When Toros Hit Road, It’s Not Always a Pleasure Trip

The miles yawn by to the monotonous rhythm of tires pounding the pockmarked asphalt of Route 46 on the way to Bakersfield.

It is a 125-mile drive from San Luis Obispo, most of it on this undulating two-lane state highway that plays havoc with the human posterior.

But like it or not, this is where the Cal State Dominguez Hills Division II men’s basketball team spends lots of time--on the road--traversing orchards and oil fields from one California Collegiate Athletic Assn. game to another.

On a recent trip, the team left Carson on a 3 1/2-hour drive north over the rolling hills of U. S. 101. That night it played at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and lost, 54-51. Twenty-four hours later the Toros had a Saturday night game here with Cal State Bakersfield, which it dropped, 69-61. The next morning they took Interstate 5 over the Grapevine on a two-hour drive home.

The trip, however, wasn’t all driving and games. It was also motels and food and largely unfriendly crowds.

In San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield, the Toros stayed at motor lodges. The larger Division I institutions generally seek hotels.

UCLA usually stays in trendier establishments like Hyatts or Marriotts. Last weekend, on a swing through Arizona, the Bruins stayed in the Double Tree Inn in Tucson for a Pac-10 game with top-ranked University of Arizona.

Unlike Dominguez Hills, which was playing and traveling on consecutive days, UCLA arrived in Tucson two days before its nationally televised meeting with the Wildcats. The Bruins began their trip, which was similar in logistics to that of Dominguez Hills, with a flight to Phoenix for a game at Arizona State. A chartered bus made the three-hour drive to Tucson the following morning.

In Division II, money is not plentiful at state universities like Dominguez Hills. This trip was not unlike others over the years. In fact, this was one of the shortest.

Earlier this season Coach Dave Yanai directed his team on a three-game, five-day van trip through Northern California. It included stops in San Francisco, Sacramento and Hayward.

Later, on its most luxurious road trip of the preseason, the Toros hopped a jet for a four-day, two-game stand in Arizona and Utah. Once on the ground, though, Yanai rented a pair of vans and shuttled his players between Grand Canyon College in Phoenix and Southern Utah State in Cedar City, a distance of 400 miles. The return trip of about 150 miles to Las Vegas was highlighted by a stop at the buffet line at Circus Circus Hotel and Casino. The cost of the meal is low and the food is plentiful, two keys to restaurant selection for financially strapped schools.

Tight budgets and Division II schedules also dictate travel by state vans when possible. They are not always reliable. In Hayward a school van broke down. Senior Roger Coleman, a 6-6 forward with a background in auto mechanics, checked under the hood. The van had run out of transmission fluid, Coleman discovered.

When the Dominguez Hills women’s team drove to San Luis Obispo for a game Jan. 21, a water pump broke on a state van, leaving the team stranded.

But the troubles don’t seem to affect the players much.

“It’s better than going to practice,” freshman guard Bryan Dell’Amico said of the road blues.

Yanai’s teams have been traveling this way for 11 years. This season the road has been a particularly gruesome place for the Toros. The team is 2-8 away from home and struggling with a 8-10 mark overall.

Leonard (Sleepy) Eaton attacked the salad bar at the Happy Steak in San Luis Obispo. The fare was a variety of all-you-can-eat salads and entrees of steak, ham, chicken or fish, generally for less than $6. The reserve guard, five hours away from an 8 p.m. tip-off at Cal Poly, was making sure he got his money’s worth.

“It’s not enough,” he said of the $12-a-day meal money allotted each Toro. “We bring our own money. Some guys bring their own food.”

Anthony Blackmon, a veteran of three seasons, was one of them.

“I have my own food,” he explained. “I made sandwiches, fried chicken.”

Some players save their money for pizza or burgers after the game.

“When you are on the road your life revolves around when you eat,” said sports information director Thomas Neff.

Seated at a table in the Happy Steak, Yanai was most concerned about the distractions of a road trip.

“Most of all we want them to remember we came here to play a basketball game, not take a vacation,” he said.

He had expressed that thought at a shoot-around in the steamy San Luis Obispo gym that afternoon.

“I told them this is going to be fun,” Yanai said. “But it will also be a learning experience.”

Less than a year ago the Toros won the CCAA tournament title in San Luis Obispo by beating SLO.

“This place will be packed,” he said of the 3,500-seat gym. “There are a lot of people here who have not forgotten what happened last year.”

Yanai left the Happy Steak about 5 p.m. It is a short walk across the parking lot to the motel, but Yanai, who drove, gassed up at a service station adjacent to the Madonna Inn just down the road.

At 6:05 p.m. he called a team meeting in his motel room. Yanai held a small green chalkboard up for all to see.

“Men, I want you to relish this opportunity,” he told them after a 15-minute discussion.

“Fellas, let’s go after a ballgame.”

