Curry Adds Spice to Women’s Team

This season, Denise Curry took over a Cal State Fullerton women’s basketball program that hadn’t reached the Big West tournament in two seasons.

She changed that this year, even if the team’s overall record didn’t improve.

The Titans are the third-seeded team from the Western Division in the tournament, which begins today in Reno.

Their regular-season record of 10-16 was the same as last year’s under Deborah Ayres, but their conference record improved from 5-10 to 7-8.

“It’s OK,” Curry said. “I never said we’d win a certain number of games. But 7-8 in the conference, with the number of injuries we had was all right. If we would have stayed healthy, I think we would have done better in the conference, and probably finished above .500.”

Curry, a former All-American from UCLA and basketball Hall of Fame selection, is in her first season as a college head coach after six years as an assistant at California and a year with the San Jose Lasers of the ABL.

“You really never know whether you’re ready for a job until you’re in it,” Curry said. “It was a new experience, but I think I’ve worked my way though it.”

Curry says the level of competition in the conference was about what she expected.

“I definitely think it was improved this season over what I saw on game film from last year,” Curry said. “But our conference still needs to work on getting more national respect. I think the only way we have a chance to get more than one team in the NCAA tournament this year is if Santa Barbara gets upset.”

Santa Barbara is 23-5, 14-1 in conference.

“What we all need to do is play a stronger schedule out of the conference,” Curry said. “We’re going to play UCLA next year, and we’re also going to play Santa Clara, the West Coast Conference champion. But we don’t want to over-schedule either. Our kids need to have some success.”

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The Titans qualified four wrestlers for the NCAA championships in last weekend’s Pac-10 meet at Titan Gym. That is the most qualifiers for the school in four years.

Fullerton Coach Ardershir Asgari, however, was disappointed it wasn’t more.

Asgari has no doubt that freshman Babak Nejadmaghaddam would have made it had he been able to compete. Nejadmaghaddam, a 177-pounder, injured his neck in an auto accident two weeks ago and has been sidelined since.

Asgari also expected Maurcio Mora to advance in the 134-pound class, but Mora was upset in two matches after being ranked as high as third in the conference.

“That was a disappointment,” Asgari said. “Mora had beaten two wrestlers during the regular season who made the nationals.”

The wrestlers who qualified include 118-pounder Sean Kim, a senior who transferred from Fresno State at the start of the second semester to join his brothers Shane and Sheldon. Sheldon is a Titan assistant coach, and Shane wrestles in the 126-pound class.

Kim had the highest finish among the Titans, taking second. The others who qualified for the NCAA meet are Joey Coughran at 126, Jason Webster at 167 and Jonathan DyReyes at 177.

DyReyes will be honored Thursday in Reno as the school’s Big West male scholar-athlete of the year.

“He’s been a solid student since he came to school here as a freshman,” said Lee Gilbert, the school’s Big West faculty representative for athletics. “But he has really come into his own in the last two semesters with 4.0 GPAs. He’s majoring in biological science, which is very demanding on our campus. Those kinds of grades in that is very impressive.”

Fullerton’s female scholar-athlete is Katy Maty, whose gymnastics career ended this season because of back problems.

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Alabama Coach Jim Wells was impressed with what he saw of the Fullerton baseball team in last weekend’s three-game series at Titan Field.

Fullerton won two of three from the Crimson Tide, which began the weekend undefeated and ranked second nationally and came out of it ranked fifth.

“They’ve got great pitching after picking up those two pitchers from Cal State Northridge,” Wells said, referring to Benny Flores and Erasmo Ramirez. “But I was very impressed with all of their pitching.”

Wells thinks the one thing the Titans might lack is power. “I think you have to have that to win [the College World Series] the way college baseball is played today. But they do a lot of things well on offense, and they put pressure on you in a lot of different ways. They’re going to win a lot of games this season, and they should win their conference again.”

Alabama has three position players and one pitcher back who made the College World Series all-star team last year when the Crimson Tide finished second to Louisiana State.

Fullerton opens Big West Conference play against UC Santa Barbara in a three-game series that begins Friday night at Titan Field.

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Coach Heizaburo Okawa’s men’s and women’s fencing teams will compete in the NCAA Western Regional championships this weekend at Stanford.

Jesse Carlson, who had a 28-2 record in epee during the conference season, leads the men’s team. Margaret MacCarthy (epee) and Ellen Mao (foil) lead the women’s team. They each finished 38-2 in conference.

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Coming Attractions

Key games this week for Cal State Fullerton:

* Baseball against UC Santa Barbara, 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday, Titan Field.

* Softball hosts doubleheaders against New Mexico State, 4 p.m. Saturday, and against Cal State Northridge 1 p.m. Sunday.