Transfers Impress but Can’t Play

Mike O’Quinn and Greg Minor are two of the players who have most impressed new Cal State Northridge basketball Coach Bobby Braswell in the first week of practice.

Unfortunately for the Matadors, neither is eligible to play this year.

O’Quinn, a 6-foot-6 forward, is sitting out a year after transferring from Loyola Marymount. Minor, a 6-3 guard who played at Canyon High, has to sit out after transferring from South Plains College in Texas.

Jump-start: It didn’t take long for Pepperdine guard R.J. Powell to make an impression this basketball season. The 6-2 sophomore, who sat out last season because of a back injury, won the dunk contest during the Waves’ midnight madness practice last week.

Powell dazzled an enthusiastic, near-capacity crowd at Firestone Fieldhouse with a 360-degree dunk, beating teammates Bryan Hill (6-8), Mark McDowell (6-7) and Billy Jones (6-5) in the eyes of fans, whose cheers determined the winner.

Digging deep: Most of the out-of-season sports at Northridge held alumni competitions during homecoming last weekend, but none were as interesting as the volleyball team’s version.

Two dozen alumni showed up for the third annual “ironman” competition, as Coach John Price dubbed it. The seven events included nine holes of golf, free-throw shooting, the shotput, the long jump, an egg toss and one of those dizzy bat races you see at minor league baseball games.

Oh, yeah, they squeezed some volleyball in there too.

Mike Bird, a 1987 graduate, was the winner. Bird is the volleyball coach at Highland High.

Footloose: Brian Wiesner, Northridge’s women’s soccer coach, had a simple answer when asked what went wrong after his team was swamped, 4-0, Sunday at Oregon State.

“We didn’t have the right equipment,” Wiesner said.

Playing on a field saturated by rain, the Beavers donned shoes with long, screw-in cleats. The Matadors were left to slip and slide in shoes with molded plastic bottoms and short cleats.

“It was like being on ice without skates,” Wiesner said. “We spent literally half the game on our butts because they could cut and stop and we’d run at them and go right on by.”

Changing Day-by-Day: It seemed like a crazy coincidence. The Portland State football media guide listed a defensive back from San Diego named Donnell Day. Northridge also had a defensive back from San Diego named Donnell Day.

But the Vikings’ Day was listed as a 5-9, 180-pound sophomore, and the Matadors’ a 5-10, 185-pound junior.

Well, they’re the same guy.

Day, who is actually a sophomore, had committed to Portland State out of Mesa College, but the coaches apparently reneged on their promise of a scholarship, Day said, so he went to Northridge instead. He changed his mind after the Vikings’ media guide had gone to press.