Sporadic Titans Timing Their Stride Right

The sun also rises on John Sneed’s new necktie, a Valentine’s Day gift he received from his daughter, a piece of work Sneed deemed ready for a public viewing Saturday night at Titan Gym. The sun was at the bottom of the tie, surrounded by a wild array of psychedelic colors--rays of red, swatches of purple, splashes of orange, streaks of gold.

The sun was smiling.

In a surprise, so was the wearer.

Sneed’s Cal State Fullerton basketball team, the designated yo-yo of the Big West Conference, had just defeated UC Irvine, 86-68, for its third victory in a row. Officially, that is Fullerton’s longest winning streak of the season, if you want to consider this a winning streak.

The Titans certainly do.

Three victories in succession qualifies for stability at Fullerton. On the Big West map in 1992, perhaps no other team is harder to figure. The Titans came within a couple of 20-footers of beating UCLA at Pauley Pavilion and scored 111 points against Utah State. The Titans also lost four consecutive games in January, scored 58 points in a zombie walk against UC Santa Barbara and concocted a way to lose at Stockton to the eighth-place in the 10-team conference, the University of the Pacific.

Fullerton has four players averaging in double figures for the season. In conference games, all five starters are averaging 10 points or more.

The Titans are solid to above-average in all five positions, with a 1991 all-conference selection at shooting guard (Joe Small), an inventive playmaker at point guard (Aaron Sunderland), a sinewy rebounder with a soft shooting touch at power forward (Agee Ward), a wiry and wily small forward (Bruce Bowen) and a rapidly improving newcomer in the middle (Sean Williams, who had 20 points, nine rebounds and four blocked shots Saturday night).

The Titans are also 10-11 and 6-6 in the Big West.

“Crazy, huh?” says Bowen.

Bowen looks around the Fullerton locker room and sees personnel capable, he believes, of winning the Big West Tournament.

“There’s no dominant team in the conference other than Vegas,” he said, “and Vegas is not participating. We have as good a chance as anyone.”

Bowen is not alone on this quivering limb, either.

“We can win it,” Williams agreed. “We were so close to New Mexico State (a 69-67 defeat) and I didn’t play much that game because my ankle was still hurting. We can beat Utah State. We can beat Fresno. We’re peaking at just the right time.”

The word from the coach’s office?

“It’s tough to put three (victories) together in the tournament,” Sneed said, “but many teams this year are capable. And we’re one of them. I’ve said it before: If they played this year’s Big West tournament four times, they’d come up with four different winners.

“And no matter what happens the rest of the way, right now we think we have a legitimate chance.”

Besides three in a row, Fullerton has won five of its last seven, a turnaround that coincides roughly with Williams’ development as something more than a fifth warm body on the court--and directly with a few well chosen words by Ward and Small, the two senior starters.

“About five games ago,” Williams said, “Agee and Joe got up and told us, ‘This is our last go-round. If we’re ever gonna do it, let’s do it now’ . . . Basically, we all got tired of losing.”

And Williams, a junior transfer from Connors State Community College in Oklahoma, got tired of serving as blue-and-orange decor around the Fullerton basket. Williams did not score more than seven points until the Titans’ 11th game of the season--and has been below 11 only once since.

“It’s been all of our JC kids,” Sneed claims. “Sean Williams, Aaron Sunderland, (sixth-man) Kim Kemp. It’s taken a while for them to become accustomed to our system. As they’ve improved, they’ve made us a better team.”

Nevada Las Vegas is out of the Big West tournament, but not off the Big West schedule--and guess where Fullerton takes its winning streak Monday night?

The Titans had better hope for some big-time point-shaving.

“We’re going to come to the airport and we’re definitely going to get on the plane,” Sneed said, doubling his per-game grinning average. “Vegas, from Oct. 15 to now, is probably the most improved team in America. They’re No. 1 in the country in field-goal defense and they’ve got eight or nine kids shooting close to 50% from the field. How many teams do that?

“But, everybody’s got to play the same teams we play.”

Sneed’s players view the challenge from a somewhat giddier angle.

“We’re going there to come back with a win,” Williams said. “Going to Vegas is payback time. We nearly beat them here last month. We had them down at halftime, but we fell apart in the last two minutes.

“We don’t fall apart in the last two minutes anymore.”

The most telling time frame, of course, is how the Titans fare the next four weeks of the season, Big West Tournament-for-the-taking included.