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Show T-Birds Vie For Tourney Spot The College of Southern Utah Thunderbirds were playing Wednesday Wed-nesday evening for Third place honors ii. the Top of the Nation Tournament at Alamosa, Colo, afer winning the opening round ; of play, then suffering a second ( round loss. ! The T-Birds turned in one of ; their top performances of the year Monday evening when they defeated the Broncos of Central Oaklahoma by a score of 91 to 84. The Broncos were the defending defend-ing champions of the tourney. Tuesday evening the Thunder-birds Thunder-birds suffered a second half cold streak to go down at the hands of the Southwest Missouri Bears, one of the tournament favorites, by a score of 83 to 67. In the opening game Coach Boyd Adams's squad came back from a halftime deficit of 40 to 36 to pick up the victory, led by Mel Wadsworth who hit for 20 points in the second half of play. Wadsworth was also the leading lead-ing rebounder in the contest aiding aid-ing the vict( ry cause. Red Oliver Oli-ver pushed in 22 points and Al Dee Konopnickl added 18 to the cause. Buddy Armstrong of the Broncos had high point honors with 30 but the Thunderbi'd defense de-fense held the rest of the Oaklahoma Oakla-homa squad down. In the last five minutes of play the Thunderbirds took he lead for good then stalled out the final three minutes of play and widened the gap from the foul line as the Broncos were forced to come after the ball. Tuesday evening the Thunderbirds Thunder-birds played on a more than even basis with the Bears of Missouri for three quarters, but went into a cold spell and never came out of it. The score was knotted at half-time half-time at 39 all and 10 minues into in-to the final half the Thunderbirds had moved to a 56 to 51 advantage. advant-age. It was at that point that lhe Bears turned the tide of the game. Taking a time out the Bears came out and scored 14 points while holding the T-Birds scoreless to move out to a 65 to 56 lead. Jim Gant, fine outside shooter for the Bears hit 12 of the 14 points to lead the way. Finally Konopnicki hit on a foul try but Jenkins of the Bears came back with two from the field to move he score practically out of reach at 69 to 57. MM TiMf FOP V JUST ONE . DON'T OVER-DO ! SAVE 'ONE MORE RUN' FOR NEXT WEEK In that final ten minutes of play the Bears picked up 32 points while the T-Birds were garnering only 11. Rod Oilver of the T-Birds, who had one of his finest nights, wound up the evening with 23 1 point.s although he sat out the final eight minutes of play after picking up his fifth foui. Cant had high point honors with 35 1 points. Wadsworth had another fine! night on the boards and also I added 13 points. He was the only other T Bird in double figures, j Wednesday night the rBirds were slated to go against '.he loser los-er of the Adams State - Western New Mexico game played late Tuesday. Adams State is host team in the tourney and Western West-ern New Mexico, another favorites favor-ites in the event, had a record of eight wins and no losses going into that contest. Souhwest Missouri and the winner of the Adams State-Wesr-ern New Mexico game were slated slat-ed to play for the tournament championship. |