Comparatively Speaking, They Were Outclassed

Critics already had been calling for the resignation of Jim Strong, so the Matador football team didn’t do the embattled Nevada Las Vegas coach any favors by dominating the Rebels last Saturday.

Two days after the game, the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a story comparing the programs.

Among the entries:

UNLV has a $2.6-million budget for football, the largest in the Big West Conference. Northridge’s is $377,000.

UNLV plays in the 32,000-seat Silver Bowl, perhaps the nicest stadium in the conference. Northridge, of the American West Conference, has 5,500-seat North Campus stadium, which the newspaper accurately described as “a converted horse racetrack and rodeo grounds built in 1944.”

UNLV has 81 players on full scholarships, each worth at least $12,000 per year. Northridge divides 17 scholarships in increments ranging from $1,000 to $1,300 each.

UNLV travels on chartered airliners. Northridge’s only flight this season was to Weber State in Ogden, Utah. The Matadors bused to San Diego State, Northern Arizona and Las Vegas, just as they will to UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. For its game against UNLV, Northridge drove to Las Vegas early Friday and returned by bus to Northridge immediately after the game, arriving on campus sometime around 4 on Sunday morning.

UNLV stays in four-star hotels. For their game against Hawaii last season, the Rebels were lodged in one of Waikiki Beach’s finest resorts. When Northridge has an overnight trip, the players have modest accommodations, and sleep three to a room.

UNLV has the highest-paid coaching staff in its conference, with Strong, an assistant head coach and two coordinators all making more than $50,000 per year.

The Rebels have nine full-time assistant coaches, a full-time recruiting coordinator and a strength coach. Northridge’s two full-time assistants each must teach 14 units per semester. There are five other part-time assistants who are paid stipends to coach.

One writer from Las Vegas summed up the result by suggesting the following headline for his story: Team Turmoil Defeats Team Terrible.

“They should have played for a training table,” he added.

*

Northridge defeated Las Vegas, 24-18, but it wasn’t nearly that close.

The Matadors gained 516 yards to the Rebels’ 304.

UNLV gained 160 of its yards in the game’s final 9 minutes 20 seconds, after Northridge already led, 17-3.

Matador running back Robert Trice--with 278 yards rushing, 23 yards passing and 34 yards as a receiver--accounted for 31 more yards than the entire UNLV offense.

In time of possession, Northridge held an edge of more than 16 minutes.

Also, the Matadors were penalized 10 times for 110 yards. Among the offensive plays nullified was a 22-yard dash by Trice that would have given him exactly 300 rushing yards.

*

After two years away from distance running, Jennifer Andrews has been a welcome addition to the women’s cross-country program this season.

Andrews was recruited out of Apple Valley High by Northridge Coach Don Strametz, but she and Strametz had differences during her freshman year and she decided to play soccer for Northridge’s women’s club team as a sophomore and junior before returning to competitive distance running.

Though Strametz thought she had a lot of potential when he recruited her, he characterized her as “one of the worst heel-toe runners” he’d ever seen, meaning that Andrews came down extremely hard on her heels when she ran.

“We tried to work on some things with her form as a freshman and I think she just got tired and frustrated with it,” Strametz said. “But I’m glad to have her back. She’s been a real spark for this team.”

Andrews was the Matadors’ No. 2 runner--behind Lori Miller--in the Aztec (Sept. 18) and Nevada Las Vegas (Oct. 9) invitationals, and she was Northridge’s top finisher in the Biola Invitational (Oct. 2), a meet in which Miller did not run.

JUNIOR COLLEGES

The Longest Day?

From the “Will This Day Ever End?” file:

Last Saturday morning, the Glendale football team gathered to board a bus and two vans for its trip to Bakersfield and an afternoon game against the Renegades.

Well, almost everyone was there bright and early.

“A couple of kids overslept, so we had to wait for them,” Coach John Cicuto said.

The Vaqueros made it to Bakersfield, but probably wished they hadn’t. The Renegades beat them, 57-18.

Then, on the ride home, one of the vans broke down on the Grapevine, which prolonged the trip for quarterbacks coach Jim Sartoris.

“Coach Sartoris stayed there until 10 o’clock at night, waiting for a tow truck,” Cicuto said.

*

Off to a flying start, the Antelope Valley women’s volleyball team continues to break school records as it sails through the Foothill Conference.

The Marauders are 6-0 and share first place with San Bernardino Valley in the conference. But, unlike the Indians, the Marauders haven’t lost a game.

Last week, Antelope Valley ran its winning streak in games to 18 this season--21 going back to last season’s last match against Mt. San Jacinto--with three-game sweeps over Rio Hondo and Desert. The strings of match and game victories are Marauder records.

*

Jenia Karimov, a Russian-born freshman at Pierce, won the men’s singles title at the Southern California regionals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Championships last weekend, becoming the first Brahma player to win that prestigious championship.

Karimov won seven matches in the single-elimination tournament to qualify for the eight-player final round at Oklahoma City on Oct. 27-31.

Two other Pierce players, sophomore Philip Leonhardt and freshman Doug Young, reached the semifinals.

CAL LUTHERAN

Zelenovic’s Back

It’s out of rehab and into the national spotlight for Tomislav Zelenovic.

The senior, a native of Rijeka, Yugoslavia, won the Rolex-Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches’ Assn. National Small Colleges Championships Western Regional title on Sunday, defeating Tim Cooley of Claremont-Mudd in the final, 7-5, 7-6 (7-3).

Zelenovic, who sat out his junior season because of a back injury, is guaranteed a ranking in the top eight when the NCAA Division III preseason poll is released in January. Coaches on the ranking committee told first-year Kingsmen Coach Mike Gennette to expect Zelenovic to start near the top of the list.

Around the Campuses. . . .

* Antelope Valley’s Mike Marsh leads Foothill Conference players in scoring with 30 points and touchdowns with five. Marsh is third in rushing with 341 yards in 52 carries. His teammate, cornerback Tony Upshaw, is first in interceptions with three.

* Valley is ranked sixth and Moorpark is seventh in this week’s football poll by the Southern California junior college sports information directors.

Jon Weisman and staff writers Fernando Dominguez, Mike Hiserman and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.