all when collegiate sports i n their entirety are considered.
Oregon’s very own Pacific-10 Conference has proved
itself worthy of its self-proclaimed "Conference of
Champions” slogan in recent years.
After setting an all-time record with 14 NCAA team titles
in 1996-97, the Pac-10 has captured 11 more national cham
pionships this academic year, culminating with Southern
California’s 21-14 drubbing of Arizona State in Saturday’s
Fiesta Bowl... er... College World Series title game (note:
I’m not claiming the Pac-10 has the nation’s best pitchers).
In addition to the Trojans’ baseball triumph, Stanford
has earned five championships (men’s cross country,
women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s swimming
and men’s tennis), UCLA has gained two titles (men’s
soccer and men’s volleyball), and California (men’s
gymnastics), Arizona State (women’s golf) and Wash
ington (women’s rowing) have all captured one nation
al championship this school year.
Furthermore, the Pac-10 has won NCAA titles in 17 of
tlie 31 possible di fferent sports since the begi lining of the
1996-97 school year.
That does not even take into account multiple win
ners in a particular sport. In women’s gol f (Arizona in
1995-96 and Arizona State the last two seasons) and
Turn to PYLE, Page 16A