One Victory All Matadors Need for Softball Title

Cal State Northridge can win its first Big West Conference softball title today with a victory in a regular season finale doubleheader at UC Santa Barbara.

Northridge (36-17, 21-9 in conference play) has a 1 1/2-game lead on Pacific (27-20, 19-10), which will play a makeup game against Cal State Sacramento today. Pacific would make up a rained-out doubleheader at Utah State only if the Matadors are swept by UC Santa Barbara.

One Northridge victory would give the Matadors the title based on run differential between Pacific and Northridge. The teams are 2-2 against each other, but Northridge has outscored Pacific, 11-9, in the four games.

The Matadors, who will receive an automatic berth to the NCAA Division I regional playoffs by winning the title, have hit their stride in the second half of the season, winning 22 of their last 27 games.

“The focus is very good right now,” Coach Janet Sherman said. “[But] we’re still in that frame of mind, we still have to win a game [against Santa Barbara].”

Northridge, which finished second in the Big West last year, last captured a conference title in 1995 when the Matadors won the last of three consecutive Western Athletic Conference titles.

TRACK AND FIELD

High expectations: Joe Criner and Cheree Hicks of Cal State Northridge have been picked by Track and Field News to finish among the top six in their respective events in the NCAA championships at Buffalo, N.Y., June 3-6.

Criner, a senior who finished fourth in the men’s 200 in the NCAA indoor championships in March, is picked to place third in that event in the outdoor meet.

Hicks, a sophomore who finished seventh in the women’s discus in the 1997 NCAA championships, is tabbed for sixth this year.

Jeremy Fischer of Wisconsin, Danny Haag of USC, Amy Skieresz of Arizona, Jocelyn Chase of UCLA, Nada Kawar of UCLA and Crystal Brownlee of South Carolina are former high school standouts from the region who are picked to finish among the top 10 in their respective events.

TENNIS

State title run: Stefan Pongratz and Benny Andersson of Ventura College, men’s doubles champions of the Western State Conference and the Ojai Valley tennis tournament, will be seeded among the top four teams Friday and Saturday in the state junior college finals at the Claremont Club.

Pongratz and teammate Ilian Iankov also will compete in the state individual finals.

Singles competition for men and women begins Friday at 11 a.m with quarterfinals tentatively scheduled for 1. Doubles competition begins Friday at 3.

Men’s and women’s singles and doubles semifinals and finals are scheduled to begin Saturday at 11.