LEWISTON — Nate Tolman scored off an Andrew Meisel assist 7:24 into overtime to lift Colby College to a 3-2 men’s soccer victory over Bates College Friday.
Peter Randall and Nick Aubin also scored for 7-6-1 Colby. Jeremy Lachtrupp assisted Randall’s first-half goal. Ben Joslin saved nine of 26 shots.
Patrick Jackson scored both goals for 5-8-1 Bates, one in each half. Griffin Wagner and John Murphy provided assists. Greg Watts turned away four of 20 shots.
Women’s soccer
Colby 4, Bates 3 (2OT)
At Waterville, Colby College scored four unanswered goals to defeat Bates College of Lewiston in double overtime.
Marissa Simmons scored with an assist from Kate Pistel in the second overtime to give 5-6-3 Colby the win. Sam Merriweather and Simmons both scored twice. Alex Yorke and Su-Lin Del Guercio provided assists. Jayde Bennett and Loni Pisani combined for five saves off 12 shots.
Bates scored three times in the first half, the first on an own goal by Bates. Jaimie Cappucci and Tina Tobin scored for the 6-7-1 Bobcats. Meaghan Doherty and Cappucci had assists. Annie Burns stopped five of 22 shots.
Field hockey
Bates 2, Colby 1
At Lewiston, senior Sema Kazarian scored two second-half goals to power Bates College past Colby College of Waterville.
Kelly McManus and Laura Baran assisted the goals for 5-9 Bates. Katie McEnroe stopped 13 of 25 shots.
Heather Quadir scored off a penalty corner at 4:57 into the first half for 6-8 Colby. Liz Fontaine made seven saves off 15 shots.
Football
Boise State, MSU sign deal
BOISE, Idaho — Boise State and Michigan State will play a three-game series starting with the season opener for both teams in 2012.
Officials from both schools announced the deal Friday that also includes a game in Boise in 2022 and the final matchup in East Lansing, Mich., in 2023.
Adding a Big Ten team is a major step for a Boise State program looking to toughen the nonconference portion of its schedule. Next season, the Broncos are moving into the Mountain West Conference and will face more competitive teams like TCU and Air Force than those the Broncos now play in the Western Athletic Conference.
The Broncos are ranked No. 2 and the Spartans No. 5.
The first game is scheduled for Aug. 31, 2012, in East Lansing and will be broadcast by ESPN.
Georgia, Florida battle today
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Georgia’s slide happened in September. Florida’s plunge came in October.
Now, they’re out of the national championship picture, out of the polls and nearly out of chances to make the season special.
Thanks to the Southeastern Conference’s topsy-turvy Eastern Division, though, both remain in the hunt for a spot in the league title game — at least until Saturday.
When the Bulldogs (4-4, 3-3 SEC) and Gators (4-3, 2-3) meet in Jacksonville for the 75th time in the last 78 years, it will essentially be an elimination game in the East. Sure, the loser still will be technically alive in the division race. But it would need plenty of help down the stretch to get to Atlanta.
“If we don’t win this game, then we’re going to be in a lot of … there’s going to be a lot of disappointed faces,” Florida center Mike Pouncey said. “We really need this win.”
Even though the Gators have won 17 of the last 20 in the series, they seem to be the more desperate team.
Florida has lost three consecutive games for the first time since 1999, a slump that dropped coach Urban Meyer’s team from the rankings, left his staff searching for answers to its inept offense and had most of college football wondering what happened to a program that won two of the last four national championships.
“People like for us to lose, people like us to be down,” safety Ahmad Black said. “Everybody’s bashing us right now.”
The Gators, coming off a bye week, spent the extra time evaluating their offensive problems. The unit ranks ninth in the SEC and 89th in the nation.
Meyer blamed the “severe issues” on turnovers, a lack of big plays, dropped passes, missed blocking assignments and inefficiency in the red zone.
“It doesn’t look like us out there,” he said.
But can the Gators really fix their problems in two weeks?
“We have modified quite a bit,” Meyer said.
