CSUN Stumbles to 19th Defeat, 4-2, to Pt. Loma

For most of the season, Cal State Northridge has played terribly inconsistent baseball. So when the Matadors finally showed some consistency in a game Thursday afternoon, it figured that there had to be a catch.

There was. They were consistently terrible.

The result was a 4-2 loss to visiting Point Loma Nazarene in a nonconference game.

“We were just terrible,” Matadors Coach Terry Craven said. “We didn’t play well in any phase of the game. That’s every single thing involved in the game.

“You look for a positive sign from anything, but I can’t find it.”

Such is the state of baseball at Northridge this season. NCAA Division II champions in 1984 and winners of 41 games last season, the Matadors dropped to 15-19 with Thursday’s setback.

Following many of his team’s losses, Craven has said that Northridge has played well enough to win except for a brief--and usually fatal--lapse.

He offered no such evaluation Thursday.

“We have played good enough to win a lot of baseball games, but we did not do that today,” he said. “We did not deserve to win.

“The simple fact was that they were not as strong as some teams we’ve been playing, and that was the only reason it was close.”

Point Loma, at 12-21, may not look good on paper. But two of its victories this season have come against Northridge.

In this one, the visitors simply outplayed the fading Matadors.

“Everything Northridge got today was caused by our mental mistakes followed by an error,” said Point Loma Coach Carroll Land. “When we’ve been able to make the plays this season, we’ve been a fairly good club.”

Against Northridge, Point Loma made enough plays to win.

Point Loma got a run-scoring singles from Steve Napier and Robert Wenzel to take a 2-1 lead into the seventh inning before giving Northridge a second chance.

Catcher Dan Muzzey singled to lead off the inning, went to second on a wild pitch and came around to tie the score when Point Loma shortstop Randy Tippit made two errors on the same play.

Tippit redeemed himself in the eighth inning with a home run off loser Randy Cina, the fourth of five Northridge pitchers. Point Loma added an insurance run in the ninth.

Northridge threatened in the bottom half of the inning, putting runners on second and third with two outs following Tippit’s third error of the game. Todd Mustin then flied out to left field to end the game.

“It was the second time this year we’ve done just nothing,” Craven said. “There are a lot of things involved with winning a baseball game, and we did none of them.

“I don’t know where we were today. We were like a team that forgot to get off the bus and play the game.”

About the only positive aspect of the loss for Northridge was that it was not a California Collegiate Athletic Assn. game. With 12 games remaining, fifth-place Northridge (8-10) trails conference leader Cal State Dominguez Hills by five games. At this point, math is all that is keeping the Matadors in contention.

Northridge plays a doubleheader at fourth-place Cal State Los Angeles on Saturday, but Craven isn’t sure where to begin picking up the pieces of what is becoming a shattered season.

“First of all, we have to wake up,” he said. “We have to play every phase of the game hard, and we didn’t do that today.”

POINT LOMA NAZARENE--Irwin and Wenzel.

CS NORTHRIDGE--Martinez, Robb (6), Wagner (7), Cina (8), Estrada (9) and Muzzey, Fernandez (8).

WP--Irwin (1-0); LP--Cina (1-2).