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Show Utes, Cougars ?o baffle in season finale made storybook recoveries from last year. BYU, now with a 6-3 season mark, were 2-8 a season .' ago. Utah wound up 3-7 last year ' but are 7-2 now. fy BY GEOFF TOWNS Sports Editor The Redskin football team has an outside chance of winning the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) crown. And it includes beating Brigham Young University Saturday in Provo. The 1 :30 p.m. game will be the final contest of the season for both teams. Utah is now tied with Arizona State in the WAC. each much more potent attack. The Utah defense, which still leads the conference in scoring defense, de-fense, will have back linebacker and team co-captain Larry Stone. Stone sat out most of the last week's Arizona game with an infected in-fected elbow. But another defensive starter, safety Joe Galarze, is considered by Coach Meek as a questionable starter against BYU. Galarze was hurt in the Arizona game, but couldn't come out of the lineup because back-up safety Scott Rob-bins Rob-bins was injured on the opening kickoff. Coach Meek said Robbins should be able to play Saturday. The Ute offense, led by quarterback quar-terback Ray Groth, remains first in the rushing department and is second in total offense. yards per carry against Arizona. Fifteen Redskins will be playing play-ing their final season game for Utah. They include safties Gary Barker, Tim Collins and Joe Galarze, linebackers Randy Hansen, Han-sen, Dwight Staten and L arry Stone, quarterbacks Ray Groth and Clint Harden, defensive halfbacks Craig Smith and Dick Wilson, right halfback Bill Fowler, middle guard Mack Powell, defensive defen-sive end Jerry Simonson, fullback Dave Smith and defensive tackle Warren Tctlcy. 45th Game This, will be the 45th meeting between the two schools. The Utes dominate the series with 35 victories to, BYU's five. But three of those Cougar wins have come in the last four years. Last year Utah snapped a losing streak by beating the Cougars, 30-21. Both the Utes and Cougars have with 4-1 marks. But the Sun Devils De-vils have two conference games left and must lose one to give Utah the title. ASU will meet Colorado State (0-3) Saturday and Arizona (3-2) the following week. BYU Still In The Cougars are not out of the championship running either. The winner of the Utah-BYU game will be assured of at least second place. And if the Cougars are victorious vic-torious and Arizona State loses one, the two teams would end the season tied for first with 5-2 WAC records. The Utes will have a full afternoon after-noon Saturday, as Coach Bill Meek considers BYU one of the best teams in the conference. "I think the Cougars are better than Arizona," said Coach Meek. "They have always had one of the best defenses, and since they've been able to get their offense going the past few weeks, they'll be tough." Cougar Defense Brigham Young is listed second in the conference in total defense, scoring defense and rushing defense, de-fense, and third in pass defense. The Cougars look much less impressive im-pressive in the offensive statistics--eighth in total offense, seventh in rushing, fifth in passing and sixth in scoring. But the stats are deceptive, decep-tive, said Coach Meek, because of the Cougars extremely poor offensive offen-sive performance in the first couple of games. Their statistics for the last five games show a BYU Stars The Cougars will be paced by quarterback Marc Lyons and Chris Farasopoulos, who leads the WAC in kickoff and punt returns. Lyons is fourth in the conference in total offense and passing. Coach Meek felt that his Utes moved the ball well in their losing effort last week, and will probably not change his starting lineup. The backfield will start with Groth, Dave Smith at fullback, Bill Hunter at right half and Fred Graves at left half. All four maintained main-tained their average of over 4.2 |