Revival Meeting? : Matadors Hope Huddling Without Cassidy Helps Put Them Back on Track

Like a boxer rallying from a first-round knockdown, the Cal State Northridge men’s basketball team got off the floor to win two games in a row after losing its first three.

Then the Matadors were hit by a couple of haymakers that landed squarely on their collective chin.

* A 62-point loss to Cincinnati.

* A 36-point loss to Xavier.

* An 86-73 loss to New Mexico, despite outscoring the Lobos by 17 points from the floor.

* An 81-72 loss to Brown after blowing a 13-point lead in the second half.

Perhaps punch-drunk, Northridge staggered into Pepperdine’s Firestone Fieldhouse on Tuesday night and was floored by a similarly struggling team, 68-52.

The Matadors are 2-8 and reeling as they enter a nonconference game tonight at 7 against Seattle University in the Northridge Gym.

As Pepperdine gradually pulled away during the second half, Northridge looked like a team ready to wave a white towel.

“Losing the game hurt,” Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy said. “Not so much the losing, perhaps, as how we lost. Just laying down and dying and not doing anything.”

Mike Dorsey, a junior who transferred to Northridge after playing for a top junior college team at Los Angeles City College, wondered publicly after the Pepperdine loss whether a few of his teammates were giving their best effort.

“There’s no emotion at all out there, no desire to win,” he said.

Time out.

On Wednesday, Northridge didn’t practice. Instead, the team gathered for a no-holds-barred, players-only meeting in which each Matador was given an opportunity to say what was on his mind.

The consensus? The Matadors were playing timidly because the players felt that way. Evil eyes and derisive remarks were being exchanged on the floor.

“When teammates are negative on each other, you start looking over your shoulder and worrying about making mistakes,” said Peter Micelli, Northridge’s senior center.

“We have to play harder and we have to be more positive with each other; those are the two main things we addressed.”

Later in the meeting, Cassidy was summoned to hear concerns the players had about his role in the team’s slide.

Afraid that one quick-trigger shot or errant pass might result in being benched, players told the coach they were playing with one eye on the court and the other on the bench.

“Everyone was looking over their shoulder and not having a good time,” forward junior Ruben Oronoz said. “Now we made a little pact among ourselves. We’re just going to come out and go for it, just play hard.”

The day after the meeting, Cassidy lauded the players on their “sincere effort” to try to regroup.

“You hope you get back on the same page, everybody pulling together,” Cassidy said. “When you lose, suspicions come out, doubts creep in. Finger-pointing is a natural thing. When you’re winning, those things don’t surface at all.”

For Northridge to struggle was not unexpected. Cassidy’s goal has been to upgrade Northridge’s schedule each season, but he admits he “might have overdone it” by playing UCLA, Alabama-Birmingham, Cincinnati, Xavier and New Mexico in the first five weeks of the season.

Lopsided losses in the span of three days in Ohio, plus a bad experience against New Mexico in the first round of the Lobo Invitational in Albuquerque magnified already trying circumstances.

In consecutive games at Cincinnati, Xavier and New Mexico, Northridge was outscored, 102-40, from the free-throw line.

Xavier shot 49 free throws to Northridge’s 23 and outscored the Matadors, 40-16, from the line. Against New Mexico, Northridge had a 17-point advantage in field-goal shooting, but made only six of 11 free throws compared to the home team’s 36 of 47.

“When you’re called with the landslide of fouls we were called with on one side, and nothing is being called the other way and worse things are happening to you, you wonder,” said Cassidy, who has attempted to remain diplomatic on the topic of officiating.

“The kids start looking like, ‘What can we do?’ ”

The answer?

“You have to play through it,” Cassidy said. “We need to get our fight back in us, our tenacity.”

Tonight’s game against Seattle, a NCAA Division II opponent, is a prime opportunity for the Matadors to get back on track. The Chieftains are 2-8 after a loss to Cal State Bakersfield on Friday night.

“You hate to ever say any one game is key, but (the Seattle game) looms very, very important to team morale and growth,” Cassidy said.

Three seasons ago, Northridge used a similar opportunity against Fort Lewis College, another Division II team, to rebound from a 1-11 start and win 10 of its last 15.

The Seattle game is of personal importance to Dorsey, who played one season for the Chieftains before transferring to L.A. City to sort out academic problems.

“I’m really pumped about this game,” Dorsey said. “I have a lot of friends on the team, and I can’t wait to see them.”

For that matter, Dorsey says, he is anticipating a glimpse at his own new-look team as well.

“We got things back in order,” Dorsey said. “We’ll be a different Northridge team.”

They need to be.