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Show Mike Price leads Miners through Manila foul-for-all by Randy Hanskat In a game where 73 fouls were called, Miner Mike Price came off the bench to lead his team to a 97-78 basketball victory over Manila in Manila Friday night. According to Miner head coach Kent Critchlow, the Manila game was really two different games, each lasting one half. In the first half, he said, the referees called most of the fouls on Park City, allowing Manila to score 18 points from the free throw line and move to a 43-38 halftime lead. Then in the second half, as if to make things even, the refs turned around and called most of the fouls on the Mustangs, allowing the Miners to score 11 points from the free throw line and win the game by 19 points. Critchlow said the number of fouls has to be some kind of a record for a basketball game. Park City received 35, Manila 38. He said the referees were calling a lot of "air fouls" where no actual contact occurred. Critchlow said he thought it was a good learning experience for the Miners because it made them play a more disciplined game. Amazing as it may seem, none of the Park City starters start-ers fouled out. Critchlow credited that to the play of his bench. Players came in and spelled the starters, enabling them to return to the game when needed later on. On the other hand, he said all five of Manila's starters start-ers fouled out. Critchlow said Mike Price led the Miners, coming off the bench. He responded to the call with his best game of the season, scoring 22 points and pulling down 13 rebounds. re-bounds. "Mike's work underneath under-neath really sparked us," Critchlow pointed out. Starting his first game for the Miners was junior Craig Griffin. Critchlow said he thinks Griffin's aggressive play may be the impetus the team needs to win more games instead in-stead of merely coming close, as has been their pattern pat-tern so far this season. The play of sophomore Scott Tatum, who played most of the third quarter, was also praised by the Park City coach. He said Tatum sank many critical baskets when the team needed them. Both Griffin and Tatum are expected to see much more playing time as the season continues. Senior guard Kenny Collins once again had a great game. Friday night he pumped in 35 points, his personal per-sonal high for the season, to lead the Miner scorers. Critchlow said he had four goals for his team going into the Manila game, of which three were achieved. First, he wanted the Miners to shoot 65 percent from the free throw line. They shot 67 percent. Second, he wanted 35 percent accuracy from the field. He got 41 percent. Third, he wanted to keep the turnovers down. The Miners had one of their better turnover turn-over ratios of the season. His final goal was to keep Manila below 50 points, but after seeing the small gym at the school, he said he thought that goal may have been unrealistic. With the foul monkey on their backs, the Miners were down throughout the first quarter. They trailed the Mustangs 17-14 at the quarter. quar-ter. In the second many Miners started to get into foul trouble. While Manila was pumping in the free throws, Park City never even got into in-to the bonus before the intermission. in-termission. The refs changed the tune of the game in the second half, said Critchlow, and the Miners quickly got back into it. Soon they were ahead, and the lead kept growing as more of the Mustang starters star-ters fouled out. It ended up 98-78, the highest Miner point production of the season. The win raised the Miner record to 3-7, 1-2 in division play. Critchlow is now looking ahead to the upcoming up-coming game with North Summit Friday night in Miner Gym. He said the Braves are 2-1 in division play. They have beaten North and South Rich, but lost to South Summit. Sum-mit. North Summit is an aggressive, strong, physical team which hits the boards very hard, he explained. The Braves play a full-court man-to-man defense, applying ap-plying pressure throughout the game. He says he thinks the keys to tomorrow night's game will be turnovers and rebounds. The North Summit action i will begin at 5:45 p.m. with ; the J.V. game (the Miner i J.V. lost to Manila 66-61). s The varsity will take the ! courtat7:30p.m. |