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Show Thursday Quarterback Cedar vs. Springville SUSC vs. Cal Poly Mark Holland and Mike Schiess are Mollica's favorite receivers. Holland catches passes for 80.5 yards per game, while Schiess is hauling in aerials for an average of 23.8 yards per contest. Defensive backs Trace Burningham and Dave Faddis top the defensive stats. Faddis leads the team in tackles, and Burningham has picked off four opponent passes to lead in that department. depart-ment. "What we really need right now is to get our execution back to the point it was against Mesa," Bishop indicates. "While we did some things well and had some good individual performances per-formances last week in our loss to Adams State, we generally did not execute the way we should have." The T-Birds lost, 28-14, to Adams State to fall from the unbeaten list an in all probability drop from its national ranking (18th) among NAIA schools. Physically, SUSC was hurt by the loss of linebacker Dave Smith for the Cal Poly game. Smith suffered bruised ribs. He will be replaced by junior Wayne Kittrell who played a strong game in the Alamosa loss. "We think that Cal Poly should be 'up' for this game for a couple of reasons," Bishop figures. "First, it's their only real inland trip; and second, a win should really help them 'turn the corner' on their attempt to put together a winning season. Cal Poly has a 2-2 record. They have victories vic-tories over Sacramento State (27-7) and San Francisco State (20-17) and losses to Puget Sound (16-15) and Santa Clara (30-14). SUSC lost a 28-13 decision at Puget Sound a year a ago. The Thunderbirds and Broncos have met four times, and Cal Poly came away the winnner three times. The last two meetings came in the 1973 and 1974 seasons. The T-Birds T-Birds won, 38-15, in '73, but Cal Poly won a 37-27 decision in 1974. Southern Utah State College's football team will take a vacation from Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference action this week, but the Thunderbirds Thun-derbirds won't be on any holiday. The T-Birds host Cal Poly Pomona, a team which is supposed to be competing in "a class up" from SUSC, Saturday at 1 p.m. in Thunderbird Stadium. "We think this week's game will give us a good chance to size up our program against a fine football school in college division competition in California." Jack Bishop, SUSC head coach says. Cal Poly, which is coached by Roman Gabriel, former quarterback quar-terback for the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, is showing signs of changing its football fortunes after four straight years of won-lost records below the .500 mark. "They have an excellent ex-cellent quarterback who can really wing the ball and a tailback who will be about as quick as anything we'll face this season," Bishop worries. The quarterback is Fred Collings, a 6-0, 170-pound 170-pound junior who completes com-pletes nearly 70 percent of his pass attempts. Per game, the Broncos pick up an average of 175 yards per contest through the air. Meanwhile, Charles Cole torments the defense with an average of over 70 yards per game on the ground. "Their offense is diversified enough that we can't key too much on any individual. Several people can gain yards," Bishop says. Statistically, SUSC is led offensively by quarterback Dave Mollica who passes for an average of 142 yards and two touchdowns per game. Mollica is also the top ground gainer with 54.7 yards per contest. While Cedar may have , had a bit of a breather . with . Carbon last weekend, their game last night with Springville placed them squarely on the fire again, a position they've been in all year. The Redmen entered the game with a lofty 6-0 mark, 3-0 in Region Six Southern Division play, but even being 6-1 after the Springville game wouldn't have been good enough, You see, the Red Devils entered the game with just a 4-2 seasonal mark, but a 2-1 league ledger, and a victory over Cedar would have evened things up, and opened up the possibility for a three-way three-way tie for the divisional championship, and a coin toss to determine the top seeded squad. Though they stood 6-0, Cedar still hadn't assured itself a spot in the state playoffs. Should they lose their final two games, it could open the door for Payson to gain the third spot and totally shut the Redmen out. On the other hand, a victory over Springville would have simplified matters greatlyfor the Redmen would have clinched the division championship, regardless regar-dless of what they do next week at Payson. Looking at statistics, Cedar would appeared to have the advantage. Offensively, the Redmen are second in the six-team six-team division with a 21-point-per-game average. Springville follows in third, but scores just 16 per outing. Cedar was still tops in defense, allowing just eight points per game, while Springville again was third, giving up 12 per game. The teams have shared four common opponents. The Red Devils topped Dixie 12-7; Cedar beat them 14-7. Springville edged Provo 20-19 in overtime, while Cedar beat the Bulldogs 19-14. But Cedar has victories over the two clubs to beat Springville. The Redmen defeated American Fork 19-7; Springville lost to the Cavemen 17-0. And Cedar topped Spanish Fork 13-7, while the Red Devils lost to them just last week by a 21-6 count. But CHS Head Coach Dave Jenson, typically wary of all games, was especially cautious about this one. "Springville has a good football team. They have two running backs who come straight at you, and their quarterback, I feel, is the second best quarterback quar-terback in the region. They also play outstanding out-standing defense."". Jenson, however, was more outwardly optimistic op-timistic about this team's chances than in some prior games this season. "I think we'll beat them. If we play just half as well as we did in practice Monday, there should be no problem winning the game." Unlike other teams the Redmen have played this year, the Red Devils don't tower over them physically. "They're not a real big team," said Jenson. "They do well by playing sound, fundamental fun-damental football. Nobody beats them very badly." In Springville, the Redmen will be facing basically a running team which likes to play ball control. In reviewing Springville's films, however, Jenson has noticed on unique feature about their running game: "They run a lot of traps and do a lot of trap blocking. We haven't seen much of that his year." the Redmen entered the game with a few question marks. Quarterback Quar-terback David Carter and Wide receiver Rusty Beatty, as of Monday, were suffering from the flu, but Jenson anticipated an-ticipated them still playing. Lineman Brian Hall, who was injured earlier in the season, should have seen more playing time against Springville, after testing the waters against Carbon. Other than a few minor bumps and bruises, Jenson said, the rest of the team was ready to go. The Redmun may not have thought at the start of the season their climatic game would come against Springville, but it did, and they were well aware of its importance. im-portance. "This game is for the conference championship," concluded con-cluded Jenson. "It's that simple." Parowan - Idle The Parowan Rams don't have a game this week, and boy, is Scott Doubek glad. Not only the coach, but , his players are i smarting after the 64-0 j rout suffered at the hands of powerhouse Beaver Friday. And only part of that pain is mental. "We got beat up physically," Doubek lamented. "Beaver is one hard-hitting team. Our boys are suffering from a lot of aches and pains." That's why Doubek was glad to see this hole in his schedule. "We've just got to recover, then get ready to taken on Milford again." The Rams lost to Milford earlier, 26-0, but played the Tigers much better than the score indicates. Last on. the schedule for Parowan is Hurricane, undefeated to this point, - and, ; little comfort to the Rams, twice winners over Beaver. |