THE COLLEGES / MIKE HISERMAN : Volleyball Serves Up Talk on the Wild Side

In volleyball, Southern California-style, what you hear doesn’t always jibe with what you see.

The sport’s language can best be placed somewhere between the banter of truck drivers on citizen’s band radios and the chatter of Valley girls at a mall.

Despite that--or perhaps partly because of it--volleyball is immensely popular in these parts. Last season, the Cal State Northridge men’s team led the nation in attendance, averaging 886 spectators a home match.

What they saw was top-flight collegiate action featuring the Matadors against such teams as USC, UCLA, Pepperdine and Cal State Long Beach, the eventual national champion.

What they heard was Sam Lagana, Northridge’s marketing director/public-address announcer and, for the past seven years, the voice of the men’s U.S professional beach volleyball tour.

It was Lagana who first labeled the school’s rather undistinguished 3,000-seat gymnasium “The Matadome.” He is, indeed, a master of embellishment.

Players don’t smash the volleyball, they “drill the pill.”

“It’s a great game for spectators,” Lagana said. “If you can get them in and show them we’re all having a good time, it’s more fun that way.”

Occasionally, his dialogue borders on the bizarre. Consider, for instance, Lagana’s call of a point scored by Long Beach’s Zachary Small:

“That’s Zachary Small, 10,000 Wil -shire Boulevard, on the play . . .”

Huh?

“Remember those Zachary All commercials?” Lagana said, referring to a Los Angeles men’s clothing chain. “I just had to play off it.”

Small’s reaction: “He turned around and looked at me like, ‘What does that mean?’ ” Lagana said.

Lagana is by no means alone when it comes to such poppycock. Volleyball announcers seem to compete in a battle of one-upmanship.

A defender doesn’t merely mishandle a ball--a.k.a. fig--he “mismangles” it. That wasn’t a good set, it was “nectar,” as in sweet.

A jump serve that curves and sinks after crossing the net is called a “candy cane.” If it lands untouched it’s a “naked ace.”

A player who scores with a one-handed block of a shot has sent his opponent to the “closet” by winning a “joust with a Kong that left a Spalding tattoo.”

If a player fakes a big hit and softly nudges it over the net it’s a “dink,” but if a hard shot is smashed in from behind the 10-foot line, “the Red Baron” has dropped a “bomb.”

A player who blocks a shot isn’t simply credited with a block, it’s a “roof” or a “Jed.” That is, unless he has help from his two teammates on the front line, resulting in a “block party.”

When a shot ricochets between several players, they are playing “pinball defense.” A player who makes a diving, one-handed save of an opponent’s shot has “gone trenching with a spatula.”

A bad pass is a shank. Three in a row and you’re “swimming in the shank tank.”

The big guys up front aren’t only slow on defense, they have turned into “Monument Valley.”

Should a soft shot fall amid a circle of defenders, they might be accused of playing “campfire defense.” If two players exchange I-thought-you-had-it looks, they are guilty of the “husband-and-wife” routine.

A player who has scored with a hard shot straight down to the floor has come “knocking” with “nobody home.” But if he hits the net and is called for a violation, consider him “Tarzan” for “swinging on the ropes.”

Whether fans have mastered the vocabulary, they can attend the UC Irvine-Northridge match Friday at Matador Gym. Northridge, currently ranked sixth, will be favored to send its partisan crowd home happy. Unless, of course, the Matadors chew pipe.

That’s vernacular for “choke, big time.”