CSUN Gets Second Win by Pushing Off The Master’s, 66-64

Cal State Northridge, a basketball team in desperate need of a shove in the right direction, got one Saturday afternoon at Master’s College in Newhall.

It came from guard Pat Bolden, who, with three ticks left on the clock, pushed a defender out of the way with one arm, grabbed a full-court inbounds pass from Ray Horwath with the other, and scored on a layup to give the Matadors a 66-64 victory over the Mustangs.

The loss was particularly frustrating for Master’s because it kept two dubious streaks alive. The Mustangs are now 0-11 against Northridge and 0-11 this season. The fact that just about everyone in the building saw Bolden push off didn’t help matters.

Apparently, the only ones who missed the connection between Bolden’s forearm and Phil Hahn’s back were Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy and two guys wearing whistles and striped shirts.

“I saw two guys going for the ball. I didn’t see anything,” Cassidy dead-panned.

Master’s Coach Randy Stem saw it differently. “I think he shoved him,” he said.

Bolden, who scored only six points, at first claimed he was innocent of a foul. But then he described the play this way: “It’s a play we practice all the time. I broke to the right because that’s where Ray normally throws it, but when it went to the other side I was able to push off (Hahn) and go get the ball. I couldn’t believe how open I was.”

Uh-huh. In football, he would have been called for pass interference.

But it never really should have come to that.

Northridge led at the half, 36-31, and increased its lead to 55-42 in the first nine minutes of the second half.

At that point, Stem benched his five starters--a move that was taken as a wave of the white flag by a majority of the home crowd.

Unfortunately for Cassidy, the Northridge players seemed only too happy to ease up. The Mustang scrubs ended up outscoring the Matadors, 4-3, in almost three minutes. More importantly, they stopped CSUN’s momentum.

A stroke of genius by Stem? Not according to the man himself.

“Let’s face it,” he said. “Northridge let down. Of the five guys I put on the floor, there might have been one athlete. The other four just ran around out there.”

Whether it was the few minutes of rest, or the embarrassment of being benched, the Master’s starters came back with a vengeance when they re-entered the game.

Northridge led, 60-48, with 7:19 left in the game. Six minutes and seven seconds later, the score was 60-59.

Who said droughts only hit once a year? Exactly seven days before, Northridge had a comfortable lead blown away by a 30-2 run over an 11-minute span against San Francisco State.

Said Cassidy: “I’ll always have flashbacks of that.”

Paul Horwath, who led the Matadors with 18 points, made two free throws with 52 seconds left to make it 62-59. Troy Dueker added a point to the margin by hitting the front end of a one-and-one with 32 seconds left, but with 17 seconds remaining Pete Coeler threw in an off-balance 20-footer good for three points to make it 63-62.

With 12 seconds left, Horwath gave the Matadors a 64-62 lead by making another free throw, but the Mustangs tied it on a five-footer by Steve Hammond with three seconds left.

Northridge then called timeout, and Cassidy called for the bomb to Bolden.

“I’ve run that play for years,” he said later, “and that is probably the second time we’ve won.”

The winning play probably Cassidy from having to make another angry speech about the new three-point shot. Northridge was 0 for 1. Master’s was 10 for 13.

Coeler scored 12 of his 18 points from the three-point range. Hahn, who led all scorers with 21 points, was 5 for 7 in three-point attempts.

Instead, Cassidy was just thankful to come away with a victory. “The way this season is going, every win is appreciated,” he said. The Matadors are 2-7.

For Master’s, the two-point loss was the next best thing to a victory.

Said Coeler: “I think we proved to ourselves we can be good when we put our hearts into it.”

Said Stem: “The first 10 minutes we played like an 0-10 team and that killed us.”

Make that 0-11.