THE COLLEGES / MIKE HISERMAN : For Matadors, a Triple Double

High noon on Friday, an appropriate time for a shootout.

According to plan, that’s when the first pitch will be thrown signaling the start of what promises to be a wild weekend of baseball between Cal State Northridge and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

There are pitchers who throw fastballs with such force that they jump right into the catcher’s mitt.

Northridge pitchers offer a derivative--fastballs that jump right off a bat.

The pitches come in straight as an arrow, belt high, seventy-five, maybe eighty miles an hour. Occasionally they come in slower, curving slightly and pausing to hover somewhere around the letters before getting swatted off toward the horizon.

Might as well be set on a tee.

“You can’t play baseball with brutal pitching,” Bill Kernen, Northridge’s coach said last week after losing an all-too-typical slugfest.

Oh no? Well, seems as if that’s exactly what the Matadors have been trying to do all season.

This time, they’ll have company. Or, as Kernen so pointedly put it, “Their pitching is (no good) too.”

The numbers don’t lie. Northridge has a staff earned-run average of 5.76. Cal Poly’s is 6.69.

In Western Athletic Conference games--a circuit fittingly known as the WAC--Northridge has an ERA of 7.23. Cal Poly’s is 7.06.

Complicating matters, Northridge and Cal Poly are doubling up the series at Matador Field, a place which already has a well-established reputation as a launching pad. There will be six games in three days--back-to-back-to-back doubleheaders--to make up a series that was washed out by March rains in San Luis Obispo.

Mercifully the games, by mutual consent of the coaches, will be limited to seven innings. Unless, of course, they go extra. . . .

Geez, don’t even think it.

Rob Crabtree, a junior right-hander whose 5-5 record and 4.14 earned-run average qualifies him as staff ace, is likely to be Northridge’s starter in the first game.

And in the second game?

Just maybe Rob Crabtree.

“If he gets through the first one in good shape, maybe somewhere around 90 pitches, he might start the second one too,” Kernen said.

The coach’s plan is to stick with his top guns as the starters in the first games each day, then improvise in the second games.

“We’re going to try to bob and weave our way through this thing,” Kernen said.

Not sure whether he meant like a skilled boxer, or a staggering drunk.

Anticipating a hit parade, some Northridge position players have offered their pitching services should the need arise.

Kernen is hoping he doesn’t get that desperate.

“I’ve had several tell me they can (pitch),” Kernen said, “but I know they’re lying.”

Perhaps it is best that Northridge, barring something close to a 20-game winning streak to end the season, has little chance of earning a postseason invitation. Otherwise the coach might be losing sleep.

“Realistically we’re just playing it out so we can be done,” Kernen said. “We established early what type of team we were going to be.”

Northridge (19-20, 6-8) won its first six, lost its next five.

“I’ve never been associated with a team that was good that lost five in a row,” Kernen said. “It just doesn’t happen.”

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Recruiting pitching is a priority for Kernen, but he hasn’t seen much help available among local junior college and high school pitchers.

“I haven’t seen somebody I’ve got to have,” he said. “There’s not anyone in the Valley, unless there’s somebody out there who’s just now coming on.”

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Close counts in horseshoes, but not basketball recruiting. Northridge coaches know that only too well.

Northridge has finished second in the running for two top prospects, forward Kendric Brooks of Hartnell College and guard Kareem Jackson of Sacramento City College.

Brooks, who came close to committing to Northridge in the November early signing period, chose Fresno State after a meeting with recently hired Bulldog Coach Jerry Tarkanian on Monday.

Jackson weighed Northridge’s offer against one from guard-laden Washington State before deciding to sign with the Cougars on Tuesday.

Brooks was third in scoring among JC players in the state, averaging 24.7 points a game.

Jackson averaged 14.1 points and 6.2 rebounds and was fourth in the state with 9.6 assists.