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Show T-birds face tough Antelopes in Opener The incentive for victory will all be Southern Utah State's when the Thunderbirds open their official basketball season Monday at 7:30 p.m. by hosting rival Grand Canyon College. Unofficially, the T-Birds opened the season last week with a strong 92-78 victory over the national team from the Republic of China (Taiwan). For each of the last three seasons, SUSC figured that it had a right respectable basketball team; but not once in those three years have the T-Birds been able to win over the Antelopes from Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon and Coach Ben Lindsay have a nien-game winning streak going against SUSC. The last Antelope victory came in the final game of the 1975-76 season, a squeeker 49-47 win in the NAIA District Seven championship game at Grand Junction, Colorado. Other Antelope wins last season included a tight 89-88 win at Cedar City and a close 72-65 victory at Phoenix. "It's no secret that we would liek to beat Grand Canyon. We want badly to beat them," Stan Jack, SUSC coach says. "We do know, however, that they will be a very strong team again this year. They have some fine players coming back." Among those "fine players" that Jack is concerned over are veteran forwards George Holm (6-5) and Jon Forrest (6-6). Also returning are regular Mike Osborne, a 6-3 guard who scored the winning basket in the NAIA district championship game, and semi-regular Richard Bacon, a 6-0 6-0 guard. "Of course, Grand Canyon lost big Bayard (Forrest), but they have recruited som exceptional junior college players," Jack points out. Forrest was a 6-10 two-time all-American who caused all sorts of problems for SUSC in the past four years. The top transfers tran-sfers for Lindsay and Company are Nate Stokes, a 6-3 swingman and an all Arizona Junior College Athletic Conference player at Central Arizona J. C, and George Hall, a 6-7 all AJCAC performer at Mesa Community College. "They will be tough again this year, but Grand Canyon is going to have trouble replacing people like Forrest, David Everett and Bob Stout. We should have a better chance to knock them off this year than we did a year ago," Jack said. Four of Jack's five starters are relatively certain: guards Kerry Rupp (6-5) and Steve Hodson (5-10) (5-10) and forwards Robert Lee (6-5) (6-5) and Eric Daniels (6-6). The starting center will be either Quinton Davis (6-7) or Dave Meyer !6-8). "I look for a close game; they usually are against Grand Canyon. I rather suspect that they will attempt to control the ball and prevent us from running. run-ning. It ought to be a good one," Jack says. |