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Show Thunderbirds, Minus Three Players, Take Sound Beatings in New Mexico and Arizona The College of Southern Utah Thunderbirds had their wings clipped, were virtually grounded and were nearly tarred and feathered on a road trip they took this past week to New Mexico Mexi-co and Arizona. Leaving three men behind with flu, two of them regular starters, the first night's outing against Western New Mexico University Friday was somewhat expected as the T-Birds succumbed to the powerful New Mexico crew by a score of 112 to 90. New Mexico took an early lead however, and coasted to the victory in the second sec-ond half of play. The WNM crew applied a full court, press at the outset of the game and they forced five straight errors on the T-Birds and they took advantage of them to rack up an early lead a lead they never relinquished. John Johnson, CSU guard, who was left home owing to illness has been effective against the I press in the past and the T-Birds , were caught without a take charge man in the backcourt to account for the quick lead. Rod Oliver, leading CSU scorer, however, came up with 22 points in the contest to maintain a semblance of the T-Birds that were or could be. Paul West and Al Dee Konopnicki left the court with 14 points each and Joe Cos-tillo Cos-tillo came up with 13. Hendricks of WNM matched Oliver's high with 22 points. Saturday the Thunderbirds traveled to Phoenix, Arizona where they took on Grand Canyon Can-yon College. Coach Boyd Adam's T-Birds posted a" victory over Grand Canyon earlier this season one of three victories on their record but that was aveng-ance aveng-ance Saturday as the Arizonans clobbered the T-Birds 99 to 63. Grand Canyon could do nothing no-thing wrong and everything that the T-Birds attempted backfired in this contest that grew from bad to worse as the game progressed. pro-gressed. In the final half of play Coach Adams swept his bench in an effort to find a combination and to afford some experience. Grand Canyon outscored the Thunderbirds 40 points from the field with 42 fieldgoals compared compar-ed to 22 for CSU. From the foul lane the T-Birds had a slight advantage ad-vantage with 19 of 31 compared to 15 of 25 for the hosts. Paul West and Louis Chirsten-sen, Chirsten-sen, a freshman center for Coach dams shared high point honors for the T-Birds with 13 followed by Oliver with 11. |