THE COLLEGES / IRENE GARCIA : It Was an Elevator Season, With Too Much Time in the Basement

There was never any doubt the Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball team possessed talent this season.

The Matadors’ problems had more to do with lack of effort. They were only competitive when they tried and toward the end of the season that wasn’t often.

Northridge had the tools but not the desire. The Matadors had great starting hitters such as Jon Baer and Oliver Heitmann and solid backups who could come in and give the team a boost.

And let’s not forget Jason Hughes, the flamboyant sophomore outside hitter with yellow, spiked hair. He usually found a way to fire up the crowd and even his teammates at times.

When they tried, the Matadors could hold their own against the country’s best teams. At one point they had an eight-match winning streak. Northridge also could defend against some of the most highly regarded hitters in NCAA volleyball and score against them too.

But there was a catch. The Matadors weren’t always in top form.

About midseason, Northridge Coach John Price started calling his team “schizo” because it was so unpredictable.

The Matadors would do weird things like defeat highly regarded Stanford on the road and turn around and lose to lowly Ohio State in straight games at home.

Northridge looked intense in some matches and lax in others. Watching the Matadors was like riding a roller coaster.

It puzzled Price, who repeatedly told reporters he had no answers.

“I wish I could tell you what happened, but I really have no idea,” became Price’s routine post-match speech.

Desperate to get his team back on track, Price experimented with the lineup. That meant using second- and third-string players.

It helped the Matadors in a few matches, but reserves couldn’t carry the team the way starters could when they were at their best.

“We’re emotionally flat and I don’t understand why,” Price said last month. “It’s been a continuous problem. That’s not a sign of a team that’s ready to play.

“We’re not good enough to not be emotionally in a match.”

The interesting thing is most players agreed but none seemed to have an answer.

After the loss against unranked Ohio State, setter Travis Ferguson conceded he and his teammates were not ready to play.

“We’ve done a poor job of preparing ourselves,” Ferguson said. “We’ve just been sliding by and that’s bad.”

And just when observers thought the Matadors had displayed the most-apathetic performance this year, came the regular-season finale against Santa Barbara.

Northridge reached an all-time low in that straight-game loss at home last week. The Matadors looked like a bunch of guys in a leisurely pickup game at Club Med.

“I was thinking during the first game that I should be fired for having a team play like that,” Price said. “It was gross.

“I’ve never had a team lose because it didn’t try hard enough.”

Price was so disgusted, he apologized to Santa Barbara Coach Ken Preston after the match, calling it embarrassing.

Baer dismissed it as no big deal because the Matadors already had clinched a playoff berth.

“This match didn’t mean anything to us,” he said.

It was a statement the team backed up with its performance.

All Price could do was shake his head and hold up his hands. Many times during the match he smacked his clipboard against his head.

“I’ve tried everything with these guys,” Price said. “We practiced at midnight and it didn’t work. We practiced at 6 a.m. and that didn’t do anything. I’ve juggled the lineups.

“It’s very incredibly frustrating that it’s that out of my hands.”

The Matadors’ season ended last Saturday with a first-round Mountain Pacific Sports Federation playoff loss at Hawaii.

Northridge (16-12) was up for that one but lost 15-10, 15-7, 12-15, 15-11. This time the Matadors, who ended the season ranked ninth nationally, wanted to win and it showed.

“We played really hard,” Price said. “The effort was definitely there.

“We finished feeling a lot better about ourselves.”

Too bad the Matadors couldn’t play that hard in all their matches. They certainly had the talent to win more games.

It’s unfortunate that it took 10,000 hostile Hawaii fans and the prospect of elimination to get pumped up.

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College Notes

Heitmann (409 kills, 117 blocks) was named to the All-MPSF second team and Baer (519 kills, 121 blocks) to the third team. Heitmann finished the season ranked fifth in the MPSF in hitting percentage (.373). Price, in his 10th season as Matador coach, has led Northridge to six consecutive postseason appearances. On Jan. 31 he earned his 150th victory, against Long Beach State.