Healthy Backs Put CSUN on Winning Track

Which Cal State Northridge team will show up Saturday night at North Campus Stadium for the Matadors’ Western Football Conference opener against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo?

Will it be the one that couldn’t generate a running game in losses to Cal State Fullerton, Central Oklahoma and Idaho? Or the one that racked up 376 yards on the ground in a 42-18 win over a surprisingly poor Santa Clara team last week?

Coach Bob Burt believes it will be the latter team providing the Matadors avoid injuries to running backs Jamal Farmer, Robert Trice and Jim Warren and avoid further damage to the offensive line.

In fact, Burt is concerned that his 3-3 team might be overconfident.

“Coming off last week’s big win against Santa Clara the thing you always have to guard against is a false sense of security,” he said.

“It was a great win for us. On the bus ride home the guys enjoyed it and that’s good, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But if we don’t follow up with another one, it’s meaningless.

“We looked at the films and found out that we can play better. We did not play perfectly against Santa Clara. We made some mistakes. And we’re gonna make some changes, especially in the offensive line so we can get to a point where we are as good as we can be.”

Burt is pleased with the play of offensive tackles John Chase and Charlie Williams, but he is still experimenting with the injury-plagued guards. A virus contracted by center Greg Sorensen could require a change at that position.

UTTER CONFUSION

At the time it wasn’t funny, but looking back, Eric Treibatch’s fumble recovery in the first quarter against Santa Clara set off a comedy of errors.

In the excitement over Treibatch’s play, the cord attached to the headset of quarterbacks-receivers coach Dale Bunn was stepped on. Bunn was knocked to the ground and suffered injuries to his hip and lower back. While players, trainers and team doctor Lester Cohn came to Bunn’s aid, the line that connected offensive coordinator Rich Lopez from the press box to Burt on the field went dead. Lopez had been calling the plays.

Consequently, Burt called the first two plays of the Matadors’ ensuing possession.

When Northridge was penalized for illegal procedure on the first play, Burt took a gamble on the next one, calling for a halfback option featuring Farmer, who had practiced the play just once, a day earlier.

Thanks to a leaping catch at the Santa Clara one by Saadite Green--and just enough arm strength from Farmer--the 37-yard completion put the Matadors in a position to score one play later.

NEXT TIME

With six tackles against Santa Clara, Treibatch ran his career total to 214, three shy of the school’s all-time record. “Tackles are not what I’m interested in,” Treibatch said. “It’s more the position of the ball on the field and making sure they (opposition) go three downs and out.”

Barring injury, the senior safety from Encino should break the record at home Saturday.

ABOUT 80 PERCENT

Trice showed speed in gaining 121 yards in 11 carries against Santa Clara, but the junior transfer from Porterville College is still hampered by a strained left hamstring. The lingering effects of his injury were apparent on a 51-yard run, his longest of the season.

Trice burst up the middle, cut crisply to his left, then tried, unsuccessfully, to get into the end zone by straight-arming the last defender who had a chance at him.

The defender managed to push Trice out of bounds at the one-yard line.

“Man . . . I was there,” Trice said. “I just didn’t get in. I’m still scared to go all the way out, a full sprint.”

Farmer, who ran for a team-high 208 yards, also was knocked out of bounds on the Santa Clara one, following a 69-yard run in which he was caught from behind.

“Coming off knee surgery I have not made those long runs,” Farmer said. “My bad knee was kind of trailing behind me. It didn’t hurt. It is just (a matter of) getting used to a long run.”

Farmer fared better in the fourth quarter on a 59-yard bolt that ended in the end zone.

ONE TO FORGET

Nine seconds.

That small measure of time has been haunting Northridge soccer Coach Marwan Ass’ad since the Matadors’ 3-2 overtime loss at Nevada Las Vegas in a crucial Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Pacific Division match.

Northridge (8-6, 2-3 in division play) appeared headed to a 2-1 win over UNLV, but the Rebels’ Thies Carstens scored the tying goal with nine seconds remaining to send the match into overtime.

Neither team scored during the first 29 minutes 45 seconds of the two 15-minute overtime periods, but UNLV’s Ben Erickson scored on a header from teammate Tom Miller with 15 seconds left.

“Until today, I’ve been walking and driving around, and all I can think of is, nine seconds,” Ass’ad said Wednesday. “Nine seconds! We were that close to winning.”

Ass’ad called the loss to UNLV the most disappointing during his 10 years at Northridge because the Matadors dominated play for the first 70 minutes, only to watch the momentum change on a mental mistake by goalkeeper Louie Mata.

Northridge forward Danny Daniels had given the Matadors a 2-0 lead with a pair of goals in the first 26 minutes of the second half.

