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Show BYU drops Utah for WAC crown BY BRUCE WOODBURY Asst. Sports Editor Brigham Young University won the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Basketball Championship Saturday afternoon by showing a lot of poise. Poise starts with P that rhymes with T and that stands for Tollestrup which spells Trouble. Phil Tollestrup, the Cougars' forward who previous to this game had been averaging something some-thing like 12 points per game, playing in the shadow of teammates team-mates Kresmiri Cosic, Steve Kelly , Bcrnie Fryer and Jim Miller; 38, but in the shooting catagory, they fell way short as the Cougars hit 60.6 percent of their shots from the field compared to 42.5 for Utah. Utah never led in the game, as BYU scored the first basket and took charge of the contest. The Cougars led 10-5 with three minutes min-utes gone. Utah, however cut the margin to one point at 14-13. BYU never let the Utes get any closer, though, and opened up a 22-15 lead to prove their point. The one-point margin was the closest Utah came the rest of the game as BYU kept between five and 20 points ahead. I 'V-. ?. IT.. '."I' J I , J " - ' i V . f V , ' - t V f - f - v - v- j- ' ';." C -. " .", v V - , - " c - X V - X i r , w.C v tVvT ' i 1 ; . ' a The 14,689 partisan Utah fans thought Utah's salvation might come via the charity stripe as several Cougars got into early foul trouble. The hope proved false though as BYU only fouled one man out (Jim Miller with five seconds left in the game) and didn't foul at all in the second half until there was 1:36 left in the contest. Utah's three other senior starters, start-ers, Ken Gardner, Jim Mahler and Peaches Laster, failed to play up to the capabilities of the fourth (Newlin), as they scored 16, 12 and 10 points each. The loss leaves Utah's record at broke out of the darkness and scored 26 points to lead his hot shooting teammates to a 98-',7 victory over Utah. Kelly and Cosic were also big Cougar weapons as they scored 22 and 24 points. Utah's big gun was senior guard Mike Newlin who scored also 26 points and put on a good shooting display in his final game as a Ute. Newlin, however, was all the firepower that Utah could muster to combat the Cougar balance and it wasn't near enough. Before the game, Utah figured that to stop the BYU attack they would have to out-rebound the Cougars and shut off their hot shooting. The Redskins did grab the most rebounds, 46 to BYU's Third-time all-conference guard, Mike Newlin, attempts a jump sho over outstretched hand of Cougar Steve Kelly . pnoto by Jim Blea 9-5 for the WAC and 15-1 1 on the season. They ended up the year tied for second place in the conference con-ference Willi UTEP, who upset Arizona State. Because Utah is hosting the Far-West Regional Tournament on March 19 and 20, they will be unable to participate in the NIT in New York. |
