OCR Text |
Show County Cage Teams Do Well in Openers By John Yardley County basketball teams all played well in their first games of the season last Friday and Saturday as Panguitch chalked up two wins Bryce Valley one and Escalante lost a close one by two points. The Moquls Just got nipped at the wire by a hustling Valley team 56-54 at Escalante. Junior Clint Porter and senior George Galea'! led the team in double figures with 19 and 15 respectively. Dick Durfey, Jerry Ilawkes and Rick Crawford rounded out the starters and played well. A big plus for Escalante is the development freshman David Reid who made some key contributions for such a lack of experience. "It took us the first half to get over the first game Jitters," explained head coach Jim Smith. "Then we came out and played Valley a close ballgame." He continued, "Hopefully we will be able to work out our inexperience on the road and we don't have another home game until December 9." Assisting Coach Smith this year , are able assistants Brent Cottam and Brent Neilson, both former outstanding high school players. Bryce Valley also played the Buffaloes from Valey this week and came away with a convincing 57-44 victory. The Mustangs started a little slowly and the score was tied at 26 at the half, but the green clad boys from BV came back in the second half for an opening win. In fact, the Mustangs outscored Valley 21 to 12 in the last period to dominate at will. "We didn't play that bad or that good," stated mentor Clare Ramsay, "although I always felt we could win when we needed to." Unfortunately, with their talent at BV this year, everyone will be "up" for the Mustangs and they will have to be ready to play every night. It is, however, the mark of a good team to just play as well as you have to to win. Richard Ott led the Bryce Valley scoring with 23 points while Wade Ramsay and George Thompson chipped in 11 each. Dallin Baugh and Troy Goulding played well while Scott Chynoweth came off the bench and did an excellent job for Coach Ramsay. This week the Mustangs play at Parowan and at Milf ord, Friday and Saturday. Panguitch reeled off a couple fine wins under new coach Brian McAllister on consecutive nights. In the victory Friday over the Parowan Rams, Panguitch was led by well-balanced scoring with Jody Davis tanking 19 to lead the way. Heath Sartlni and Kris Barney each dropped 13 while Nate Brinkerhoff scored nine. In all, nine different players socred for the Bobcats as they racked up 77 points. On Saturday, Kris Barney was like a "House afire" as he ripped the nets for a whooping 27 points as the Bobcats toppled Milford 69-53. Jody Davis scored well again with 16 and Brinkerhoff added 11. Coach McAllister received fine play from senior Lawrence Orton and a number of his juniors to go along with the higher scorers. "I think the key to both our victories was high percentage shots," stated a pleasant Coach McAllister, "We got the shots we wanted and then shot a very good percentage," he continued. Panguitch shot well over 50 percent for the two games.. Panguitch hits the road this week for a tough Beaver game on Saturday. Another highlight In Panguitch was sophomore Ralph Perkins who tanked 28 Friday in the JV me while Freshman Doug Henrie scored 20 of the 32 points in the freshman preliminary contest. The highly touted Panguitch wrestling team began its season last week and came away with two fine efforts. At the Gunnison match in Gunnison on Thursday, the Bobcats narrowly lost to the powerful Bulldogs 38-32. It was an all-around fine showing for the entire team. On Saturday, at the Invitaitional Tournament at Milford the Panguitch grapplers grabbed second place with a solid scoring margin of 149 points. Several PHS wrestlers won their weight championships. Raymond Roundy, Troy Josie, Danny Fran-dsen, Stuart Reynolds and Kerri LeFevre all captured first places. Coach Maloy Dodds was very proud of his team during the week and invites anyone to attend the home matches on Thursday nights at the Panguitch gym. |