Unemployed Gibbs Jumps at Film Part

Keith Gibbs, most valuable player on the Cal State Northridge basketball team last season, ended up with no offers to play professionally.

Until this month, that is.

When movie producers called Northridge coaches asking if they knew of any “good-looking white guys who can jump,” Gibbs was steered into a tryout for a film part.

He won it.

Two weeks ago he left for Toronto where the movie “The Air Up There” is being produced.

Gibbs, a 6-foot-5 swingman, averaged 15.2 points and five rebounds for the Matadors as a senior last season.

He led the team in scoring and was also the leader with 31 steals and 16 blocked shots.

Until leaving to work for the movie, he was helping the Northridge team by serving as an extra practice player. Gibbs is still a Northridge student.

HOME SWEET HOME

The Northridge basketball team has two close wins and four close losses--all on the road--but Coach Pete Cassidy has retained a sense of humor.

Asked what he was up to before a practice earlier this week, Cassidy replied, “Getting ready for our first home game. I’m just finishing the maps for the players so they can find the game. I want to make sure they still know how to get there.

“This will almost be like going into a foreign gym for them.”

Northridge’s opponent in its home opener is Cal State Fullerton. The Titans are 2-1 under first-year Coach Brad Holland, a former UCLA guard. Bob Hawking, a former Simi Valley High coach, is a Fullerton assistant.

The Northridge gym was good to the team last season. The Matadors were 3-14 on the road but 8-3 at home.

LOOKING FORWARD

The Northridge women’s volleyball team recently completed its best season (27-8) since moving to the NCAA Division I level in 1990, but Coach Walt Ker will have big holes to fill next season, chiefly those left by senior starters Nancy Nicholls, Shelly Swalec and Dawn Krenik.

Nicholls, a 6-0 middle blocker from Cleveland High, led the Matadors in kills (433) and hitting percentage (.294) and was second in digs (377), total blocks (127) and service aces (42).

Swalec, a 5-10 middle blocker from Sterling Heights, Mich., set a single-season record for block assists (136), led the team in total blocks (155) and was third in digs (367).

Krenik, a 5-7 outside hitter from Agoura, led Northridge in digs (441) and service aces (49) and was second in kills (244).

“I’m looking to recruit (a player of each position) right now,” Ker said. “A setter, a left-side hitter and a middle blocker.”

Debbie Bueche, a 6-2 sophomore from Thousand Oaks, probably will fill one of the middle-blocker positions after getting limited playing time this season behind Nicholls and Swalec.

Bueche was employed consistently as a reserve in the first half of the season but only played in three of the Matadors’ final 10 matches.

“It wasn’t anything she did wrong,” Ker said of Bueche’s dwindling playing time.

“It’s just that she was playing behind Nancy and Shelly. . . . Debbie did some great things this year in terms of improving different aspects of her game.”

MATADOR TRADITION

If the past is any indication, chances are that Ker will replenish the Northridge roster with graduating high school players and not junior college transfers.

The reason is twofold, according to Ker.

First, because women’s volleyball players tend to be good students, they often sign with four-year schools coming out of high school.

Secondly, Ker will sign a junior college player only if he believes she can make an immediate contribution.

“With high school players, you can afford to have them train and develop for a couple of years, and then contribute in the last two years,” he said. “But with junior college players, they need to be able to start right away.”

GUN-SHY

Her nickname is “Money” but she has been a bit reluctant to shoot so far.

Northridge freshman Kris Waldorf, the Matadors’ starting point guard, is shooting better than 50% from three-point range (a team-leading nine for 16) through five games, but according to Coach Kim Chandler, Waldorf isn’t looking for her shot enough.

“That’s what we’ve told her many times,” Chandler said. “She’s got to come prepared for her shot. Sometimes she comes unprepared to shoot off a screen. When she comes prepared, she’s quite a scorer.

“Kris’s nickname in high school was ‘Money,’ ” Chandler said. “Maybe I have to get out there on the floor and yell it with a bullhorn.”

HURLY-BURLY

Quickly. Who is the leading rebounder for the Northridge women’s basketball team?

Six-foot-two center Maureen Batiste? Six-foot forward Nancy Nicholls? How about 5-11 forward Alana Collins?

Wrong. It is the Matadors’ senior shooting guard, 5-7 Janel Vega.

And she leads by leaps and bounds. Through five games, Vega has 40 rebounds, an average of eight a game. Collins is next with 30.

“Janel is pure heart,” Chandler said.

Vega’s frenetic, awkward style of play may best be described as hurly-burly--emphasis on the burly. She finished third in a bodybuilding competition at Vandenberg Air Force Base during the summer.

She said the training--lifting weights for four hours a day--improved her quickness and vertical leap.

But the most difficult part of preparing for bodybuilding competition was dieting.

“You can’t eat fat or sugar,” she said. “It was all protein and carbohydrates.”

Vega’s diet for the 75 days before the contest consisted mainly of fish, egg whites, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and the like. “When you got done, all you wanted to eat was junk food,” Vega said.

Or gobble up rebounds.

ON THE MONEY TRAIL

The first day of the junior college football signing period came and went Wednesday and Northridge Coach Bob Burt signed no players.

Although the athletic department will receive $85,000 in guarantees from games at San Diego State and Northern Arizona next season, Burt has yet to receive the funding he needs to sign junior college transfers to partial scholarships.

Burt, whose team finished 5-5 this season, must replace 11 senior starters. The Matadors are particularly thin on the defensive line.

MULTI-SPORT PLAN

The attempts of several universities to establish a cost-containment Division I-AA football conference for next season have been complicated recently.

Northridge, Cal State Sacramento and Southern Utah have requested that their athletic directors discuss the possibility of forming a multi-sport conference.

The athletic directors will meet for the first time to discuss the concept Jan. 13 during the annual NCAA Convention in Dallas.

Although Northridge Athletic Director Bob Hiegert has lobbied for more than a year to find an affiliation for the football program, he believes the multi-sport conference takes precedence.

In the long run, Hiegert believes, the formation of a multi-sports conference could help iron out some of the difficulties the schools have encountered in setting up the football-only conference.

UP IN THE AIR

Northridge, a longtime leader in the push for a cost-containment football conference, is no longer necessarily committed to the conference.

CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson will determine whether the school remains interested after she reviews a report by a commission that conducted interviews on campus this week in an effort to determine in which direction the athletics program should proceed.

Hiegert is hopeful the report is completed before the commission’s Jan. 30 deadline so he can give the other potential conference members a status report when they meet again, Jan. 28-29 in Sacramento.

Staff writers Kennedy Cosgrove, Mike Hiserman, Theresa Munoz and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.