Northridge Goes Out on a Low Note : Basketball: Matadors end season with a 100-68 loss to Brigham Young.

This was not the way the Cal State Northridge men’s basketball team wanted to conclude its second season at the NCAA Division I level.

The Matadors, who started their two-game trip to Utah having won three consecutive games and 10 of their last 13, were overwhelmed by Brigham Young, 100-68, Tuesday night in a nonconference game before 17,206 at the Marriott Center.

The loss followed Saturday night’s 89-75 defeat at Southern Utah, and was Northridge’s worst margin of defeat since a 108-73 loss at Montana in the fifth game of last season.

It was the first time this season that the Matadors (11-17) had given up 100 points.

“We were overmatched, there’s no doubt about that,” Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy said. “Our hats are off to BYU, they’re a good basketball team. We played Utah, Stanford and Washington this season, and BYU is the best team we’ve played.”

Northridge played a first half painfully reminiscent to Cassidy of the opening 20-minute period against Southern Utah.

The Matadors trailed by 17 points at the intermission in that game, and the margin was 20 (48-28) against a BYU team, which can gain a share of the Western Athletic Conference title with a win at Utah on Saturday night.

“We played way too much one-on-one in the first half,” Cassidy said. “I told the guys coming in that we had to pass four, five, six, seven, even 10 times to get a good shot, but we didn’t do that. With their size, we didn’t have much of chance in that kind of game.”

Whereas Northridge trimmed its deficit to seven in the second half against Southern Utah, the Matadors never drew closer than 17 against the Cougars (21-6).

BYU, which shot 59.1% (39 of 66) from the field, led by 33 points on four different occasions.

Fourteen players scored for BYU, led by Nathan Call with 18. Russell Larson, a 6-foot-10 freshman, and Robert Jones, a 6-6 senior, added 15 points each.

Call, a senior point guard from Capistrano Valley High, was averaging 8.7 points entering the game, but he made six of eight field goals, including three of four three-pointers.

Keith Gibbs scored a team-high 14 points for Northridge, but he was only six for 19 from the field. Shelton Boykin and Percy Fisher added 12 and 10 points, respectively. Andre Chevalier, who had 22 points against Southern Utah, was limited to four.