pasting numbers but excel 'autocorrects' some to dates

im copying numbers from a basketball boxscore into excel

ex. http://espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=311228009

and when copying the team totals at the bottom of the boxscore into excel, excel decides it wants to change some of the values, primarily FGA, into a date, thus 77 becomes 17-MAR. i notice when i go to format cells, to change it to general, the cell is preset to custom, with one of the date formats selected.

is there a way to make excel not do this?

thanks

jr