Meyer is 31-3 in his coaching career, including 15-1 at Florida, with more than a week to prepare. His record includes season openers, bowls and games after open dates. He’s 2-0 against the Bulldogs with an extra week.
South Carolina hosts Vols
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Steve Spurrier remembers all three South Carolina victories over Tennessee, even the one in 1992 when he wasn’t the 17th-ranked Gamecocks’ coach.
He would like to make beating the Vols more routine, starting on Saturday.
Though the three wins South Carolina does own have all been special.
In 1992 Spurrier’s Florida Gators had to have outside help to win the Southeastern Conference Eastern Division and the Gamecocks, in their first season as SEC members, obliged with a stunning 24-23 victory over the 16th-ranked Vols.
“That was a memorable day,” Spurrier recalled. “That was a day that Florida beat Georgia, and we needed somebody to beat Tennessee to win the Eastern Division, which happened that year.”
Spurrier was the Gamecocks coach for their only two series wins since then, each memorable in their own right. South Carolina won at Tennessee in 2005, Spurrier’s debut season, for the first time ever. Then two years ago, the Gamecocks dominated the Vols 27-6 and the school announced shortly after that longtime coach Phil Fulmer would not return.
Spurrier and the Gamecocks host the struggling Vols (2-5, 0-4 SEC) this weekend.
“Tennessee’s a little bit in a down slump, as several teams are,” Spurrier said. “But we can’t worry about that.”
South Carolina (5-2, 3-2) has much bigger, Tennessee-type things on its mind, like reaching the SEC championship game. The Gamecocks lead the SEC East and are the division’s only two loss team. Things fall Spurrier’s way this weekend and he’s playing for a spot in the Georgia Dome the following week against Arkansas.
“We see these things. We just have to keep a level head,” said Brian Maddox, who had a career-high 146 yards in last week’s 21-7 win at Vanderbilt. “We know it’s there. We just have to kind of put it in the back of our minds.”
Spurrier’s done his best to make sure South Carolina keeps its focus week-to-week the past few games with so-so results. The Gamecocks held fourth-quarter leads at Auburn and Kentucky before losing those contests, yet quickly bounced back from both contests the following game — most notably for South Carolina with its 35-21 upset of No. 1 Alabama on Oct. 9.
The Vanderbilt win last week showed Spurrier his players had some ability to fight off adversity and achieve. The Gamecocks were tied 7-all at the half and playing without injured freshman star Marcus Lattimore in the backfield. Still, they rallied to the win.
“It was sort of good to be tied at halftime and win the game last week,” Spurrier said. “The two we’d lost, heck, we were leading going into the fourth quarter in both of them. So, we didn’t finish well a couple of games. We ended up finishing against Vandy a lot better. That’s probably what we’re going to need to do if we’re going to be successful down the stretch here.”
Tennessee’s probably not sure what it can do to avoid a disastrous finish in Derek Dooley’s first year as coach. Starting quarterback Matt Simms sprained his left knee in a 41-10 loss to Alabama last week and spent time in a walking boot. The Vols haven’t had this long an SEC losing streak since 2005 with some fans worried about — gulp — going 0-8 by the time it’s all down.
“I’ve seen a sense of disappointment,” Tennessee receiver Gerald Jones said. “I’ve seen a couple of heads drop.”
This week, Dooley unbelievably compared Tennessee to German troops in WWII surprised by the Allies’ D-Day Invasion. The losing is starting to wear on the first-year coach.
“Here, I get reminded every week this is the first time since some Stone Age that this happened,” Dooley said. “It hasn’t happened a lot here. … This is new. We’re in uncharted waters.”
So is South Carolina, which has rarely come this close to the SEC championship.
“All we are is in position right now, which is good. It’s very good,” Spurrier said. “Whether or not we can finish, we’re going to find out.”
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Jeffrey Collins of The Associated Press in Columbia, S.C., and AP Sports Writer Beth Rucker in Knoxville, Tenn., contributed to this report.