Northridge Shivering Its Way Across Frigid North

Sitting in a hotel lobby, Brooklyn McLinn shivered inside a warm-up suit, shaking hands buried inside his sweatshirt.

Twenty-four hours earlier McLinn, a Cal State Northridge guard, spent half an hour in a hot shower trying to get warm before the Matadors’ game against Montana in Missoula.

“You only stood under there for 30 minutes?” teammate James Morris asked. “I was in there for an hour.”

Morris was still chilled during a 63-55 loss to Montana on Monday, although Coach Pete Cassidy insisted the weather had no effect once the game started.

“I didn’t notice any snow inside the building,” Cassidy said.

As Division I Independents, the Matadors travel more than most teams and have shivered in such places as Milwaukee; Chicago; Pocatello, Ida.; and Flagstaff, Ariz., the past 2 1/2 seasons.

But nothing quite prepared them for minus-9-degree temperatures and a wind-chill factor of 33 degrees below zero when they arrived in Missoula late Sunday evening.

The icy air greeted them like a slap in the face after a 12-hour journey, including flight delays.

The trip into Missoula was nerve-racking for some passengers because several earlier flights between Bozeman and Missoula had been canceled because of poor visibility.

The Northridge team preferred, however, to take the flight rather than a four-hour bus ride.

“We were already tired,” Morris said. “We just wanted to relax and get into a warm bed.”

In the parking lot of the Greater Missoula Airport, the players were chilled to the bone in the few seconds it took them to load their bags into a van.

With the wind gusting as much as 30 m.p.h. and blowing snow across the road, the ride from the airport to the hotel was eerily quiet.

“I was scared because the defroster wasn’t working and you couldn’t see out the windshield,” McLinn said.

Though McLinn and Morris, who will lead Northridge against Montana State tonight, can’t wait to get home, Cassidy is among those who have developed an appreciation for the snow, the cold and the mountains.

“It is a cultural experience,” Cassidy said. “And it is beautiful.”