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Show T-birdson road againstHTO - M H "Key games" is the way Stan Jack, Southern Utah State's head basketball coach, describes road games this week for his T-Birds. SUSC will challenge Western New Mexico University Thursday at Silver City, and New Mexico Highlands University at Las Vegas. Both games are scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. a quick 5-10 senior who started every game last year, averages 11.1 points. The starting front line for the Mustangs will probably be Terry Pennington, 6-5 . center who averages 8.3 poins and 5.2 rebounds; James Bagwell, 6-4 forward; and Dale Parker, a 6-2 forward. With the exception of Pennington, who is a fresh- Gillespie, but otherwise we are doing things pretty well. Gillespie, a starting guard, is currently hospitalized with an ankle injury and blood clot complications, "Monte Widdison is coming on with more consistency; con-sistency; Paul Pratt is filling in well for Gillespie; we have three players-Mike Daniels, Scott Brown, and Pete Rencher-who are handling the other forward position well between them, and we are getting strong and steady play from Marc Wilson and Chava Lopez." SUSC's 96-61 victory over Westminster Monday raised its conference record to 6-2. Overall, the Thunderbirds have won 11 games and lost only three. "We expect both games to be tough; Western New Mexico has been an ex-pecially ex-pecially tough opponent for us on the road," Jack says. "These are key games for us. A pair of wins would put us in a strong position going into the second half of conference play. A pair of losses would make the climb pretty steep for us." Starting this week, SUSC and Western N.M. were almost neck and neck in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference standings. The Thunderbirds have a 6-2 conference record; that puts them in a second place tie with Fort Lewis. Western New Mexico has five conference con-ference wins and three defeats and is currently tied with Mesa and Southern Colorado for fourth spot. New Mexico Highlands has a 3-5 conference record, but has shown definite signs of improvement over last season's squad. "We expect Western to be a little the stronger of the two teams, but either is capable of beating any other team in the conference on a given night," Jack figures. Balanced scoring and team depth have been major parts of the WNM success formula to date. Tim Reese, a 6-2 senior guard, leads the scoring with 12.8 points per game. The other starting guard, Johnny Joe Marrujo, man, all five Mustang starters are seniors who have played together for a considerable time. Highlands is apparently following its favorite formula: for-mula: score like crazy and hope the other team can't keep up. The Cowboys have been partially successful with their method. They are scoring 80 points per game that's the third best in the conference (SUSC is tops at 82.5 points per outing). The problem with the Highlands system is that the opposition has been more than able to keep up. Cowboy opponents average 90.3 points. That makes Highlands the worst defensive team in the league. The Cowboys are a strong rebounding team, but have trouble with their fieldgoal shooting (only 41 percent accuracy). SUSC shoots 49.4 percent. " Individually, the Cowboys are led in scoring by newcomer Steve Smith (16-0) (16-0) and in rebounding by Jim Conner (8.2). Veteran Ken Young is the RMAC's second best percentage shooter (62 percent), just behind SUSC's Scott Brown (71 percent). Jack is generally satisfied with recent T-Bird performances. per-formances. "We miss the extra depth at guard provided by (Rickey) |