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Show Strange dilema Tough competition, bad weather get baseballers off to poor start Next action comes Saturday at St. George against Dixie College. Two seven inning games are scheduled. March 31 through April 2 CSU will compete in a three day tournament tour-nament at Las Vegas. Also in the field will be Chico State (Calif.), UNLV and the. University Uni-versity of Montana. First home action comes April 3 with a doubleheader against Rangely (Colo.) College. Col-lege. "Our defense is good; we probably have the best overall over-all pitching staff ever to play at CSU; the infield is solid; our hitting is adequate," Petty said. "If we don't let these early season defeats hurt our mental attitude, we can still be tough." Freshmen Tim Braithwaite and Jon Hoover have strengthened strength-ened the infield. With the addition ad-dition of transfer Tex Anthony this quarter, CSU should be solid defensively. Don Kirk, Jack Mitchell and Larry Eyre have all demonstrated demon-strated good pitching. With the addition of Fred Esplin, just returned from and LDS mission, and the development of Chuck Eaholtz and transfer trans-fer Ben Ferguson, CSU should The strange dilemna of College Col-lege of Southern Utah baseball base-ball is about to end; at least head coach Cleo Petty hopes it is about to end. With some of the best baseball base-ball talent ever to play at CSU, the Thunderbirds are mired in a 0-8 season thus far. "It's easy to point out some of the reasons for our eight losses," Petty said. "One big reason is the caliber of our opposition, and another is the lack of baseball weather in Utah so far this spring." CSU's losses have all come at the hands of strong baseball base-ball teams playing in semi-tropical semi-tropical climates. Defeats have been at the hands of Grand Canyon College (Phoenix), University of Nevada at Las Vegas, California Western (San Diego), University of , San Diego, and San Diego Marines. A week of good weather has melted the snow on the T-Bird diamond. If the weather holds CSU will get its first outdoor practice of the season this week. While the schedule does not get easier, teams from more comparable climates begin be-gin to dot the 'Bird calendar of opponents. have a strong mound corps. Power hitting is coming from catcher Reid Kimoto and first baseman Robby Jewkes. "All in all, we are a pretty solid ball team. As the season sea-son progresses, I look for us to surprise some of those tough opponents on our schedule," sched-ule," Petty says. Season Results: Grand Canyon 7, CSU 0 Grand Canyon 6, CSU 0 Grand Canyon 3, CSU 2 Nevada Las Vegas 11, CSU 0 Cal Western 3, CSU 2 Cal Western 4, CSU 3 U. of San Diego 5, CSU 2 San Diego Marines 10, CSU 5 Next Games: March 29 . Dixie at St. George March 31 . April 2 Tournament Tourna-ment at Las Vegas, Nevada. (Nevada Las Vegas, Montana, Mon-tana, Chico State, CSU) April 3 Rangely at Cedar City |