Titans’ Travel Plans Fail, but Game Plan Is Fine

The road was not kind to the Cal State Fullerton basketball team Wednesday, but it sure got a lot friendlier Thursday night.

The Titans, showing few effects from a 17-hour trip to the Midwest the day before, scored the game’s first 13 points and went on to a 66-55 victory over Northern Iowa in the UNI-Dome.

A crowd of 1,894 stood for the opening tipoff, and fans remained on their feet until the Panthers’ first basket.

Boy, were their legs tired. Northern Iowa went more than six minutes without scoring, missing its first 12 shots before Jon Ellis made a driving basket with 13 minutes 55 seconds left in the first half.

Then, when the Panthers (1-3) made a second-half run at the Titans (2-0) and had a chance to trim the deficit to six, Ellis missed four consecutive free throws, the second pair with 3:38 to play.

Those were the first foul shots the Panthers missed all night but they proved costly.

Bruce Bowen, who scored a team-high 17 points, took a back-door pass from Don Leary, scored and sank a free throw for a three-point play, and Aaron Sunderland, who had 13 points and five assists, scored a fast-break basket after a Bowen steal to put Fullerton comfortably ahead, 58-43, with 3:10 left.

It was the Titans’ first victory east of the Rockies since 1974, when they beat Richmond. Since then, they had gone 0-13.

Sean Williams added 13 points and four blocked shots for the Titans, who won only 10 games away from Titan Gym the last three seasons but took a big step toward transforming their image from road worriers to road warriors Thursday night.

But first they had to survive Wednesday. The team’s connecting flight from Denver to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Wednesday morning was rerouted to Peoria, Ill., because of wind and icy runway conditions in Cedar Rapids.

The Titans sat on the Tarmac at Peoria for 2 1/2 hours waiting for a gate to clear and then bused to Cedar Falls, a four-hour trek through a snowstorm.

The Titans left the Fullerton campus at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday and didn’t reach their Cedar Falls hotel until almost 17 hours later, at 11:30 p.m. CST.

“Wednesday was hell, but I’m real proud of the way the team responded,” Titan Coach Brad Holland said. “They went through some adversity and didn’t complain. It was a real test of character, poise and mental toughness, but they stayed focused.”

Fullerton had a similar experience last season on its first trip, sitting on the runway in Chicago for four hours before leaving for Indianapolis, where the Titans played Butler. Fullerton had a five-point lead with seven minutes remaining that night but collapsed and lost, 100-83.

Though Titan legs were a little wobbly in the second half and they suffered a few breakdowns against Northern Iowa’s full-court press, they never let the lead slip under eight points.

“Coach Holland said we had to turn a negative into a positive,” Sunderland said. “Mother Nature was responsible for our trip, but we couldn’t change that. The only thing we could control was our play, and the trip didn’t seem to affect anyone. Everyone took care of business and got it done.”

Northern Iowa cut the lead to eight four times in the second half, but each time the Titans were threatened, they responded.

“Last year we’d try to hang on to leads and get passive,” Bowen said. “This year we get a lead and play aggressive. We haven’t showed this kind of character in a long time, and it feels good. This is something special, and it should be a big lift for the team.”

One would have thought playing at home would be a big lift for Northern Iowa, which is 159-68 in the UNI-Dome over 17 years and was coming off road losses to Iowa State and Iowa. But Bowen could sense before the game and during the game’s early moments the Panthers would have an off-night.

“We saw they weren’t ready in warm-ups--you could see fear in their eyes--and we came out and played hard,” Bowen said. “You could read their body language--the way they came off picks--and tell they were intimidated.”