CSUN Faces Roadblock

Hope they like peanuts.

The Cal State Northridge men’s basketball team filed on to a commercial jet on Wednesday morning--jamming into coach seats designed for persons much smaller than the average power forward--for the first leg of what is sure to be a grueling odyssey.

Thanks to the quirkiness of a nine-team Big Sky Conference schedule, the Matadors must play five consecutive games on the road in five states in 15 days, starting tonight against Eastern Washington.

Northridge will play at Portland State on Saturday, at Weber State on Feb. 20, at Sacramento State on Feb. 22 and at Northern Arizona on Feb. 27 before finishing the season, mercifully, with a home game against Idaho State on March 1.

Through Feb. 28, the Matadors will spend nine nights in five hotels and log more than 4,000 miles in the air. By the end of the month, you can bet they will be having nightmares about seat-backs, tray-tables and turbulence.

“I’ve never seen it in my life, not in the middle of conference,” said Bobby Braswell, Northridge’s first-year coach, a college assistant for seven seasons. “It just seems unreasonable that one team, any team, should have to play five games in a row on the road.”

Complicating matters are these cruel facts: Northridge is 1-7 on the road this season and has lost 21 of its last 22 away games. The Matadors’ only “road” victory came in December at Pepperdine.

“It’s going to be tough,” Northridge point guard Trenton Cross said of the trip, “but we have just got to pull through together as a family, keep each other up. I think we can do it.”

They will have to. Northridge (8-12, 4-6 in Big Sky play) has lost four in a row and needs a couple of victories in its last six games to finish in the top six and qualify for the conference tournament.

So how did Northridge draw such a schedule?

Doug Fullerton, Big Sky commissioner, squashes any conspiracy theory against the Matadors, who are in their first season in the conference.

“People are used to a very symmetrical schedule, where you have playing partners [teams that travel as pairs, like USC and UCLA in the Pacific-10],” Fullerton said. “That works if you have an even number. But with nine teams you are all over the place. I think there are bad parts to everyone’s schedule.”

Indeed, Weber State is four games into a stretch of five consecutive conference road games. But the Wildcats broke that up with a nonconference home game last week.

Northern Arizona plays four consecutive road games against the same teams Northridge faces, but the Lumberjacks then play host to the Matadors in the fifth game.

Road games seem particularly tough in the Big Sky. Home teams are 34-17 this season.

Northridge is 0-3 on the road in conference play.

Ask Northridge players to explain why they play so poorly on the road, and they are likely to shrug their shoulders and point to their temples.

“I think it’s all mental,” forward Keith Higgins said. “You just have to go in with the attitude of forgetting about the ref and the fans and all that. You just have to play basketball.”

The trick to winning on the road, Braswell said, is to take the crowd out of the game. The Matadors did that in their season opener before 13,066 fans at Nevada Las Vegas, playing the Rebels even until losing in the final seconds.

“That’s the best feeling, when they are real loud and you come down and hit a three or score a basket and they get quiet,” Cross said. “The best way to keep [fans] out of the game is don’t let teams do spectacular dunks or lob plays or hit a series of threes or stuff like that. You have to keep the hoopla to a minimum.”

A visiting team can use the crowd to its advantage, though.

“You get the guys in an us-against-the-world mentality,” Braswell said. “Let them know that when we go into these arenas, you’ve got nobody but your 12 teammates and the coaching staff. It’s all that we have and we have to depend on each other. That kind of rallies them sometimes.”

Northridge will be avoiding the hotbeds of Big Sky basketball. Of the five upcoming opponents, only Weber State figures to draw more than 3,000 fans.

The Matadors have beat the first four opponents on this trip.

“We beat them before and that’s fine and dandy,” Cross said, “but we’ve got to do it again. We don’t dwell on the past. If we come in with the mentality of, ‘Oh we beat them once we are going to do it again,’ you can get beat like that.

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Road Warriors

The Northridge basketball team on Wednesday began a 16-day road trip during which it will play five games in five states. The Matadors will travel 4,298 air miles and will spend nine out of 16 nights in five hotels. Here is their travel itinerary:

Schedule / Air miles:

1. Wednesday: Fly LAX to Spokane. Feb. 13: Play Eastern Washington in Cheney, WA. 945 miles

2. Friday: Fly Spokane to Portland. 279 miles

3. Saturday: Play Portland State, after game fly Portland to LAX. 834 miles

4. Feb. 19: Fly LAX to Salt Lake City. Feb. 20: Play Weber State in Ogden, UT. 590 miles

5. Feb. 21: Fly Salt Lake City to Sacramento. Feb. 22: play Sacramento State. 532 miles

6. Feb. 23: Fly Sacramento to Burbank. 380 miles

7. Feb. 26: Fly Burbank to Phoenix, bus 137 miles to Flagstaff. Feb. 27: play Northern Arizona. 369 miles

8. Feb. 28: Bus to Phoenix, fly Phoenix to Burbank, 137 miles

Total: 4298 miles

Source: Cal State Northridge