It’s Rousey Rebuilding for Northridge

Steve Rousey was in the middle of Cal State Northridge’s improbable rise to the Big West Conference baseball championship last season when the Matadors interrupted the annual fight over the conference title between Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State.

But there was a price to be paid for that success. Former Coach Mike Batesole is now at Fresno State. Virtually all of the key players were lost either to the major league draft or graduation. Only two starting position players returned. And Rousey, Batesole’s lead assistant the last two years, is picking up the pieces in his first Division I head-coaching job.

A year removed from a 41-17 season, Northridge is an abysmal 8-33 after losing 5-2 in the opener Thursday of a Big West Conference series against UC Riverside. In some games, the Matadors are as unsightly as their record. In others, they have been a hard-luck team.

But, as recent victories over Long Beach and Fullerton show, they aren’t playing out the string.

“I feel like we’re headed in the right direction,” said Rousey, a former pitcher at Fullerton and assistant under Dave Snow at Long Beach. “Nobody’s down. We’re just fighting out of this.”

There have been many low points. The Matadors went through a 29-inning scoreless drought. They are 3-11 in one-run games, including a stretch in which they lost seven in succession. The new coach has also had to rebuild a pitching staff racked by injuries and has put as many as six freshmen in the starting lineup.

It means the bright spots are to be savored. Like recently, when the Matadors defeated Long Beach, 3-2, on a two-run single by John Voita after having lost the first two games, 3-1 and 1-0. Or last Friday, when Aaron McKenzie and Wade Friesen hit home runs off Wes Littleton, Fullerton’s All-American pitcher, in a 6-4 victory over the second-ranked Titans.

“We’ve been doing a lot of things right but it just wasn’t showing up on the scoreboard,” Rousey said. “What we’re going through is going to help us in the future.”

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UCLA softball players Tairia Mims, Natasha Watley and Keira Goerl and Fullerton’s Gina Oaks and Jenny Topping have been invited to the U.S. national team camp June 4-8 in Chula Vista. They will compete for spots on two teams that will compete internationally this summer.

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The USC men’s golf team set a school record for 54 holes with a 32-under-par performance at the ASU Thunderbird Invitational last Saturday in Tempe, Ariz., but was beaten out by host Arizona State. Senior David Oh shot a career-best 12-under-par and finished second behind David Schultz of Texas Christian.

The Loyola Marymount women’s water polo team has won a school-record 13 matches. The Lions play host to second-ranked USC on Saturday.