THE COLLEGES / MIKE HISERMAN : Cassidy Trying to Harness CSUN’s Unbridled Speed on Offense

Could an old basketball coach really learn new tricks? Furthermore, could he teach them?

Inquiring minds wanted to know.

Pete Cassidy had coached Cal State Northridge basketball for 19 previous seasons and rarely uttered the words “run” and “gun” in the same sentence. Unless, of course, he was threatening to use the latter if his players chose to do the former.

That was supposed to change this season. Northridge, in its inaugural Division I campaign, was going to play Loyola Marymount-style. Two passes--maximum--and launch.

The Matadors would trap on defense and fast break on offense. The ball would be treated as if it were a live grenade.

Cassidy talked to the experts, Denver Nuggets Coach Paul Westhead, who had installed the system at Loyola Marymount, and Redlands Coach Gary Smith.

Smith’s forte early in his coaching career had been defense. Now he was committed to the running style. That intrigued Cassidy.

“Gary, what do you do if you can’t break? What do you run half court?” Cassidy asked.

Said Smith: “We don’t have a half-court offense.”

Cassidy gasped.

Was he ready for this?

Even the Northridge players wondered. “He’s always had a tight grip on what goes on on the floor. Now it’s so helter-skelter and he’s got to depend on us a little more,” center Todd Bowser said. “He’s in transition just like we are. I guess it’s kind of like letting a daughter go out on that first date. It’s tough to let go.”

But Cassidy did. In its opener at Colorado, Northridge attempted 44 three-point shots--and lost by 24 points. Then came a 25-point loss to Colorado State and a 58-point thrashing at the hands of New Mexico State.

The Matadors weren’t running and gunning as much as they were chasing and panting.

The players, Cassidy said, were thinking too much. Or not thinking at all. Playing jail-break basketball, it seemed, was like attempting to understand the lyrics of a song on fast forward. Often the result was garbled.

“When you’re playing against people who are better than you are, like New Mexico State, people who are so much quicker, it’s devastating if you hesitate a moment,” Cassidy said. “Your advantage is gone. We just don’t know the system yet.”

In the meantime, Westhead’s Nuggets were routinely getting buried by an NBA-record avalanche of points. Ditto for college programs such as Loyola Marymount and others that attempted to emulate the Lions’ style.

Coach Jim Harrick of UCLA called it a disease. He wondered aloud where “the purity and the finesse and the beauty” of college basketball had gone.

“When you’ve got the horses Jim Harrick does, you can say anything you want,” was Cassidy’s reply.

The system would not be scrapped, only adjusted.

“Coaches are notorious thieves, stealing from each other,” Cassidy said. “And I don’t mind telling you I’ve stolen a lot from Westhead and Gary Smith. But there’s still going to be a little bit of me in there. Some things I just can’t let go of.”

Things like a half-court offense.

Lately, the “me” in Cassidy has begun to emerge more noticeably. The points have begun to dwindle. Not CSUN’s as much as its opponents.

In the first six games of the season, the Matadors allowed an average of 106.5 points a game while scoring 81.7. The past two games those averages are 80.5 and 78, respectively.

Northridge (2-6) has won two of its past five games, including an 83-73 decision over the University of San Diego at home last week.

San Diego, which had five wins and losses to only Indiana and UC Santa Barbara coming into the game, was the preseason favorite to win the West Coast Conference. Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine and Santa Clara are among the conference’s other schools.

Northridge has not scrapped its up-tempo style completely. But the Matadors have become more selective. Cassidy calls it opportunistic.

“There are things we are learning to flow into that still allows us to be an early offense,” Cassidy said. “You can get a shot off within three or four seconds on the first move and it takes only three more seconds to swing the ball and have one or two or three other scoring opportunities along the way.

“We’re not perceptively slowing the ball down. We’re just making the extra pass or two to get the good shot.”

Faster, the Matadors have found, does not necessarily mean better.

“The commitment it takes to play that kind of basketball is tremendous,” Cassidy said. “It’s not my personality to be that way and that’s what probably is prohibiting us from committing totally to that kind of style.”

That and a need for taller, quicker players with better ballhandling skills.

Nevertheless, Northridge appears to have found a tempo it can live with.

And perhaps even win with.

The skin game: One of the topics Cassidy discusses with students in his “Theories of Coaching” class at Northridge is how to deal with criticism.

“When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, there has been a lot of criticism,” Cassidy said. “I tell them it’s like Dale Carnegie said, ‘Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain . . . and most fools do.’ It’s life. It’s part of the coaching profession.

“The first thing I tell them is that everyone up there is a coach and you have to be thick-skinned. If you’re thin-skinned in this profession, you probably won’t last long. You have to understand that people aren’t in the know. They just don’t know. They haven’t walked in your shoes.”

Still afloat: Northridge’s swimming and diving teams have kept their records above sea-level in their first season at the Division I level.

The Matador men’s and women’s teams have identical 3-2 records.

The women, paced by Cecilia Henricksen with wins in the 200-yard individual medley (2:16.48) and 200-yard butterfly (2:12.67), were particularly impressive in a 109-95 loss to UC Santa Barbara, the defending champion of the Big West Conference.

Briefly: Northridge’s preseason ranking of 22nd by Baseball America is striking considering the Matadors have never played a game as a Division I team. “As far as I’m concerned, this is the biggest thing that has happened since I’ve been here, even bigger than playing for the Division II championship,” Coach Bill Kernen said. “Establishing ourselves as a Division I program is what we’ve been working on for the past 19 months.”

Tory Stephens put up some startling shooting numbers in Valley’s first 10 games. Stephens made 99 of 165 field-goal attempts (60%), including a respectable 20 of 51 (39.2%) from three-point range. Take away the three-point baskets and Stephens, a sophomore guard, is 79 of 114--that’s 69.3%. He is averaging 20.5 points a game. . . .

The Western State Conference’s ninth-best assist man, averaging 3.4 a game, is Glendale’s Mike Cassidy, son of Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy. . . .

Rumor mill: Mitch Root, Chatsworth High’s All-City center fielder, will play baseball for Northridge next season. On the record, Root says “maybe.” Root’s brother Mark is an outside hitter on the CSUN volleyball team. . . .

Onions to the coaches from NAIA women’s soccer teams from districts 3 and 5. They really spread the wealth around when they selected an all-region team. All but one of the players came from District 5. Cal Lutheran’s Rachel Wackerman was among those from District 3 left off the all-region team, but, of course, all she did was lead the nation with 30 goals.