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Show SUSC wins division baseball Side; enter MM tanev For some reason there is an air of expectancy around the Southern Utah State College baseball practice field as the Thunderbirds prepare for the upcoming Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships. champion-ships. The T-Birds earned their way to the four-team championship champ-ionship playoff by nipping Western New Mexico University, Univer-sity, 3-3 and 7-5, Monday. Also entered in the championships champ-ionships Monday and Tuesday at Greeley, Colo, are Adams S tate (Mountain Division East), Washburn University from Topeka, Kansas (Plains Division East), and host University Uni-versity of Northern Colorado (Plains Division West). Southern Utah State is the champion from the Western region of the Mountain Division. Di-vision. The T-Birds will meet a familiar opponent, Adams State, Monday at 10 ajn. in the opening game of the double doub-le elimination touranment For each of the last three years, SUSC and Adams State have met in the playoffs. The Indians and Thunderbirds Thunder-birds are the only two teams who will have participated in all four RMAC baseball championships cham-pionships since the conference was reorganized. "We've got one of the most competitive teams I've coached," coach-ed," Cleo Petty, Thunderbifd coach, said. "And in addition, we have a little better pitching pitch-ing depth than we've had in other trips to the championships." champion-ships." Inconsistent fielding has been the biggest Thunderbird drawback to date. "We'll do a good Job in one game, then turn around and commit1 a flock of foolish errors in the very next game," Petty said. ' Early in the week, Petty was noncommital about who would be the starting pitcher against Adams State. Certain to see action in the tournament, tourna-ment, however, are Craig Lloyd Mike Clark, John Anderson and Wayne Butler. Recent fine pitching performances perfor-mances by Wayne Butler (a no-hitter against Westminster) Westmin-ster) and Don Kolstad (a strong performance in a 3-2 loss to University of Nevada at Las Vegas) also make the SUSC championship hopes brighter. "Against Adams State, we will face one of the nations best fielding teams and also one of the better hitting teams in the country," Petty said. There's no doubt that our pitching and fielding will be tested." University of Northern Colorado Colo-rado and Adams State will be the co-favorites in the tournament, tourna-ment, but either Washburn or SUSC could easily surprise them. |
