In Gaining Experience, Northridge Is at a Loss : Volleyball: Young Matador women are no match for USC in a 15-2, 15-3, 15-11 setback and fall to 1-6 with a second three-game losing streak.

No one said it was going to be easy for the Cal State Northridge women’s volleyball team.

The Matadors began the 1995 season with only one starter back from last year’s squad that posted a 23-8 record and won the National Invitational Volleyball Championship, and it has shown during the first two weeks of play.

Northridge entered Wednesday night’s nonconference match at USC with a 1-5 record and a .098 hitting percentage and left it with a 1-6 mark and its second three-match losing streak of the season.

Playing against a USC team ranked 11th in the nation, the Matadors were outhit, out-blocked and out-dug in a 15-2, 15-3, 15-11 loss to the Trojans.

USC took only 15 minutes to overpower Northridge in each of the first two games before the Matadors made things more difficult in Game 3.

Lian Kang Lu, Northridge’s second-year coach, inserted Natasha Johnson and Amy Gillis into the Matador lineup in place of starters Carrie Kapfenberg and Rene Goth in the third stanza and it resulted in better blocking and an improved hitting percentage.

“Their timing was better than Carrie and Rene’s,” Lu said. “[Carrie and Rene] were too excited. They were jumping too early. Their timing wasn’t right.”

After posting dismal hitting percentages of negative .120 and .130 in the first two games, Northridge improved to .175 in the third.

Taking advantage of several USC errors and the hitting of freshman Holli Hansen, the Matadors took a 7-4 lead before falling behind, 12-7. Northridge closed to within 14-11 before USC closed out the Matadors.

The loss marked the fifth time this season that Northridge--which hit .000--has been held to a percentage under .050 and it was the fourth time that the Matadors have been swept, but Hansen said that she and her inexperienced teammates are chalking all of it up as a good learning experience.

“It is frustrating, but we know that we’re a young team,” she said. “We know that we’ve got four freshmen in the starting lineup and we can’t expect to come out here and win right from the start. It’s going to take time.”

Hansen had seven kills and eight digs for Northridge. Kapfenberg and freshman each Crystal Newquist added four.

Senior Kelly Kuebler, a second-team All-American selection last year, led USC with 14 kills and 11 digs.

“We’ve played teams that were more solid all around than them,” Hansen said. “But . . . they seemed to always know where we were going to be.”

Northridge Notes

The Matadors will travel to Flagstaff, Ariz., to play Northern Arizona on Friday and Saturday. Northridge was scheduled to play in the Northern Arizona tournament this weekend, but when the other two teams withdrew, the Matadors and Lumberjacks decided to play back-to-back matches.