COLLEGE NOTEBOOK : Ker Was Shafted After a Close Shave in Oregon

Some members of the Cal State Northridge women’s volleyball team last year felt that they were too highly strung when they lost to Portland State in the NCAA Division II final.

The team lost a rematch this season in the Division II championship, again to Portland State, but the team had at least loosened up.

Three hours before the game in Portland, two players asked CSUN Coach Walt Ker if he would come to their room. The two said they “needed to talk to him.”

Ker went to the room--where he was jumped by the entire team. The players taped his ankles and wrists, then covered him with shaving cream.

Ker was then placed in the hotel elevator and sent down to the lobby.

One wonders what Ker would have endured if CSUN had won the championship.

All the stats that are fit to print: The latest California Collegiate Athletic Assn. statistics show the Cal State Northridge men’s basketball team giving up an average of 61.1 points a game and scoring 65 points a game. The Matadors, in scoring 3.9 more points a game than opponents, hold the fourth-best average in the CCAA. Only Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (21.9), UC Riverside (12.9) and Cal Poly Pomona (7.9) rank higher. At the bottom, Cal State Los Angeles averages 18 points less than its opponents.

Add CSUN stats: Northridge’s Paul Drecksel is the No. 4 scorer in the conference with a 15.4 average. Matador Troy Dueker is second in the CCAA in assists.

The big little-big man: Valley College’s Mario Lopez has been frustrated and frustrating so far this basketball season.

The Monarchs are a struggling, inexperienced team with a 5-7 record under first-year coach Virgil Watson, but opposing teams have had to contend with the Lopez swat. The 6-7 sophomore center/forward from Notre Dame High is averaging a little more than five blocked shots a game.

Lopez does, however, get into frequent foul trouble, perhaps because of the accent he puts on his blocks.

“He is one of the best junior college players in the state,” Watson said. “You hear all this stuff about other players, but Mario is the guy that all the major colleges want. He can play with any of them.”

The lanky Lopez carries only 185 pounds on his 6-7 frame, but he has been working with weights and is getting working on his upper-body strength.

Cal Lutheran junior forward Karl Slattum tore ligaments in his left knee and will miss at least six weeks, but probably the entire season. Slattum was injured last week in practice.

“It just sort of snapped,” Slattum said. “It wasn’t very fun.”

Nor was the sight of watching his teammmates lose last weekend to Cal Poly Pomona and The Master’s College.

Cal Lutheran (2-6) will try to end it’s five game losing streak tonight when the Kingsmen play host to Christ College.

Cal Lutheran Coach Ed Anderson figures to unveil yet another starting lineup in what has become a prolonged search for a pair of competent starting guards. Every guard on the team has started at least once, except freshman Steve Delaveaga, who has been averaging 10 points a game as first man off the bench.

Randy Stem, the Master’s College men’s basketball coach, has a courtside manner that only Johnny Bench could love.

Stem rarely moved out of a catcher’s crouch while directing his team from alongside the bench during the Mustangs, 83-70, consolation win over Cal Lutheran last weekend in the Pomona-Pitzer Tournament. Watching Stem move, or rather watching him fail to move, could make even the strongest knees ache.

“I never played catcher in baseball,” laughed Stem when asked why he didn’t stalk the sidelines like so many of his colleagues. “It’s not superstition or anything like that. It’s just that once I get down in that position, it hurts too much to get back up.”