One Seismic Shift Fits All in Big West

It was an uprising of seismic proportions and it turned the Big West Conference upside down.

UC Irvine, undefeated and alone in first place, was stunned at home by Cal State Northridge in overtime. But that paled in comparison to other developments on Upset Saturday.

The conference’s three bottom-dwellers--Idaho, Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton--all defeated teams ahead of them. The most shocking result was Fullerton’s 65-51 victory over Utah State, which won the conference tournament and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament last season.

It confirms what coaches have said throughout the season: The Big West is as balanced as it has been in several years.

Irvine (13-5 overall, 6-1 in conference) saw its lead drop to one game over UC Santa Barbara (11-5, 5-2) and suddenly hot Northridge (6-10, 5-2). Utah State (13-4, 5-3) dropped to fourth place.

Saturday’s results also renewed hope for teams that have been disappointments. Long Beach (6-12, 2-5) had dropped four of five and 10 of 12 before defeating Pacific.

“If we win 10 of our next 13, we’ll be in third or fourth place in the conference,” 49er forward Travis Reed said. “Everyone will forget about the inconsistent year. They’ll just remember that we got to the tournament.”

Pacific (11-6, 3-4) lost both games on its trip last week but that hasn’t dimmed the hopes of Coach Bob Thomason.

“We’ve had the toughest stretch of anyone in this conference,” Thomason said. “We’ve played five of seven on the road. But we’ve got seven home games left.”

What it all means is when eight of the 10 Big West teams get together at the Anaheim Convention Center for the conference tournament March 7-9, all of them will believe they’re one hot weekend away from getting the conference’s automatic NCAA berth. The only team that doesn’t have a shot is newcomer UC Riverside, which is ineligible for the conference tournament until 2004.

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Riverside Athletic Director Stan Morrison did everything but sell hot dogs. He shook hands and helped usher people to their seats. It was unlike anything Riverside had seen as a school-record 3,168 jammed into the Student Recreation Center for last week’s game against Utah State. Hundreds more were turned away from the first regional basketball telecast at the school.

And the worst possible thing that could have happened did. The Highlanders laid an egg in a 68-42 loss to Utah State.

Morrison hopes the performance didn’t turn off the large student contingent that turned out for the game. Students are admitted free as part of their self-imposed fee hike to help fund Riverside’s move up to Division I but they had been scarce at home games.

“It’s been said a million times that the toughest part of any journey is the first step,” Morrison said. “Well, we took that first step. We got knocked on our butts but we’ll get back up. What we hope is our fans will do the same.”

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The second half was about to begin, an opportune time for Markus Carr to open his mouth.

His team, Northridge, was getting pummeled by Irvine, at one point trailing by 20 and getting badly outrebounded on the way to a 12-point deficit Saturday.

His message was clear as his teammates were about to take the floor. Earlier that day, Arizona trailed UCLA by 20 points with 13 minutes left, but won, 96-86.

“I’d seen [Arizona] fight back, play tenacious defense and I said, ‘Why can’t we do that?’” Carr said.

The Matadors did, holding Irvine to six-of-17 shooting (35.3%) in the second half to force overtime.

Carr took it from there. He scored five of the Matadors’ 11 overtime points, including three free throws when he was fouled while shooting at the top of the arc with 1:35 left.

Carr finished with a career-high 31 points and the Matadors won, 73-72. “I felt like Markus Carr was going to refuse to allow us to lose this game,” Northridge Coach Bobby Braswell said.

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The UCLA men’s tennis team, already ranked No. 3, did little to lower expectations last weekend.

Rodrigo Grilli, a mid-year arrival from College of the Desert, won the singles championship at the National Collegiate Tennis Classic on Sunday at Nevada Las Vegas.

Grilli’s championship preceded a victory by sophomore Tobias Clemens in the singles final Monday at the Sherwood Collegiate Classic in Thousand Oaks.

The Bruins’ top doubles team of Marcin Matkowski and Jean-Julien Rojer, top-ranked nationally after winning two tournaments during the preseason, was upset by Stanford’s David Martin and Scott Lipsky, 9-8 (7), in the final at Las Vegas.

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Staff writers Mike Bresnahan, Lauren Peterson and Eric Stephens contributed to this report.