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Show ft lie nvnsjapci - a uuisuaj xui ui j u. No. 7 in UPI Utah continues to climb in national polls i i 1 a. if '4$ Tom Chambers dunks one as teammate looks on. by Ilk'hard Barnum-Reece ptrt Journal Ky Richard Barnum-Keete . Don't look now, but the University of Utah basketball basket-ball team, the new darlings of Utah's sporting scene, may be ranked as high as number five or six in the nation this week. That ranking may come after the Utes made their last home stand of . the regular season last weekend against the New Mexico Lobos and the University of Texas-at-El-Paso Miners and came away victorious. And the win against New Mexico was no easy slide. The Miners, who have held the national championship in their grasp during the tenure of Coach Don Haskins, came to play. It was the inspired work of the four Utah seniors that brought the game into their win column leaving them with the best record the Utah team has had since Ticky Burden and Mike Sojurner took the Utes to the finals of the NIT some 10 years ago. Still, in the UPI poll released this week, the Utes didn't move a notch as Wake Forest dropped completely out of the top 10 and was replaced by Notre Dame. The Irish stopped top-ranked Virginia's winning streak in front of millions of TV fans Sunday. So there it is: Utah is number seven in the UPI poll and probably will move up in the AP poll where they currently sail in the number nine spot. After the Utah victory over UTEP, it seemed like an old fashioned testimony meeting as each of the four Ute seniors took the mike and expressed his warm regards for his teammates and pledged, at the same time, to bring the team back to the Special Events Center for the regional NCAA playoffs to be held later this spring. All this in front of The fights -John Manarino is a sportsman; he lives by iM.Vthe fights." Eisceptj ift.this case, he isaft " spectator he's a participant. - " ' - "I've just always liked to wade in there, he says with that glazed look in his eye. "In the old days it was the Red Belle on State St. in Salt Lake. You could always trust those guys to come up with some bar fights. It was always interesting down there." I asked him what it was about bar fights that so attracted him. "It's much safer than those street fights, " he explained. "In bars, you're fighting with your friends. And if you can't fight with your friends, who can you fight with?" Some say that Graziano was a bar fighter, but you'd think it was impossible that the former champ would work on those bar toughs like a butcher with a meat cleaver. I asked Manariano about it. "That's what makes bar fights so interesting," he said. "Even somebody like Graziano could get it with a sucker punch. People have to be on their toes all the time in bars. You can't just slide in there and pretend you own the place right at first. That comes later. You have to get beat up a little first; then they respect you." The reason they respect you, Manarino said, now tossing a cigarette butt aside, "is they know that you can take a punch." "What good is that?" "They don't hit you as hard the next time." "Why not?" "Because they know you'll go out early anyway." In Manarino's world, respect is a strange beast; the kind you'd ride into Hell if you were able to get the damn saddle to stop slipping off during the descent. "It's like this," Manarino explained. "You can get beat but you can't get beat bad. If they beat you too bad then you get into'bazookas ;v and that kindicf istuff and then, it'sno fun - anymore. It gets real clinical. LikeVietnam. There's no fun in that. "Bar fighting ought to be an Olympic sport," Manarino says, now brushing up alongside his nose a few times, sniffing the cool mountain air. "I've known a few good bar fighters in my day, and it's a real shame that they never got the recognition they deserved." I watched the master at work the other night at a bar on Main Street. His opponent was a cretin, a real bushwacker who had turned even weirder with a bottle of tequilla in his gut. "You lookin for a fight?" the cretin said. "Sure," Manarino smiled. And then they held each other and danced. Two grown men acting like fairies. Sure, there was the possibility of violence behind all that display of affection, but, in the end, the possibility was about as great as Mickey Mouse getting the lead for the next James Bond film. No possibility at all. So the two of them talked and made up. This isn't to say that the two not-so-gentle men weren't capable of gouging each others eyes out. It's just that the real fun of the bar scene is no longer going out and trying to beat Joe Caput and his gang in the ear-biting contest. There's nothing to it, Manarino said. You bite off one ear and you've bit off a hundred. Just like that. "And then people tend to get mean. Downright mean. They don't understand that it's just a sport and nobody should be mangling another person permanent. "You know," Manarino continued, "I'm worried that we'll never get the recognition we deserve. Never. It's a real tragedy. Why don't you write about us?" Ski the new Snowbird chairlifts-Mid-Gad, extended Gad I and Little Cloud. MORE LOFTS . . LESS LINES. -Now you can ride the chairs to