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Show SUS baseball from frying pan to fire The Southern Utah State College Thunderbird baseball team may be bouncing out of an early season slump after splitting a doubleheader with a powerful University of Utah team last weekend. SUSC's record, 2-6, belies its actual talent. Coach Cleo Petty feels that the team's hitting is their highlight, adding, though, that their pitching is "on and off." The rest of the schedule does second game loss. Petty is pleased with the growing maturity of his pitching staff. The coach points out that Jan Rudelich, Dennis Avery, Jeff Carter, and Randy Johnson are all developing at a rapid rate. Lloyd, Dave Sargent, Lyle Anderson, and Cliff Dilley lead the team in batting. Third baseman Sargent was walked twice in the opener against U of U and also got two hits in two times up. He was 1-3 in the second game. Catcher Anderson was 1-3 in the first game and 2-3 in the second. A newcomer, Dilley collected 3 hits in seven at-bats in the two-game series. SUSC will play Western New Mexico in a 2 out of 3 game series at the end of the season to decide w ho will represent this half of the Rocky Mountain Athletic conference con-ference in the play-offs. The winner will then play the winner of the other half of the conference to decide the championship. The play-offs were eliminated on this side of the Rocky Mountains last year when Western New Mexico forfeited. For the time, SUSC's fortunes appear to be looking brighter, the outcome of the season depends on when and where the pitching staff will jell and how the team will fare when they play much bigger schools, week after week not ease the pressure on the T-birds. T-birds. They traveled to Las Vegas W?ednesday to play the University of Las Vegas, a club that comes up a winner almost every year, and BYU, April 11. The T-birds then play Weber State, April 12. Petty expects to have his hands full during both games. Craig Lloyd upped his record to 2-0 after the T-birds defeated the Utes 6-5 in the opener. Lloyd sprinkled nine hits in 7 innings, struck out 6, and walked one. Lloyd was walked twice in the first game and went 2-3 in the 15-3 |