Northridge Volleyball Braces for Pepperdine

In its third season in the California Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn., the Cal State Northridge volleyball team expected to break out of the cellar and challenge for an NCAA playoff berth.

But, after six matches, the Matadors are reeling.

They’re 1-5 and haven’t won so much as a game against anyone other than St. Mary’s, which is 0-8 and everyone’s doormat in its first season in the conference.

And just when CSUN probably thought that it couldn’t sink any lower, along comes Pepperdine, the nation’s No. 1-ranked team and winner of its last 25 matches, including 10 this season.

Coach John Price’s team will meet the defending NCAA champions tonight at 7:30 at CSUN.

Anyone wishing to get a good look at the unbeaten Waves should be advised: The way CSUN has been playing lately, the match may be over by 8:15.

Pepperdine, which has a second unit that Price said could start for CSUN, hasn’t lost a conference match since April 4, 1984.

And things have been going so poorly for CSUN that Price called last Saturday night’s 15-8, 15-7, 16-14 loss to fifth-ranked Hawaii “probably the best match we’ve played in the last three weeks.”

The Matadors have lost in straight games to Stanford, Cal State Long Beach, USC, UC Santa Barbara and Hawaii.

“That sounds like we’re so bad,” said CSUN’s Scott Juhl. And yet, Juhl said, the team remains optimistic. “To look at our season right now and say, ‘Oh, we’re frustrated, and it doesn’t look any better after this,’ would not be good.”

It might be accurate, though. The Matadors must still play two matches each against Pepperdine and UCLA, an 11-time NCAA champion. They also have match against second-ranked USC.

Juhl said CSUN is going to pull out of its slump and “start snapping people,” but so far this season the only snapping in Northridge matches has been done by its opponents.

“It’s getting a little frustrating, particularly because of the way we’ve been playing,” Price said. “The problems are on our side of the net, and not so much who we’re playing against. We’re making a lot of unforced errors.”

Shoulder injuries to outside hitters Ed DeGrasse and Jim Meaney, and setter Mark Stein’s sprained ankle have forced the Matadors to practice with less than a full unit on several occasions, Price said. And Meaney and DeGrasse have missed some matches, too.

Price speculated after CSUN finished sixth in the 20-team UC Santa Barbara tournament Feb. 1 that this could be the school’s best team ever. But, he said, “We went from a nice groove to . . . I think we lost our edge a little bit. We’re a borderline team, anyway, so we need to keep that edge.”

Northridge beat Long Beach at Santa Barbara and went “toe to toe” with UCSB, Price said, in a best-of-three match that lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes. The Gauchos won. Two weeks later, the Matadors had been beaten handily by both teams in CIVA matches.

Still, Price isn’t ruling out a trip to the playoffs for CSUN.

The CIVA’s top five teams qualify for the NCAA tournament. The conference champion earns an automatic berth in the Final Four, and the teams that finish second through fifth advance to the West regional.

“If we start losing in the second round to the teams we’ve already lost to, we’re in deep trouble,” Price said. “But if we play to our capabilities, which is a huge if because we haven’t been doing it, I think we’re capable of beating four of the five teams we’ve lost to. It wouldn’t be that big of an upset for us to beat Santa Barbara, Hawaii, Long Beach or Stanford. If we beat SC, that would be a huge upset.”

And if they beat Pepperdine, it would be even bigger.

So big, in fact, that Price is all but ruling out the chance of it happening. Realistically, he said, CSUN’s match against Hawaii on Thursday night is much more important.

“We can beat them on a given night,” Price said of Pepperdine, “but, realistically, they’re going to beat us a majority of the time.”

Especially when CSUN is playing as poorly as it has been lately.