Titans Run to Victory : Basketball: Cal State Fullerton turns on its fast break for the first time this season to defeat Eastern Illinois, 86-60.

For those Cal State Fullerton fans wondering just how good these Titans are, whether their 4-1 start is indicative of a true turnaround under rookie Coach Brad Holland or a truly soft nonconference schedule, hang in there--you’ll know soon enough.

Not this week. Fullerton, which beat up on a weak Eastern Illinois team, 86-60, in front of 1,007 Monday night in Titan Gym, has one more gimme, against Division II and soon-to-be Division III Chapman Wednesday night at home, before sinking its teeth into something a little more substantive: Road games at UCLA (Dec. 30), Nevada Las Vegas (Jan. 2) and New Mexico State (Jan. 4).

“After Chapman, those are three of about the toughest teams we can play,” Holland said. “They’re all ranked teams, so we’ll find out more about ourselves after that. I liked the win tonight and we played hard, but to be competitive with those three we have to play much better than we are now.”

It wasn’t difficult being competitive Monday with Eastern Illinois, a team that was outmatched in almost every category--speed, height, quickness, inside strength and outside shooting ability.

The Titans, behind the solid play of point guard Aaron Sunderland, got their fast break going for the first time this season and simply ran the slower Panthers off the court.

All five Fullerton starters reached double figures, led by Bruce Bowen’s 20 points and Sunderland’s 17 points and seven assists. Sunderland, who ranks second in the Big West Conference in assists (7.8 per game), would have had even more Monday, but teammates were fouled several times after receiving passes from him.

Kim Kemp added 17 points for the Titans, Sean Williams had 13 points and nine rebounds and Don Leary, who was named Big West player of the week Monday, had 12 points, including three three-pointers.

Fullerton made 25 of 39 free throws, outrebounded the Panthers, 41-31, and helped force 22 Eastern Illinois turnovers. The 26-point margin of victory was the Titans’ largest since an 84-58 victory over Tulsa in December, 1989.

“It was really nice to get out and rebound and run, to have fast-break opportunities and cash in on them,” Holland said. “We need to do more of that to be effective. We need to create scoring opportunities off the break. Tonight was the first time we’ve been able to do that this year.”

Of course, it helped that the Titans were facing a team on the skids. The Panthers were on a four-game losing streak when they came to California for a four-day stay--which included a trip to Beverly Hills and Hollywood Sunday and will include Disneyland and a Clippers game this week--and they did little to halt their slide Monday.

Eastern Illinois didn’t make its first perimeter jump shot until Johnny Hernandez’s three-pointer with 18 minutes 5 seconds left in the second half. Until Panther center Curtis Leib got hot in the second half, when he scored 13 of his team-high 15 points, the Panthers seemed intimidated inside.

Fullerton scored a handful of points on easy follow shots, and the Panthers had trouble getting back on defense.

“I thought we had to keep them off the boards and stop their running game,” Eastern Illinois Coach Rick Samuels said. “We didn’t do either. For a while in the first half and some in the second, it looked like Fullerton was in a feeding frenzy.”

The Titans got real fat real quick, using first-half runs of 9-0 and 10-0 to build a 45-26 halftime lead that was never threatened in the second half.

Sunderland, who went two for 12 in Saturday’s 75-68 victory over Cal State Northridge, enjoyed perhaps his best half of the season, scoring 11 points and passing out five assists in the first 20 minutes.

Among his first-half highlights: an alley-oop, in-bounds pass from underneath the Fullerton backboard, which Kemp converted into a basket; a perfect penetration-and-pass to Todd Satalowich, who made the layup, and a hanging, lean-to-the-left, shoot-with-the-right-hand shot that went in from about eight feet out.

“He was really into it,” Bowen said. “He felt he didn’t play real well against Northridge, and he wanted to prove himself tonight. With him on, it makes the offense go that much further.”

The offense also runs smoother when Leary is hitting from the outside, and that took awhile Monday. Leary, who scored 21 points against Northridge Saturday, got off to a slow start, forcing and missing his first two three-point attempts, but he finally got into the flow of the offense late in the first half.

His three-pointer keyed the 10-0 surge that gave Fullerton a 37-17 lead with 4:22 left, and he hit another three-pointer from the right side with 2:31 left to make it 42-23.

The Titans pushed the lead to 31 (82-51) late in the second half before Holland emptied his bench with three minutes remaining.

Eastern Illinois fell to 1-5, and now Fullerton will face another struggling team, 2-5 Chapman, which will have plenty to prove against the Division I Titans.

“You can equate us playing Chapman with UCLA playing us,” Holland said. “They (UCLA) are clearly the better team and should beat us, just as Chapman is clearly a game we’re supposed to win by a large margin. It should be interesting to see how we react to Chapman.”

And UCLA, UNLV and New Mexico State, too.