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Show T-birds enter Redlands Invitational the basket," Jack said. USIU has two senior lettermen who paced the Westerners last year: 6-5 Dwight Hays, a forward, and 6-3 guard Joe Sobkowiak. Two strong transfers, 6-6 Sharman Quinn and 6-5 Ken Walker will improve the USIU front line. "We expect them to be plenty tough," Jack worries. It will be a confident, but realistic, Soutern Utah State College basketball team that opens the competition in the University of Redlands Invitational Tournament Thursday in Redlands, California. The Thunderbirds immediately im-mediately run into a team that year-in and year-out has the strongest basketball reputation in the field of eight teams. The T-Birds meet United States International In-ternational University Thursday at 2:30 p.m. (PDT) Should Southern Utah win its first game, the second round opponent will be either California Baptist, another strong team, or host Redlands University. That game will be at 9 p.m. (PDT) Friday. If SUSC loses in the first round, it will meet the loser of the Redlands-Cal Baptist game at 4:30 p.m. (PDT) Friday. "We want badly to win at least a couple of games at Redlands," Stan Jack, SUSC coach said. "With a young team like we have, we need to build our confidence; and our December schedule is not conducive to confidence-building." confidence-building." Jack is generally pleased with his team's season opening 88-68 victory over Western State Tuesday. "One of the brightest spots was that we had a lot of players who all played some pretty 'decent ball.' The guard line looked good right down the line, and our two freshmen (Scott Brown and Craig Stoker) played well," Jack indicated. "We had other good indications, in-dications, too," Jack pointed out. "We executed well, and we kept our defense together; it didn't come apart on us." However, all was not positive around the T-Bird camp after the contest. Jack points out a need to improve the rebounding and to cut down on the turnovers. Probable starters for Thursday's opener will include Marc Wilson (6-9) at center, Pete Rencher (6-6) and Monte Widdison (6-8) as the forwards, and Chava Lopez (6-4) as one of the guards. The other guard will be either Paul Pratt (6-0) or Rickey Gillespie (6-0). Wilson, who led T-Bird scoring in the season opener with 19 points, was described by Jack as "impressive" in his first game for SUSC. "The films show some very good moves in and around |