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Show Baseballers set for seige By the time the Southern Utah State College baseball team finishes its eighth game in four days Saturday night, it should be able to handle almost any tournament schedule. The Thunderbirds get their concentrated schedule Wednesday and Thursday with doubleheaders each day against powerful Grand Canyon College and again Friday and Saturday in twin bills. All eight games are scheduled to be played at Thunderbird Field, 850 West Center. "A schedule like this " j and the nature of the opposition both work against us," Don Conrad, SUSC baseball coach, explains. "First, both Grand Canyon and Northern Arizona are good hitting teams. Second, probably the major weakness of our team is a lack of depth in the pitching staff. Combine those two factors with eight games in four days, and it's obvious mat we will need some super pitching and defense to get us through." Conrad is quick to point out that except for the lack of depth, T-Bird pitching has generally been good. "What normally nor-mally happens is we are forced to leave starting pitchers in games longer than we should because of our concern with bullpen depth." Scheduled to start Wednesday's games are Todd Mortensen (senior, Sanford, CO) and Don Gubler (senior, Santa Clara). Both are righthanders. Mortensen Mor-tensen is 2-4 for the season, and Gubler has a 3-3 record. Thursday's starters will be Scott Bergerhouse (junior, Antioch, CA) and Kevin Donner (junior, Rupert, ID). Bergerhouse has a 1-3 record, while Donner has no wins and one loss. Bergerhouse and Donner are both righthanders. Following the concentrated con-centrated home schedule this week, the T-Birds will host the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament April 30-May 1. Conrad figures that this week's schedule should be a good preparation for the tournament play. "What we are really trying to do this week is to bring everthing together for the conference playoffs. That's where we can earn the right to play postseason games. We also want to keep our spirits high so we don't start beating ourselves," Conrad says. SUSC started the week with a 6-13 record, but that record came against extremely tough competition. com-petition. "We'll be strong in the tournament," Conrad predicts. As a team, the 'Birds raised their batting average nine points last week in a four game series at Provo against rugged Brigham Young University. Second baseman Jeff DuMont led the improved hitting with nine hits in 15 at bats against the Cougars. That jumped his average 69 points to .347 and second place in hitting on the squad. Gary Cowart, designated hitter, has the team's top average, .412. DuMont is a junior from Albany, Oregon; Cowart is a junior from Spanish Fork. Outfielder-pitcher Mark Johnson and first baseman Russ Turner also had good hitting against BYU. Johnson (junior, Kearns) added 19 points to his average, now .341, while Turner (senior, Las Vegas, NV) jumped his average by 15 points to continue his comeback from an early season hitting slump, turner now hits .244. Other hitters at .300 or higher include catcher Roger Farnsworth (junior, Annabella), .342; third baseman Pat Kilgore (junior, Puyallup, WA), .321; and first baseman Anthony Giron (junior, Kearns), .300. DuMont leads the team in hits (24) and runs batted in (11). Johnson and Cowart share the home run lead (3 each); Kilgore is tops in runs scored (14) and triples (2) ; while Turner has hit more doubles than anyone else(5). "Our hitting has been good," Conrad points out. "this week we are working hard on defense, so we can get as much as possible out of our pitching." pit-ching." The return to action of Darren Garrick should strengthen the pitching staff some, but Conrad will probably still have to start some pitchers this weak against both Grand Canyon and NAU. |