Cal Beats Northridge, but Bozeman Isn’t Happy : College basketball: Cal coach has dispute with Northridge official during Bears’ comeback.

Cal basketball Coach Todd Bozeman was mad at his players, mad at the officials and mad at the Cal State Northridge fans who were tormenting him from behind the Cal bench.

How mad?

Mad enough to fight.

Cal rallied from a 14-point deficit to defeat Northridge, 76-65, Sunday in a nonconference game at Northridge, but not before the Golden Bears’ third-year coach allegedly took a swing at a member of the Northridge athletic staff midway through the second half.

Howard Garcia, the security supervisor at Northridge home games, said he was trying to calm the Cal coach when Bozeman attempted to punch him, grazing his left ear.

Bozeman was complaining about the lack of security personnel behind the Cal bench when Garcia said he told him, “Coach, we have security. We’ll take care of the security. You just coach your team.”

At that, Garcia said, Bozeman swung at him before Cal assistant coaches intervened. Garcia said he would not press charges.

Bozeman denied striking Garcia but did say, “I shouldn’t have lost my composure to that degree. I’m going to get upset, but I shouldn’t have lost it to that degree. But I’m young (31). I’m not a robot.”

The incident took place as Cal was taking control of a game it was expected to win easily.

The Bears (9-5) took their first lead of the game, 49-47, on a dunk by Monty Buckley with 12:54 to go.

Buckley, a senior forward, finished with 18 points, making seven of his last eight shots after missing his first seven attempts.

Tony Gonzalez, a freshman reserve from Seal Beach who is a tight end on the Cal football team, scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds.

Northridge (4-11) had an eight-point advantage evaporate in the first four minutes of the second half as Cal improved defensively.

After shooting 45% and making six of nine three-point shots in the first half, Northridge made only 10 of 35 shots (28.6%) in the final 20 minutes.

Forward Eric Gray had career highs of 19 points and eight rebounds for Northridge. He was starting in place of Ruben Oronoz, who sat out his second game with a sprained left ankle. Robert Hill added 11 points for the Matadors.

Randy Duck scored 14 points and Jelani Gardner added 10 for Cal, which ended a three-game losing streak--all against teams ranked in the Top 25.