OCR Text |
Show Color Country Classic Finals today! as the defending champions after defeating Redlands 94-83 last season. Westminster finished third last season winning over Claremont. In 1973 it was an all-California finale with United States International In-ternational and Redlands meeting. USIU won it, 57-54 with the T-Birds third and Westminster West-minster fourth. In 1974 it was a battle between the two Utah clubs with the Parsons of Westminster capturing cap-turing a 70-63 win over the T-Birds. T-Birds. In that tournament Cal Baptist took third and Fresno Pacific fourth. In last year's action Kerry Rupp of the T-Birds was the tournaments leading scorer and Steve Hodson of the T-Birds . earned the Most Valuable Player award. But this is another year, another classic and only tonight's finals will tell the story. The Annual Color Country Basketball Classic tournament is in its second and final day today, Thursday, with a champion in the college division and all-tournament all-tournament teams to be named in the College and High School divisions at the conclusion of play this evening. Games are being held in the Cedar High School gymnasium with two sessions each day. In today's action winners from Wednesday opening round of i1 play will meet in the college division for the championship w ith first round losers to vie for consolation honors. In the High School division host Cedar and Dixie will simply change opponents. In Wednesday's action the Cedar Redmen tangled with Judge Memorial while the Dixie Flyers were pitted against Springville. Today Dixie will meet Judge Memorial in the tournament opener at 2:30 p.m. while the Cedar High Redmen will meet Springville at 7 p.m. Several Possibilities Several possibilities could develop in the High School portion of the tournament. Potentially each team could emerge with a 1-1 record or two teams could have records of 2-0 while the other two teams had 0-2 records; or one team could be 2-0 with one team 0-2 and the other two teams with 1-1 records. Regardless a tournament team will be named at the conclusion of play this evening. College Civision Traditionally the two Utah colleges, Southern Utah State College and Westminster host two visitors from California in this annual classic. This year the visiting colleges from California are Point Loma and Los Angeles Baptist. The host SUSC T-Birds of Coach Stan Jack have to be considered as one of the favorites in the tournament, although the history of the event, has had three separate tournament champions. The T-Birds entered the tournament with a 4-1 record including a convincing victory over Westminster early in the season. Point Loma is one of a trio of southern California college division teams expected to battle for an eventual berth in the NAIA national tournament. Certainly Point Loma entered the tournament as a ptoential co-favorite co-favorite with the T-Birds. The Crusaders enter the tournament with a record of seven victories and two defeats. Point Loma is returning ten lettermen from last year's squad, including four starters. They are expected to have depth and balance with good overall size. ForL. A. Baptist they have one of the West Coast's leading "assist men" in little Robert "Rocket" Collins. He is only 5-8, but he teams with 6-4 Carl Turner to give the Mustangs adequate guardline size. Overall the team is not big, but the starting five have average college division height. As mentioned the past three tournaments have produced three different champions with the T-Birds entering the tourney 45 VERS1TILITY. Kerry Rupp, one of the T-Bird guards has tremendous versitility. Here he drives the lane against Westminster. He has the ability to feed or continue for the bucket He will be a big factor in SUSC's plans for the Color Country Classic being staged this week. Last year Rupp was named to the All-Tournament team. |