Optimistic Titans Starting to Do the Unthinkable

The winning streak is modest. Two games. A two-point victory over Boise State, an eight-point victory over Idaho. A little success that goes unnoticed at many places and by many people.

The Cal State Fullerton basketball team will play UC Irvine tonight at the Bren Center and maybe the winning streak will grow to three. After that is a game at North Texas, and North Texas is a pretty bad team. And then there’s a home game against Pacific, and Pacific doesn’t have Michael Olowokandi anymore or anyone like him. So it’s not unfathomable that the Titans could have a five-game winning streak next week.

It’s not unfathomable. But it should be.

When this basketball season started, it was Irvine that was supposed to be on the rise. Coach Pat Douglass seemed pretty confident that he had the Anteaters moving on up. But Irvine couldn’t sweep Boise State and Idaho last week. Not like the Titans did. So things are a little tense around Irvine. And things are sweetly upbeat around Fullerton.

Ike Harmon stole a pass from a teammate during practice Monday and he howled as if an NCAA berth had just been received and then he heaved the basketball high up among the lights in Titan Gym. A good time was being had by all. In practice.

When this season started, when the Titans lost their opener to a Division II team, a Division II team that was 0-5 when Fullerton arrived, a Division II team from Canada by the name of Simon Fraser, who would have thought the Titans could stand at the threshold of February and think about finishing second in the Big West Western Division and even talk big about finishing first?

Hobbled by an NCAA probation over violations under a head coach long gone and committed when these players were barely in junior high school, the Titans were barred from playing exhibition games and are prohibited from recruiting community college players until 2001.

Coach Bob Hawking attributes the four-game losing streak that started the season to that lack of exhibition games and to a lack of depth partially caused by the recruiting ban.

And during that losing streak, the Titans lost starting center Matt Caldwell for the season to shoulder surgery. Great. Probation. Injuries. What was the point? Who would have blamed the Titans for hanging their heads, for shrugging their shoulders, for giving up?

“But why would we do that,” Harmon says. “We thought we were a good team.”

Well, maybe that’s a stretch. You don’t have to be a good team to finish highly placed in the Big West. You just have to beat the other Big West teams at home and win a game or two or three on the road.

The Titans, without benefit of community college help, which Hawking would love to have recruited for this team, and with Caldwell’s injury, are all of seven deep now. The only two subs who play much are freshmen. The eighth man is a walk-on. One sprained ankle or twisted knee and the Titans might be unable to guard anyone for fear of fouling out.

And yet there is confidence prowling around the outside of Titan Gym on this practice day.

Fullerton has, after all, beaten Irvine six consecutive times, seven out of the last eight. Should the Titans beat Irvine, then North Texas (4-11), Pacific (7-9) and division-leading Long Beach State would be next. Fullerton swept Long Beach last season. “We’re not intimidated by them,” Harmon says. “I don’t rule out beating them out for the division title.”

There is confidence and there is foolishness. At 2-2 in the division (same as Pacific), the Titans are already two games behind Long Beach (4-0). But there’s no need to steal any hope from the Titans yet.

Josh Fischer, a 6-9 sophomore from La Habra High, has stepped into the minutes that would have been Caldwell’s. Harmon, 6-7, and Brandon Campbell, 6-4, have also played center. A 6-4 center? “Brandon has actually played very well in that spot,” Hawking says.

Fischer says it’s kind of amazing, what you can do when you have to. “When you know you have to play a lot of minutes,” Fischer says, “you just don’t get tired. When we heard people talking bad about us at the beginning of the year, we just didn’t listen.”

Well, maybe some of the Titans listened. “You can’t help it,” says Harmon, who leads Fullerton in scoring (16.7 points) and rebounding (7.3). “It was pretty much everybody. Students, friends, the media. I didn’t get too upset after that loss to Simon Fraser because I knew what that was about. You play exhibition games to work the kinks out and we didn’t get that. We had to work the kinks out in games that counted.”

The games all count and the Titans don’t count on anything. “I don’t like to play the guys so many minutes,” Hawking says. “We do have to be very careful about foul trouble. Another injury would make it very tough.”

So allow the Titans to howl a little at practice, to brag on their modest little winning streak, to look ahead and see victories instead of losses. Because, as all their friends and neighbors told them two months ago, Harmon says, “We weren’t supposed to win a game in the conference. But we didn’t listen.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com