That advantage was cut in half when Mata left the ball free on the ground, thinking a foul had been called on UNLV for roughing him on the previous play. Carstens proceeded to steal the ball and score.

“For 70 minutes, we put on a clinic,” Ass’ad said. “UNLV was helpless and I’d never seen them like that before . . . We played as well against them for the first 70 minutes as we have played since the 1987 season.”

The 1987 Northridge team, led by NCAA Division II All-Americans Joey Kirk and Thor Lee, advanced to the Division II championship before losing to Southern Connecticut State, 2-0.

KING-SIZE HANGOVER

Friday’s loss to UNLV seemed to have a hangover effect on the Matadors on Sunday at New Mexico as they fell behind the Lobos, 3-0, in the first 24 minutes and lost, 3-1.

The loss left Northridge in fifth place in the Pacific Division standings, and virtually ruins any chance the Matadors have of qualifying for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation postseason tournament. The winner of the four-team tournament automatically qualifies for the NCAA playoffs.

“Right now, we’re playing for a winning season,” Ass’ad said. “We’re playing for pride and for building some momentum for next year.”

CSUN will play division matches at No. 10-ranked UCLA on Friday and at UC Irvine on Sunday, then will conclude the season at home with nonconference games against Gonzaga on Oct. 29 and California on Nov. 1.

NO RESPECT

The Northridge women’s volleyball team has won seven of its last eight matches, and is 17-7 overall, but Coach Walt Ker feels like the Matadors are still struggling to gain respect.

Although Northridge finished second in the four-team University of New Mexico tournament behind the host Lobos with a 2-1 record over the weekend, the Matadors have yet to crack the top 25 in the national poll, despite having beaten UC Santa Barbara (ranked 20th), Notre Dame (23rd) and Fresno State (24th).

Perhaps more importantly, Northridge was not ranked among the West region’s top 10 teams last week in the latest poll. Eight teams from the region will advance to the NCAA playoffs next month. “I feel we’re playing really good, quality volleyball right now,” Ker said. “But I’m not sure if the pollsters have noticed yet.”

With no top-25 opponents left on the Matadors’ regular-season schedule, Ker figures that Northridge must win its remaining 10 matches to have a chance at advancing to the NCAA playoffs.

“If we win our next 10, that would give us 17 wins in our last 18 matches,” Ker said. “We would have to be given serious consideration for a playoff berth if that happened. At least I hope we would.”

WORKING OVERTIME

The Cal Lutheran football team can thank Occidental Coach Dale Widolff for giving his school a winning opportunity in the teams’ Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game last week.

It was Widolff who proposed that the conference adopt the tiebreaker format used in NCAA postseason games.

Widolff sought the tiebreaker after facing Central (Iowa) in a 1984 playoff game. Because Central’s conference (the Iowa Intercollegiate) used the tiebreaker, Widolff had his team attempt a two-point, go-ahead conversion late in the game, believing that a tiebreaker would favor Central because it was more familiar with the format.

Occidental missed the two-point conversion and lost the game in regulation.

Widolff got the SCIAC to approve the tiebreaker beginning with the 1985 season, to help SCIAC teams that reach the playoffs and reduce the chance of the conference race ending in a tie.

But the tiebreakers have not been good to the Tigers, who have lost four of the five they have been involved in.

In the tiebreaker, each team receives the ball on the opponent’s 25-yard line. If the game remains tied after each team has a possession, the procedure is repeated. “I like it,” Cal Lutheran Coach Joe Harper said with a smile.

Harper became a winner in the first overtime game of his 29-year coaching career when Ben Schuldheisz kicked a 34-yard field goal. “No one is satisfied with a tie,” he said.

GETTING HIS KICKS

Schuldheisz has played a key role in three of Cal Lutheran’s five games.

He missed a 34-yard field goal as time expired and two extra points in a 21-20 loss to the University of San Diego Oct. 3. He also threw a touchdown pass--the first time he had ever thrown the ball in competition--in a 41-7 victory over Claremont-Mudd-Scripps the following week.

“It’s definitely been exciting,” Schuldheisz said. “I’ve never been involved in so many close games, especially this early in the season.”

Schuldheisz said he was nervous and “wasn’t real confident in his kicks” early in the season, but he has seen his confidence increase lately.

“(The San Diego game) was really hard for me,” Schuldheisz said. “In high school, I never missed two PATs in a season, let alone two in one game. I was so happy to get a chance to redeem myself with that final play.”

Staff writers Steven Herbert, Mike Hiserman, John Ortega and Theresa Munoz contributed to this notebook.