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Show Ute dribblers drop one, slurp up a second? only to relinquish it once during the half. The Utes tied it at 68-all with 5:00 to play, but they could never quite match the 54 percent shooting average that the Arizona boys put together. W.th 1:18 left Soderberg, who didn't live up to all his advance publicity, tipped in a missed shot to put the Utes ahead for the first and only time in the second half. Arizona called time out and set up a play. With The miracle that he was something that the been lacking for three games called dej miracle was man-madeb! ' players themselves as lh : hands up, hustling deff turned the crowd or, , ning the Sun Devils,' Soderberg, after 0nv ! seven points jn his Ji night before, broke 1 By BRUCE WOODBURY Chronicle Staff Basketball is a funny game. Some nights your team plays good enough to challenge the Lakers, while other nights they couldn't beat five midgets with their shoelaces shoe-laces tied together. On the good nights being a basketball coach is not a bad occupation. You can sit on the bench and watch your team make you look good. It's the bad nights that wipe coaches out. After last weekend Utah coach Bill Foster should be an authority on the variances of a basketball team, because Foster and his kids experienced both the good and bad in basketball play. The order, however, was somewhat reversed. The Utes experienced the bad Friday night when Arizona came to town, and what was supposed to be an easy win turned out to be a hard loss 78-76. The upsets continued Saturday night, but this time it was Utah's turn as they put together a super game to down Arizona St. 72-64. The Arizona game was a game of firsts for Utah. It was the first conference game of the season, the first conference game that Foster had ever coached in and it was the first appearance of Utah s heralded big man Mark Soderberg Soder-berg However, the 9,509 faithful who saw Friday's game would have to agree that on that night the old adage of first the worst certainly did apply to the Redskins' Red-skins' play. The Utes led 18-9 with 13:00 to play in the first period, but then, the Wildcats got hot, and by the time that 13:00 had expired had tied the score at 43 apiece. In the second half the Wildcat hot streak continued as they took the lead from the opening tipoff s. ' i V flj ... - , A 'V 'v. - Utah's newest player Mark Soderberg 31 goes up (or a shotin.ed end game."Sod" helped lead Utes to upset win over Arizona Slate')ee 27 seconds left that play materialized when Wildcat guard Jim Huckestein was left free for an easy layup. This gave Arizona a one point lead, but Utah the ball. The Utes, however, weren't quite as cool and turned the ball over to diminish any hope for a victory. Eddie Trail was high with 21 points for the game. Coach Foster blamed the loss on his team's poor defense. Arizona was managing to pull the Ute zone out from underneath the basket and then get a man loose under there for the cripple. The coach vowed, however, that there were going to be some changes made before the Sun Devils showed up Saturday night. True to his word Foster stayed up till 2 a.m. Saturday trying to produce a miracle. r points and 16 reboW become a dominant force riV' Ute offense. He was also a:'at in the Ute defense as hebfche shots and generally intimi: ti the other players around ar basket. in ini Jones, on the other hand, f t intimidating Sun Devils all the court. )th er Foster called the win not a; one, but a great one. Scot If when asked what he did dif F in the ASU game, just rP" shyly, shrugged his shoulders. ' said, "Ah, I don't know." I: may be right because bast is a funny game and some:' you don't know what you do'' or wrong. This weekend, In ti everyone knows what happr'. at Utah: the Utes got trie" laugh. eo |
