CSUN Near Flawless in 45-13 Romp at St. Mary’s

St. Mary’s Coach Joe DeLuca leaned back in his plush chair and took a heavy drag on a foul-smelling cigar. It did not explode, becoming the first thing that did not blow up in his face Saturday.

Everything his Gaels attempted against a nearly flawless Cal State Northridge team turned to mush. Some things he tried just failed. Others failed miserably.

When the game mercifully came to an end, the Matadors had handed St. Mary’s a 45-13 thrashing that was just as lopsided as the Matadors’ 56-12 loss two weeks ago to Nevada Reno.

DeLuca, the Gaels’ second-year coach, kept the smoldering cigar clenched between his teeth as he vented his frustrations in his small office.

He should have opened a window and vented his small office, too.

“This is not a victory cigar,” he said. “After I smoke this I will self-destruct at 8 o’clock tonight.

“If I had expected a beating as bad as this, I wouldn’t have come to work today.”

CSUN came to work, though, rolling up 449 total yards behind the brilliant play of quarterback Chris Parker, who unloaded on a dazed and confused St. Mary’s defense for 295 passing yards and four touchdowns.

Defensively, the Matadors just about beat the Gaels to death. St. Mary’s finished with 208 passing yards, but a big chunk of that came during who-cares time in the fourth quarter. And quarterback Mitch Mantua was also intercepted four times--twice by Simon Goss-- with Reggie Wauls and Ray Johnson each picking off one.

CSUN also recorded five sacks as its front line hammered the smaller Gaels on virtually every play.

But it was CSUN’s defense against the run that really sparkled, with St. Mary’s merely gaining 10 yards rushing in 37 attempts. Thirty feet. The length of an oversize living room.

Or look at it this way: If Kareem Abdul-Jabbar simply fell down four times, he would cover nearly 30 feet.

“They just dominated us,” DeLuca said. “They were bigger, faster and stronger and they just knocked us around all day long.

“I felt we could play with Northridge. I was wrong.”

The Matadors capped their biggest offensive explosion in eight seasons midway through the final quarter when Richard Brown took a kickoff on the 1-yard line and scorched the middle of the field without a St. Mary’s player touching him. His 99-yard return was a school record.

“We were expecting an onside kick,” CSUN Coach Tom Keele said, ‘and we had all our wide receivers up front. We don’t teach them how to block, and they didn’t block. That run was all Richard Brown.”

One of the officials may have best summed up the one-sided game when, after the clock was stopped with one second left and the St. Mary’s offense came back onto the field--perhaps to try a 32-point play to tie the game--he said, “The timekeeper doesn’t understand life.”

Parker, the junior who wrested the starting job from Danny Fernandez in the final days of summer practice, completed 19 of 28 passes before giving way to Fernandez in the closing seconds of the third quarter.

Given plenty of time to survey the St. Mary’s defense because of an offensive line that simply overpowered the Gaels, Parker showed a strong and accurate arm. He fired TD strikes of 30 yards to Mike Kane on a swing pass, 22 yards to Kenny Garrett on another swing pass, a 17-yarder to Vincent Chambers in the end zone and a 7-yarder to Scott Colvin.

A 21-yard touchdown pass to Kane in the second quarter was nullified on a holding penalty.

“That was fun,” Parker said. “When the line gives me that much time to throw, I can have games like that all the time. They used mostly a zone coverage, and we just split the seams all day.

“It was really important, after the Reno game, to come back like this and show that we’re a good team. I think the game against Reno (a Division I-AA powerhouse) really helped us. We learned a lot in that game.’

Kane, the senior from Temple City who moved into CSUN’s starting lineup as a freshman, carried 15 times and broke Mike Vogel’s school record of 358 career rushes. Kane finished with 84 yards and needs only 119 more to become CSUN’s all-time leading rusher.

He scored the first TD on his 30-yard pass reception and added another in the second quarter on a 2-yard run.

CSUN also got a 32-yard field goal by Mike Doan. It was perhaps the biggest triumph of the game for the Gaels’ defense.

CSUN rolled up a 24-7 halftime lead, allowing the Gaels only 78 total yards and a 10-yard touchdown pass from Mantua to Raoul Fulcher.

On their second possession of the third quarter, the Matadors drove 80 yards, 73 of them on three passes by Parker including the 17-yard touchdown strike to Chambers.

The rout continued on the Matadors’ next possession as Parker completed seven passes for 60 yards in a 64-yard drive, capping it with the TD pass to Colvin for a 38-7 lead.

Following the Gaels’ final TD that was set up by a pass interference penalty and a roughing-the-passer penalty, Brown brought the day to a fitting conclusion when he romped the length of the field with the kickoff.

“I kept waiting for someone to hit me,” he said. “No one ever did.”

The Matadors open their home season Saturday against San Francisco State. After being involved in blowouts in the first two games, Keele said he expects his Matadors to be involved in more competitive games the rest of the way.

“Reno was just too good for us,” Keele said. “After that game we needed a big win. Not just a win, but a big win. We got what we wanted today.

“Now we’ve got see just how good we are.”

Notes

St. Mary’s not only lost the game, but two key players as well. Ken Copas, a senior offensive guard and the mainstay of the line, went down on the first play with a severe knee injury. Raoul Fulcher, a senior tailback, also suffered a knee injury, although it wasn’t considered as serious as Copas’. . . . The St. Mary’s campus is 25 miles east of San Francisco, nestled amid rolling hills and forests. During the game, cows roamed the hillsides above the stadium. None of them stopped to watch. About 2,000 people watched the game, however.