The team gathered in a semicircle and clasped hands over the double bed assigned to assistant coach Bart Yamachika. There was little space to move in the room.

“On three,” yelled Derrick Clark and Blackmon simultaneously . “One, two, three--TOROS!”

And then the team boarded the van for the SLO campus, where three hours later it lost another road game.

Distractions away from home are a major concern to Yanai.

In San Luis Obispo he worried about the training facilities at the host school. In fact, they were too good.

Usually Coleman, an athletic training major, tapes the ankles of each Toro. But on this night the hosts provided three female trainers to do the job.

Yanai, who exchanged his cardinal and gold sweats for a coat and tie, wondered what the effect might be.

“This is a big concern,” he said about the players mingling with the women trainers. “I hear the talk in (the training room). Let’s face it. They are young men.”

Yanai prides himself on the subtleties of preparedness. Preparation is crucial for road games, he says, because players are in unfamiliar surroundings.

“I am rather ritualistic in my approach to a game,” he said.

For its pregame and half-time talks, Dominguez Hills used an electrical control room adjacent to the basketball court, the same room it had a year ago before the championship game of the CCAA tournament. Wrestling mats, fencing equipment and folding chairs took up much of the floor space.

“Fellas, I’m excited about this game,” Yanai said, his voice resounding off the concrete floor. The 10-players joined the two coaches in the center of the room.

“One, two, three--TOROS!”

The game started 10 minutes late and less than 12 hours after the team left Carson. A full house did not materialize, however. A Joan Baez concert apparently attracted many of the students away from the game.

The outcome was close, with SLO leading most of the way. Neither team made a field goal in the final seven minutes.

An hour after the game, Yanai and Yamachika drove downtown for pizza and beer. It was nearly midnight.

Back in his school sweat clothes, Yanai was singled out easily by SLO students slogging down beer and pizza.

“Did you guys win?” asked a young man swilling from an icy mug.

“No,” said Yamachika.

“Yea, Poly, yah!” shouted the man.

In his motel room later, Yanai lit a cigar. He used to smoke them only after victories, but those have been few on the road this year. Now he lights up to relax.

For the next hour and a half he talked about his team and what it would take to get on the winning track. It is nearly 3 a.m. when he turns out the lights.

Clark’s day in San Luis Obispo started at 6 a.m. Saturday. He and teammate Barry Johnson had agreed to get up early and wash the dirty team uniforms. In the cool and damp coast air, the pair drove the van three miles into town to find a laundromat.

Yamachika and Neff got up at 8 and jogged near U. S. 101. Reserve forward Mike Rudberg, his hair wet from a shower, walked across Madonna Road to McDonald’s for breakfast.

At 10 Yamachika fired up the van and the team left for Bakersfield.

Along Route 46, Blackmon, a 6-7 center, dozed in the back of the cramped van. Yamachika passed the time with chitchat. Several players took naps. Neff, in a state-owned Plymouth Horizon, followed 10 minutes behind with his wife, Sherri.

Yanai, in the lead car, his own Oldsmobile, mulled over the upcoming game with Cal State Bakersfield. He had plenty of time for that on the two-hour sojourn. Cattle and wine country east of San Luis Obispo soon gave way to the hazy breadbasket of western Kern County.

The team chose the Sizzler Steak House for dinner to take advantage of its all-you-can-eat items.

There were no trainers available when the team arrived at antiquated Civic Auditorium so Coleman got the call to tape ankles. Taping was more important than ever that night because the playing surface in the Civic creaks and has dead spots.

Players on both teams appeared to trip over loose joints in the wooden sections fastened together with large, worn metal screws. The ceiling is low and in some spots shooters zero in on the rim as they stare into blinding spotlights.

The Bakersfield crowd of 1,800 is extremely vocal.

“Hey, Dave,” shouted a fan at Yanai from his seat behind the press table. “Better get that No. 21 (Clark) out of there. He’s losing his cool.”

The fan rode Yanai and the Toros most of the night, using names and numbers. But Yanai said he was not bothered by it.

“I have been coming (to Bakersfield) for so many years I guess the fans feel like they know me personally.”

Clark and the team did not lose their cool, and although the Toros trailed by as many as 12 points, they never quit. Yanai said later that he was proud of that. Dominguez Hills got to within two points several times in the second half but missed that key rebound or three-point shot.

Asked if he looked forward to getting home to the spacious confines of the modern Toro gym, Yanai answered simply, “Oh, yes.”

Yanai went back to the motor inn and plopped onto his double bed. Yamachika nibbled on chips and drank soda.

Yanai let out a sigh. “I’ve been trying to squeeze out a win on this trip,” he said.

The coach stayed up well into the early morning again. He walked to an all-night coffee shop across from the motel and relaxed with another cigar, a beer and onion rings.

Not too many hours away, the team would be on the road again--but this time they would be heading home.