Micelli Avoids Cassidy’s Wrath in a Close Shave

In keeping with a national trend, the cue ball look is in vogue with Cal State Northridge basketball players.

When Northridge opened its season against Stanford on Friday, Tom Samson, a freshman forward, was sporting a cleanly shaven head. Rumor had it that Peter Micelli was responsible for Samson’s appearance, but he claimed innocence.

Sort of.

“I’ll never, ever tell,” Micelli said with a sly grin. “I think it was done (Thursday) night, but I wasn’t around so I couldn’t tell you.”

And well he shouldn’t.

Before the season, Coach Pete Cassidy warned Micelli against forcing newcomers to shave as an initiation ritual.

“Coach said if as a team we shaved Samson’s head I would have to miss a game,” Micelli said. “I think Tom did it himself. He wanted to do it.”

Cassidy, however, confirmed that he considered Micelli guilty until proved innocent.

“What is done in good fun in an innocent way is fine, to a point,” Cassidy said. “But I can’t help but be concerned that some people might be embarrassed by it and, in turn, their confidence might be affected.

“At that point it ceases to be in good fun and I can’t condone it.”

Asked if the shave was, indeed, his idea, Samson replied, “Yeah, uh, you could say that.

“It brings me into a tenacious mind-set. It’s kind of a San Quentin look. It inspires me to play tough.”

Samson said he asked sophomore Robert Hill to do the cut. Andre Chevalier, the team’s senior captain, finished it off.

“It’s a team thing,” Cassidy said. “When it comes to these things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Apparently, the look is catching on.

When the Matadors took the floor Tuesday night at Cal State Long Beach, several players were sporting similar cuts.

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Chevalier played in 85 consecutive games before missing the Long Beach game because of an injured left foot.

The 6-foot senior from Cleveland High is Northridge’s all-time leader with 348 assists and 131 steals and needs only 36 points to become the ninth player in school history to score 1,000.

Providing Chevalier is able to play Friday against Southwest Missouri, he needs to average 14.1 points a game the rest of the season to pass Jim Malkin and become the school’s all-time scoring leader.

Malkin scored 1,301 points from 1959-62. Chevalier had 26 points in Northridge’s first two games.

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Cassidy and Gonzaga Coach Dan Fitzgerald used to trade X’s and O’s when they were high school coaches in the early 1960s--Cassidy at Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks and Fitzgerald at Daniel Murphy High in Los Angeles.

Asked who got the better of those battles, Fitzgerald side-stepped the issue.

“I think (James) Naismith usually won the league,” he quipped.

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The string of 14 consecutive appearances in a postseason tournament by the Northridge women’s volleyball team officially was snapped earlier this week when the Matadors were not invited to the National Invitational Volleyball Championships in Kansas City, Mo., Friday through Sunday.

But interim Coach John Price said that Northridge’s chances at a berth in the NIVC tournament probably ended Nov. 20 when they were swept by San Jose State in the regular-season finale.

That loss came a week after the Matadors (12-17) were defeated in four games by Cal State Sacramento.

“When we lost to Sac State and San Jose State, that kind of did us in,” Price said. “If we had won those matches, we would have had a much better chance at getting in.”

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Despite the Northridge volleyball team’s sub-.500 season, several juniors posted big numbers.

Aimee Stone, a transfer from Colorado State, set a team single-season record for kills per game (4.20), and moved to second on the single-season list for kills (458) and total attempts (1,205), and to third in service aces (65).

Missy Clements ranks fourth in total attempts (1,085) and seventh in kills (405).

Ana Kristich moved to fifth on the single-season list for block assists (120) and total blocks (136), and teammate Debbie Bueche-Smith ranks eighth in block assists (105) and ninth in total blocks (122).

Senior Molly McLaughlin ended her collegiate career ranked eighth on the all-time Matador list in digs (639).

CAL LUTHERAN

Anatomy of a Rout

Tim La Kose, the Regals’ first-year women’s basketball coach, witnessed some big routs during stints as the junior varsity boys’ coach at Simi Valley and Royal highs during the past two seasons, but nothing he saw compared to Tuesday’s 124-9 drubbing of Pacific Christian at Thousand Oaks.

The Regals (1-2) set five team records. And it could have been worse, La Kose said.

“We could have scored 200 points,” he said. “Games like that are difficult because we needed a win and we wanted to play hard for the entire game.

“But you do feel sorry for the other team. You know they’re playing hard, but they were just really struggling.”

La Kose said he called off Cal Lutheran’s full-court press and switched to a 2-3 zone with 10 minutes left in the first half, yet Cal Lutheran had 48 steals and Pacific Christian committed 70 turnovers.

“A lot of their turnovers were unforced,” La Kose said. “It wasn’t like we pressured them.”

JUNIOR COLLEGES

Good Rule, Bad Rule

It might be too early to formulate binding opinions, but men’s basketball coaches already have mixed feelings about the 35-second shot clock and a couple of other rules implemented this season.

The NCAA dropped the shot clock from 45 to 35 seconds, eliminated the five-second violation when a player dribbling the ball is guarded closely and adopted a rule that calls for the clock to stop after baskets in the last minute of the game and any overtime period. The 45-second shot clock was introduced in college basketball during the 1985-86 season.

Depending on who’s talking, the rules are great or awful.

“That’s more to my liking,” Ventura Coach Philip Mathews said of the 35-second shot clock. “We can play a faster game. The rule I don’t like is the elimination of the five-second (dribbling) count. I think you need to reward good defensive efforts.”

Lee Smelser, the veteran coach at Canyons, agrees with Mathews about the five-second rule but not the shot clock.

“The five-second rule penalizes your defensive player for being tenacious,” Smelser said. “A guy can dribble the ball for the whole 35 seconds and it doesn’t matter.

“I was disappointed to see the clock go to 35 seconds. I don’t understand the thinking behind the rule.”

Glendale Coach Brian Beauchemin, another coach who doesn’t like a shorter shot clock, offers a possible reason behind the rule change.

“It seems like sometimes the rule-makers don’t have anything else to do,” he said. “I was happy with the 45-second clock. I don’t know if they are trying to make (the college game) closer to the NBA or what.”

However, not all the coaches have problems with the abolishment of the five-second rule. Newton Chelette of Antelope Valley is among those who welcomes the change.

“I like the rule change,” Chelette said. “I think that was the most abused rule (in basketball). ‘Closely guarded’ was defined as being within six feet of the player with the ball. I thought that was a silly rule in the first place because it wasn’t very practical.”

Chelette must live with the rule changes on the bench and on the floor. He has been a high school and college basketball official, as well baseball umpire and football official, for many years. His officiating schedule this season includes at least 22 college basketball games.

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When Moorpark’s football team plays host to Valley in the Western State Conference K-Swiss Bowl on Saturday at 7 p.m., there is a chance the Raider men’s basketball team could be in the championship game of its own tournament that night at 8.

To some, it might seem like a scheduling blunder, but Moorpark Athletic Director John Keever says he sees little conflict.

“We are going to go with both (as originally planned),” Keever said. “They would be different (types of) crowds anyway.”

Keever said the school could have played the bowl game in the afternoon.

“We draw better at night (football games),” Keever said. “I think we’ll draw well at the football game even if our basketball team is in the finals. I’m not worried about it.”

Staff writers Fernando Dominguez, Mike Hiserman and John Ortega and contributed to this notebook.