THE COLLEGES / FERNANDO DOMINGUEZ : Canyons Manages to Stay Up Even With Its Guard Down

It’s a good bet that Greg Herrick, women’s basketball coach at College of the Canyons, will take Sacramento off his holiday travel plans.

Herrick and the Cougars were in full force when they played in the Sacramento City tournament just before Christmas but returned home without star guard Rebekah Cunnan, the Western State Conference South Division player of the year last season.

Cunnan, who was averaging 15.6 points, suffered a torn knee ligament in an 85-45 first-round victory over Feather River on Dec. 21 and likely will undergo season-ending surgery. She was sent home the day after the injury.

“She dove for a ball,” Herrick said. “It wasn’t anything brutal or savage about it. She said she heard something pop.”

But the Cougars (16-3), ranked 12th in the state, haven’t exactly folded without Cunnan.

Canyons is 5-1 since her injury and won the Fullerton tournament last week with a 68-66 victory over highly regarded Cypress in the championship game. In a first-round game, the Cougars defeated San Diego Mesa, 110-64, to set a school scoring record.

The loss of such a key player might have devastated other teams, but Herrick believes the Cougars will be able to defend their WSC South title.

“We are not going to dwell on her injury and use that as an excuse,” Herrick said. “We are still pursuing the conference title and have a good chance to get it. . . . We have a quality group of players.”

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Women on men’s wrestling teams?

Don’t count on it in the near future at Moorpark College, although it could happen at Cal State Bakersfield.

Last month, Bakersfield administrators conditionally agreed to allow women to participate in the school’s Division I men’s program.

With some provisos, however.

Before women can join the team, male athletes and coaches must take “sensitivity training” classes to avoid potential sexual harassment complaints.

Also, the women must compete only against other women.

The first condition should be easy to meet but the second might prove more difficult: Bakersfield would be the first Division I school to have women wrestlers.

Still, the wheels are turning there. But not at Moorpark, the only junior college or four-year school in the area that has a wrestling program.

“There are no plans for it at the present time,” said John Keever, the Raiders’ wrestling coach since 1969 and the school’s athletic director. “I’m not heading in that direction this late in my career.”

Keever, who took Moorpark to state titles in 1990 and ‘91, said the mechanism is not in place yet for women to join the Raiders.

“There’s no (girls’) high school wrestling program in my area,” Keever said. “Until there’s a feeder program, it’s pretty much out of the question.”

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For the third time in about a week, the Ventura men’s basketball team will face one of the top 10 teams in the state when the Pirates travel to the South Bay to face Long Beach tonight.

Ventura (18-0) is ranked No. 1 in the state and the Vikings (16-4), defending state champions, are seventh. The game is a rematch of last year’s state title game, a 63-61 victory for Long Beach.

Last week, Ventura won the Hancock tournament, getting past then-No. 5 Sequoias, 70-67, in the first round and then-No. 3 Cerritos, 87-62, in the semifinals.

“That’s good for us to play teams like that early (in the season),” said Philip Mathews, Ventura coach. “You have to play them sometime.”

Some coaches might have questioned how three of the top 10 teams in the state were pitted against each other in the same bracket at Hancock, leaving the host team with a bunch of pretenders in the other bracket and giving Hancock a better shot at making the final, but Mathews wasn’t complaining.

“In all fairness to (Hancock Coach) Bobby (White), he switches it around every year,” Mathews said. “Every school wants to (win its own tournament).”