Northridge Split Makes for a Rough CCAA Road

Should the Cal State Northridge baseball team fall a game shy of either winning the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. title or being selected as the second conference representative to the NCAA Division II West Regional postseason tournament, the Matadors likely will point to the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader against Chapman College as their downfall.

Desperately seeking a sweep to keep pace with first-place Cal State Dominguez Hills, the Matadors, 13-2 winners in the opener, watched helplessly as the Panthers staged a four-run rally in the final inning of the second game for a 6-5 win at Matador Field.

The split dropped third-place Northridge (28-16, 12-8 in conference) three games back of Dominguez in the loss column and two behind second-place Pomona. Chapman is 21-21, 9-8 in conference.

CSUN’s inability to maintain leads has resulted in a rash of late-inning losses this year--the most recent being last Wednesday’s 10-8 defeat to Cal State Los Angeles. And in an indirect way, Matador Coach Terry Craven’s reluctance to go to his bullpen may have been responsible for Saturday’s painful setback, which made a loser out of junior Jeremy Hernandez, who pitched a complete game. Craven denied that he lacked confidence in his bullpen.

“I thought he was throwing as hard in the last inning as he was in the first,” Craven said of Hernandez. “He just got a little wild and tried to reach back and do things he didn’t need to do.”

Hernandez (5-5) had a two-hitter through six innings until he was roughed up for four hits and a sacrifice fly to go with a pair of walks and hit batsman in the seventh.

“It wasn’t so much them as it was me,” said Hernandez, who experienced similar late-inning troubles four days earlier against Cal Poly Pomona. “My fastball hasn’t been what it usually is the last couple of games. I haven’t been able to put it over the plate.”

CSUN opened the scoring against starter Jim Bennett with three runs in the second inning. Rob Scott had a run-scoring double and Dan Muzzey added a two-run single.

After Chapman scored an unearned run in the fifth, CSUN answered with a Jim Vatcher double and Tim Rapp homer, his sixth, to forge a 5-1 lead.

Chapman’s Darren Nelson, 0 for 9 in the three-game series (including Friday’s 9-1 Matador victory) to that point, tied a school record with his 16th home run in the sixth. David Bird (5-3) pitched three innings of one-hit relief to earn the victory.

In the first game, CSUN right-hander Dan Penner (8-5) was the beneficiary of a 16-hit Matador attack. John Balfanz (Nos. 11 and 12) and Scott McIntyre (10th and 11th) slammed two home runs each.

Rapp had three hits and four runs-batted-in and Lenn Gilmore went 4 for 5.