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Show T-Birds Launch Season with Yeek End Games What appears to be one of the tightest basketball races in the history of the intermountain Collegiate Col-legiate Conference Is slated to get under way Friday and Saturday Sat-urday evenings. College of Southern Utah will make a home court appearance on the opening week end against two tough opponents, Ricks College Col-lege of Rexburg, Idaho, and Weber We-ber College of Ogden. The Thunderbirds will open conference play Friday against the Ricks Vikings and Saturday they will tangle with the Weber Wildcats. Both games will be at the CSU fieldhouse and tipoff time is slated for 8 p. m. On the basis of pre-conference action the conference is expected to be extremely tight this season and the club that can win Its home battles and pick up a couple cou-ple of wins on the road is likely to walk off with the championship. champion-ship. The road trips will be the tough ones, it Is expected, but with the closeness of the teams, the home court battles become even more Important Thus Friday and Saturday's contests will be a telling picture for the Thunderbirds. They are In a position of almost must wins even before the conference starts In order to be in contention for the 1962 ICAC crown. Coach Cleo Petty and his T-Birds T-Birds know how tough an assignment as-signment this really Is as the CSU hardwood crew has already met the Ricks Vikings and suffered suf-fered a set-back In the second round of play in the Dixie Invitational Invi-tational tournament Weber College, which will leave the ICAC at the end of the 1962 school year, is by far the largest school in the conference and is sporting a top team that is expected to hang together next year as the school moves into a four year program. In the Dixie Invitational CSU played Ricks a close contest, suffering suf-fering a less in the final minutes min-utes of the game, 70 to 64. At least three of the Thunder-bird Thunder-bird squad members have been hitting consistently In the double dou-ble figures and it will probably fall to these three to continue the scoring punch for the CSU quintet quin-tet They Include La Mar Pugh, six foot five inch center who comes to the CSU campus from Cyprus High School in Magna; Glen Gray, captain of the Thunderbirds and a sophomore guard at 6 ft. 2 in., and Larry Dehlin also a sophomore guard, the smallest man on the CSU squad at 5 ft. 8 inches. Gray played his high school ball at South Sevier in Monroe and Dehlin played at Bingham High School. Both spent one year at Utah State University at Logan Lo-gan and transferred to CSU this fall. A fourth probable starter and one of the msai consistent bank-board bank-board men, Is M.irian Roper, a freshman from Spanish Fork. He stands 6 ft 1 inch. The fifth man on the Thun-derbird Thun-derbird crew will likely be Don Chambrr'aln, also a freshman from East High School in Salt Lake City. Beyond the starting five Coach Petty has one of the strongest benches in CSU history with good speed and good helghth. Norman Fran com of Payson is the tallest tall-est man on the squad at 6 ft 7 inches and he has shown good ability on the boards in a number num-ber of games this season. On the guard line another Bingham product, Joe Robertson, offers good speed and some fine ouptside shooting. Gayle MoKeachnle, a freshman, fresh-man, Ron VanWagenen, a sophomore soph-omore and the only returning letterman on the CSU squad, will probably get the first calls to assist as-sist at the forward spots. |