the top ski over 3,000 vertical feet of Snowbird for just $10 a day! The best skiing value in Utah. ADULTS CHILDREN 12 ft UNDER All Day . . $10 All Day $7 Half Day $7 Half Day $5 Half Day Hours: A.M. 9 to 1:30 p.m. P.M. 12:30 to 4:45 p.m. snowbird w ski and summer resort 521 -6040 AMiAHCtit INFORMATION 942-4059 Utah Avalanche Forecast Canter close to 16,000 fans. But to do that, the Utes will have to continue to up their level of play. And they'll have an opportunity to do just that Thursday and Saturday as they take on . Colorado State and Wyoming. Naturally, the Colorado State game will be ; a breather; a chance for the talented Ute bench to; demonstrate its prowess. But the Wyoming game, f well, that's something else. ; The oddsmakers now are ; saying that Utah probably i will get its head caved in in 1 Laramie's old fieldhouse. 1 The oddsmakers say that ; BYU will eat it on Thursday, and then Utah will come in and take a thrashing on Saturday before the regional TV fans during the game of : the week. Tm just glad that RYU and Wyoming will have to go at each other first," Jerry Pimm said about his Utah basketball team's chances in Wyoming. "This is a team that can win the WAC they'll just maintain their poise and continue to play the game like they know how to play it." Danny Vranes, Karl Bankowski (you remember him from the Park City soft-ball soft-ball leagues, right?), Scott Martin, and Tom Chambers. They're the four Utah seniors who are making a real difference in the Utah basketball fortunes this year. It makes all the difference dif-ference in the world, Pimm , says, when you have four '' guys out there who under- ; stand what to do as the clock closes in on you and the ; ducks are on the line. Against New Mexico, the Utes had a six-point lead at halftime, and the sure knowledge that Kenny Page, the second leading scorer in the WAC, could come out and open up his guns any second and then the game would be horserace. :, ;'And hent'it; happened: "I told my guys at half- Bankowski slipped in like a time that they just., weren't knifeor another two points ' playing with enough in(eri-:t4n& Sitith. the New Mexico: sity." Pimm said. "We seem guard; went ' down' in a ' bundle. As Bankowski rolled lO.ver him and got up, the Ute 'forward .kicked his foot out.' Smith responded by crawling across the floor and starting to throw punches. ' "I'll tell you one thing," Jerry Pimm said later. "Karl is a very strong per-, per-, son. I had good position on him. I was low and holding him back and he was throwing me around like a wet towel, trying to get at that guy." Bankowski ended up with 16 points; Chambers chipped in 26 along with 13 rebounds; and Danny Vranes, who only touched the ball a few times, taking only six shots, came up with 10 rebounds and 12 points. Chambers was probably the most impressive Ute as he was given free time by Hendersen, who did not attempt at-tempt to deny the big Ute center the ball by getting in front of him. And on defense, Chambers stole the ball three times, dribbling the length of the court and stuffing stuf-fing the ball. It was, as they say on the playgrounds of New York, "In Your Face" basketball personal intimidation in-timidation at its extreme. "He's going to be a heck of a power forward in the NBA," Hundley said after the game about Chambers. "He'll be a good one ll he continues to come along." "I think we finally got with it tonight," Pimm said in the locker room after the win over the Lobos. "We played hard but we played extremely ex-tremely well. We might have been a little too much of a quick shot team tonight, but overall I was very pleased with the way our guys handled hand-led them. to play better the second half. I don't know why but we do." . Indeed. The Utes came out as if they were carrying guns and knives and then they waded into battle, savaging the Lobos like so much dog meat. The Utes shot a mere 47 percent the first half, but they shot over 50 percent the second half. They picked up ! 47 rebounds against 39 for the Lobos. In all, they dominated the game, i Jereome Henderson, the New Mexico center, did all he could to make it easy for Utah. At times, the New : Mexican pivot looked like a Mack truck in pursuit of a runaway truck lane. "Bad. That man is one of the worst players I've ever seen," said Hot Rod Hundley, the former Los Angeles Laker guard now working as a broadcaster broad-caster for the Utah Jazz. mJrm positive that he's going to be drafted in the first round," said Adrian Dant-ley Dant-ley with a wry smile on his face. "In the Continental League." Meanwhile, the Utes were running their fast break to perfection on both nights, UTEP, famous for the slowdown game, apparently , thought they would shake the i "Runnin' " Utes up a bit by coming at them high and ;i hard, also running, preten-'r preten-'r ding that it would make a ; difference in the final out-come. out-come. Not so. Bankowski was especially I deft against New Mexico. He was sliding by the New Mexico defenders with the quickness of a cat burglar, avoiding charging calls by fractions of an inch as he turned sideways in mid-air and dropped the ball through the hoop. BY OWNER 2304 Butch CassidyCt. 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