This Coach K Might Win a Title This Year

Coach K is on the verge of a conference championship.

Ho-hum? Nope.

The coach isn’t Mike Krzyzewski and the school isn’t Duke but the basketball is good.

“Coach K” is the nickname for Charlie Katsiaficas, who coaches at Pomona-Pitzer, which is 15-6 overall and leads the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with a 9-1 record.

A young team, Pomona-Pitzer erased a lot of doubts by beating defending conference champion La Verne, 84-81, on Feb. 4.

“That was a very important game at the time, but this thing isn’t over yet,” Katsiaficas said. “You know, I kind of had a big question mark in my mind about the team going into this season. I was comfortable with the people we had, but when you don’t have the experience, you never know.”

Pomona-Pitzer starts three sophomores, a junior and a senior. Travis Greer, Derrick Quinet, Erik Lund and Brett Lange provide a balanced scoring attack and Phil Kelly runs the offense.

“That’s been the nicest thing--we have five starters who all average between 10-12 points so we don’t have to rely on one guy to score,” Katsiaficas said. “But we also have depth. We play nine people pretty much equally.”

Those are good things, but opponents will tell you that Pomona-Pitzer wins because of tough defense. The Sagehens have scored an average of 80.5 points in SCIAC games but given up only 66.7, the second-lowest total in the conference.

*

Caltech’s men’s basketball team is no stranger to tough losses--the Beavers have not won a conference basketball game since January of 1985--but its overtime loss to Whittier two weeks ago was particularly painful.

“It was a heartbreaker, especially since we had a lead with 14 seconds to go in overtime,” Coach Gene Victor said. “For Caltech kids, that’s especially tough. But these kids are great, there’s no moaning here.”

Caltech has lost 80 consecutive SCIAC games, and the overtime loss at home now looks as close as it will get to a victory this season.

The Beavers are 8-11 and 10 of their losses were in conference games. Victor schedules nonconference opponents that the Beavers will have a chance to beat. It improves more than the record: it improves morale and allows Caltech to improve its passing offense before conference play.

And, as any Caltech math major would tell you, the odds are the streak can’t go on much longer. Besides, there’s a rematch with Whittier on Feb. 23.

*

Leslie Ferguson, a 6-1 center on the Redlands women’s basketball team, broke two more school records last week. By scoring 24 points in a loss to Cal Lutheran on Friday, Ferguson became the leader in career scoring with 1,465 points and in single-season scoring with 434. Jennifer Wohlmuth, who played from 198185, held the previous records, 1,444 and 424.

Ferguson, a senior, previously broke the school record for rebounds, and her 971 this season are the most by a Redlands player on the men’s or women’s team.

College Division Notes

The Cal Lutheran women’s basketball team has won 23 consecutive games, dating to last season. This season they are 21-0 and have scored the most points in one game of any Division III team, 133 against Mills College on Dec. 2. . . . Cal Poly Pomona Coach Tom Marshall is one victory shy of 200. Marshall’s teams were 185-105 in 11 seasons at UC San Diego. In his first season at Pomona, his Broncos are 14-8 overall and 2-6 in California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games. Marshall gets his next shot at 200 Thursday against Cal State Bakersfield.