The Colleges : Northridge Shoots for 4th Win With Winless Master’s On Deck

The Cal State Northridge baseball team is off to a 3-0 start and with winless Master’s College visiting Matador Field for a nonconference game at 2:30 this afternoon, the streak is likely to continue.

Northridge Coach Bill Kernen is pleased with a pitching staff that has surrendered just one earned run in 27 innings.

“That’s very good pitching, but it’s not surprising,” Kernen said. “We’ve played two games away from home in places where balls do not carry very well.”

The Matadors will get their sternest test of the season Friday when they travel to Cal State Long Beach to play the Division I 49ers, who won their first eight games this season under former Loyola Marymount and Valley College Coach Dave Snow.

Master’s disasters: Master’s, which is 0-4-1 overall and 0-2 in NAIA District 3 play, has been tied or in the lead entering the ninth inning in four of its five games.

“We’ve had a problem in the ninth throwing the ground ball for the final out,” Master’s Coach Pat Harrison said. “We’ve played some pretty good teams, so in one sense it’s good to know that we were within one out of winning in four of those games.”

Mirror, mirror on the ball: Jeff Preston, who plays first base for Master’s, has hit three home runs in the Mustangs’ first five games, and the redshirt sophomore from Placerville, Calif., says that he’s doing it with mirrors.

“I’ve worked a lot on my swing over the fall,” said Preston, who is batting .357 after missing last season because of a shoulder injury. “We had a lot of time inside and a lot of time to swing in front of mirrors and stuff like that.”

Walk this way: To Occidental College pitchers, the strike zone must appear to be just a shade larger than a postage stamp.

In their first two games--both losses--Tiger pitchers allowed 23 runs and 21 walks.

At Cal Lutheran, it is the fielders who have failed to get a grip.

The Kingsmen have committed 16 errors in losing three of their first five games.

No spring chickens: Coach Chuck Ferrero likes to call it Super Bowl Fever. That’s the ailment that strikes the handful of out-of-shape and over-the-hill hopefuls who show up every spring expecting to take part in spring football workouts at Valley College.

Ferrero turns them away before they step on the field.

“If I have never seen them or heard about them, I turn them away,” Ferrero said. “They usually don’t last more than a day and a half.”

Playoff scramble: Regional basketball playoff tournaments for California junior colleges will begin Feb. 25, and Valley and Glendale are still in the running for a berth.

Under this year’s format, four Western State Conference teams will receive automatic bids.

Santa Monica, the top-ranked team in the state, is in first place in the WSC followed by Ventura, Oxnard, Glendale and Valley.

Representatives from the WSC, Southern California, South Coast, Orange Empire, Foothill and Pacific Coast conferences will take part in the 26-team, three-round Southern regional. The top four teams will advance to the state finals March 9-11 in Santa Clara.

Anticlimactic: They might as well do away with the junior college state baseball playoffs.

After all, odds are that the winner of this week’s annual Casey Stengel tournament at Rancho Santiago and Cerritos colleges will be the eventual state champion.

In 1985, Cerritos won the Stengel tournament and went on to win the state title. College of the Canyons did the same in 1986 and Cerritos did it again in 1987. Last season, Rancho Santiago won the tournament and finished second in the state behind Sacramento.

Canyons (2-2) opens play in the eight-team tournament today against Pima (Ariz.) at 2:30 p.m.

Hostile hosts: Cal State Northridge was not a friendly place for the University of Manitoba (Canada) volleyball team Monday night.

First, Northridge staved off defeat by coming back twice in the fourth game before going on to win the five-game match.

Then, after several Manitoba players retired to the locker room, they were forced to stay there for 45 minutes after someone mistakenly locked them inside.

“They finally got someone to open the door and it was like, ‘Nice hospitality,’ ” Northridge Coach John Price said.

Northridge improved to 3-4 with the victory, but the Matadors are still without a win (0-4) in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn. Northridge travels to UC Santa Barbara tonight and Stanford on Saturday for WIVA matches.

The Matadors will be bolstered by the return of outside hitter Bob Samuelson who was reinstated to the team after being suspended last week for disciplinary reasons. Samuelson sat out Stanford’s sweep over Northridge last Friday.

“The bottom line was miscommunication,” Price said. “We talked things out on Monday. I think he understands what I need and want from him and he told me a couple of things that will help both of us in terms of communication.”

Staff writers Sam Farmer, Gary Klein, Mike Hiserman and Ralph Nichols contributed to this notebook.