OCR Text |
Show Baseball Season ends for T-birds It s all over for the 1978-79 version of the Southern Utah State College baseball team. Coach Cleo Petty closed a 28 year record as Thun-derbird Thun-derbird coach by almost bringing SUSC through the back door to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Con-ference title game. As it was, the rigors of five games in three days finally caught up to the 'Birds. In the RMAC tournament, SUSC first bumped off powerful Sosuthern Colorado, 5-3, on the rain-plagued rain-plagued day. The T-Birds were nudged into the losers bracket of the double elimination tournament Friday in a tight 6-4 loss to host Mesa. Victories over Western New Mexico (13-4) and Regis College (3-2 thanks to a series of heroics by catcher cat-cher John Borla ) moved the 'Birds into the semifinals against Western State. Then the team's glue started to slip, and Western State took a 6-3 win to eliminate SUSC. Because of a better season's record, Regis College was selected the at-large at-large team to compete in the NAIA District Seven tournament tour-nament this week at Phoenix. The Thunderbirds thought they had a shot at that position, but failed to land the berth. A quick look at the final 12-23 12-23 record is misleading, i Many times this year SUSC has stepped into competition against major college opposition, op-position, at least a couple of times against nationally ranked major college opposition. op-position. "We had some high spots, " Petty said. "We have now beaten the University of Utah, for example, five out of the last six times we've met. We've played some of the best-UNLV, Brigham Young, Northern Arizona, and Grand Canyon College, the number one ranked NAIA team. We don't have anything to ' be ashamed of." Borla, who had a good series of games in the RMAC tournament, finished the season batting .352 to lead the squad, a postiion he has held almost from the first game. Folic .. ing in order are Tony Pappas (.347), Bill Groves (.342), John Papas (.327) and Gary Cowart (.300). Jed Murray was the team's top pitcher. He picked up six wins against three losses and had a 3.15 earned run average. Garn Jorgensen had two wins and a 3.99 ERA. |