THE COLLEGES : UCSB Slugger Antoon Not Afraid of Wolf

There were two out and two on in the bottom of the ninth when UC Santa Barbara’s Jeff Antoon, a Notre Dame High graduate, stepped to the plate Sunday.

Santa Barbara trailed Fresno State, 4-3, in a Big West Conference game that would determine whether the Gauchos would qualify for the NCAA tournament.

Adding to the pressure, Antoon was facing Steve Wolf, who leads the nation in strikeouts. Wolf quickly threw a called strike.

The next pitch didn’t make it past the plate.

Antoon redirected it for a towering home run.

The homer, Antoon’s team-leading 11th, cleared the fence as well as a building behind left field.

A loss would have knocked Santa Barbara into fourth place in the Big West, but the 20th-ranked Gauchos (40-18, 13-8) assured themselves of an NCAA berth by moving into second.

Tim DeGrasse, who pitched for Notre Dame and Valley College, earned the win in relief. DeGrasse is 7-3 with four saves.

Antoon, a sophomore third baseman, was named to the All-Big West first team for the second consecutive year. He is batting .340 and has tied a school record with 22 doubles.

Another area product, second baseman David Waco of Chatsworth, is batting .300 with five home runs. Four of his homers came in two games against Cal State Northridge, including three in one game.

Best break: This spring it seemed that seniors Tony Cohen and Matt Simpson, Cal Lutheran’s No. 1 doubles team, were having more bad breaks than break points.

Cohen sustained an ankle injury early in the season, which knocked him out of the lineup for several matches and knocked the team out of sync for several more. However, the duo finally got a break when Cal Baptist’s top doubles team defaulted in the NAIA District 3 tournament.

One of Cal Baptist’s players couldn’t make it back in time from his Davis Cup match for Ghana, and Cohen and Simpson beat Cal Baptist’s No. 2 team, the 13th-ranked doubles team in the country, to qualify for their second consecutive trip to nationals.

Cohen and Simpson (10-4) probably will not be seeded in the nationals, but Cal Lutheran Coach Paul Steele said: “In their mind, winning the district kind of made their season.”

The NAIA nationals begin Monday in Kansas City, and Steele said there is a good chance that Simpson (10-9) and Cohen (8-5) also will be included in the singles draw.

Two liners: Lolita Pile won the women’s triple jump for the fourth consecutive time and the long jump for the second year in a row in the CCAA meet. Her leap of 20-3 in the long jump was a personal best and moved her to fifth on the all-time Northridge list. . . .

Quincy Watts of USC, a three-time state champion at Taft High, automatically qualified for the NCAA Division I championships in the 200 meters when he placed second in 20.66 seconds in the Occidental Invitational last Saturday night. The time was the second fastest of Watts’ career and his best at low altitude. . . .

Oxnard Coach Lindsay Meggs was a “guest coach” at Cal Lutheran’s last practice before leaving for the NAIA Area 1 baseball championships. Meggs, a former Cal Lutheran assistant, “throws the greatest BP (batting practice) on the planet,” Cal Lutheran Coach Rich Hill said. . . .

A week after setting a school record of 25-10 1/4 in the long jump, Northridge freshman Chris Perry improved his best in the triple jump to 49-2 1/2 to finish second in the CCAA meet. The effort moved Perry to seventh on the all-time Northridge list. . . .

Freshman Rodney Burt of Cal State Bakersfield, a former standout at Birmingham High, won the men’s 400 in the CCAA meet. His personal best of 47.53 exceeded the provisional qualifying standard for the NCAA Division II meet.

Making tracks: Redshirting at Northridge has not hindered Darcy Arreola this season.

Arreola, the 1989 NCAA Division II cross-country champion, has lowered her personal best in the 800 (2:04.05) and 3,000 meters (9:12.77) and has run the second-fastest 1,500 (4:15.00) of her career in the past month.

Her 2:04.05 clocking in the 800 came at Occidental College on Saturday night and exceeded The Athletics Congress Championships qualifying standard of 2:05.77.

She already has qualified in the 1,500 and 3,000.

“I’m real surprised with the times because I haven’t done any real speed work yet,” said Arreola, who is running for the Nike Coast Track Club. “We haven’t done anything shorter than 300s in workouts. . . . But the drills have really helped. That and the weights.”

Arreola might not have to wait long for another personal best--she will run in the mile at the Jack in the Box Invitational at UCLA’s Drake Stadium on Sunday.

Paula Ivan of Romania, the 1988 Olympic 1,500 champion, heads the field that includes U. S. Olympians PattiSue Plumer and Vicki Huber, and Teena Colebrook of Great Britain and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Colebrook defeated Arreola for the 1989 Division II 1,500 title.

Getting physical: Slowed by knee surgery after her senior year in high school and sidelined because of illness at Northridge last season, Tonya Conner appears to have recovered from her physical woes.

Conner, the state champion in the long jump as a Barstow High senior in 1988, was forced to withdraw from Northridge last year after contracting a case of infectious hepatitis.

Yet she broke the 40-foot barrier in the triple jump to place second in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships at UC Riverside last Saturday.

The mark exceeded the automatic qualifying standard for the NCAA Division II championships in Hampton, Va., next weekend and came a day after Conner placed second in the long jump with a season best of 19 feet 3 inches.

“It took her a while, but she’s finally overcome all her problems,” Northridge assistant Tony Veney said. “A lot of people had written her off after last season, saying she was a has-been, but she’s really starting to come on. . . . She’s got her confidence back and that’s helped her a great deal.”

Conner’s effort of 40-3 1/2 in the triple jump improved her previous best by a foot, moved her to third on the all-time Northridge list, and broke Lolita Pile’s freshman record of 39-8 3/4, set in 1987.

Not surprisingly, Veney likens Conner to Pile, the runner-up in last year’s Division II meet.

“They’ve both got the long legs and they’re both a lot faster than people give them credit for,” he said. “They have those long ground-eating strides that make them look slower than they are. . . . They don’t look like they’re going that fast, but they’re chewing up ground.”

Staff writers Brendan Healey, Mike Hiserman and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.