CSUN Spared Pain of Losing Close One This Time Around

The Cal State Northridge football team is hurting today, but this time the pain should only be temporary.

The sting of losing a close one can last a year or more.

But this game wasn’t close.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a team that has made a tradition of beating Northridge, did it again, 28-16, in a Western Football Conference game Saturday night at Mustang Stadium.

So much for the revenge factor.

Northridge had hoped to exorcise the memory of a pair of close-but-no-cigar losses to San Luis Obispo last season. The first, a 6-3 decision at North Campus Stadium, forced the Matadors to share the championship of the WFC with the Mustangs.

The second, by a 14-7 score at Mustang Stadium only two weeks later, knocked Northridge out of the NCAA Division II playoffs in the first round.

So maybe it was better that San Luis Obispo’s victory this time was more lopsided than even the score would indicate. Northridge’s only touchdowns were scored on plays covering 75 and 66 yards.

While the Mustangs rolled up 480 yards in offense, Northridge could not sustain anything. But at least the Matadors should be able to maintain their sanity. Another close loss and who knows?

Art Espino, a Northridge offensive lineman, was so bitter after last season’s losses that he purchased a T-shirt that read, simply, “Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Oct. 26, 1991”--the date of Saturday’s rematch. He wore it during training sessions to motivate himself.

Northridge’s playoff loss of a season ago was particularly grating because the Matadors felt they gave the game away--which, as a matter of fact, they did.

The key play in that one was a botched snap on a punt that gave San Luis Obispo the ball on its 12 late in the fourth quarter. The Mustangs scored the game-winning touchdown four plays later.

Although Northridge gained an average of less than two yards a play during that game, Homan Farahmand, the Matadors’ long-snapper, took individual honors as goat. It was Farahmand who delivered the ball in slow baby bounces when punter Albert Razo would have preferred a line drive.

Again in Saturday’s game, Farahmand’s name was being uttered in pain. Only this time he was just one of many who made mistakes.

Instead of bouncing the ball to Razo, Farahmand delivered it airmail--far over his punter’s flailing arms--when the teams were locked in a scoreless tie early in the second quarter.

Fortunately for Farahmand, the score remained the same as Northridge held on three downs inside the five and Tom McCook was wide right on a 20-yard field-goal attempt.

The miss only delayed the inevitable.

When Steve Lombardi intercepted a Marty Fisher pass at the San Luis Obispo 38 with 7:03 left in the half, the Mustangs quickly turned the Matador miscue into a touchdown and 6-0 lead.

The score stayed that way until the third quarter, despite the actions of a Northridge offense seemingly bent of self-destruction.

On the kickoff to open the second half, Tremelle Barnes was hit from behind by Lombardi at the Northridge 40, sending the football airborne and into the arms of McCook, the Mustangs’ kicker. On the following play, Baldomar Cortez bulled his way 34 yards over and through a host of Matador defenders for a touchdown and a 12-0 lead.

A 32-yard field goal by Dan Eastman and Bill Harris’s 75-yard burst for a touchdown midway through the third quarter temporarily put Northridge back in contention, leaving the Matadors in arrears only 12-10.

Very temporarily.

After Harris’ run, Chris Thomas, a senior who transferred to San Luis Obispo from Ventura College, took exactly 15 seconds to take the kickoff back 91 yards for a touchdown. And so it went. San Luis Obispo’s final touchdown came after Northridge faked a punt at the Mustang 42 and Razo, a high school quarterback, overthrew a wide-open Kevin Carmichael.

There were a comedy of errors. But afterward only the Mustangs were laughing.