The first Big West Conference series did not go the way the CSUN Matador baseball team would’ve liked. The Matadors showed plenty of fight in its weekend series against the host UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, though Santa Barbara still had enough in its tank to win all three games at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium by scores of 9-5, 8-7, and 10-6.
After struggling to defeat the Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors in the first match between the two teams on Tuesday night, the second-ranked CSUN Matador men’s volleyball team left very little doubt 24 hours later as to who was the better team. The Matadors had a much easier time with the 13th-ranked Warriors on Wednesday night.
The CSUN Matador men’s volleyball team has been on quite a ride the last couple of weeks. After spending a week ranked No. 1 in the nation in a tie with Penn State, adversity has hit them lately. ?The Matadors are back to a No. 2 ranking, just one point behind Penn State, despite the fact that neither team played last week.
The CSUN softball team split its four games this weekend, sweeping a doubleheader with the University of North Dakota on Friday at Matador Diamond, but losing both its games in the Long Beach State Invitational on Sunday. Northridge needed only five innings to assert themselves in game one against North Dakota State, winning by a score of 8-0.
Cal State Northridge women’s basketball head coach Staci Schulz sensed that Cal State Fullerton’s Toni Thomas was going to have a chip on her shoulder Thursday night. When Northridge played Fullerton at Titan Gym back on Feb. 2, Thomas scored only five points despite grabbing 10 rebounds.
The third-ranked CSUN Matador men’s volleyball team continues to roll along. ?Led by a balanced offensive attack that saw four Matadors reach double figures in kills, Northridge was unstoppable for all but one game of its Mountain Pacific Sports Federation match against visiting UC Santa Barbara Wednesday night, beating the Gauchos in four games by scores of 30-25, 25-30, 30-17 and 30-23.
After a rough start to the 2008 baseball season last weekend against Northwestern, things went a lot smoother for the CSUN Matador baseball team against the LaSalle Explorers this past weekend. The Matadors grinded out a tough 7-5 win on Friday, but followed that effort up with blowouts the next two games, winning 15-0 on Saturday and 16-5 on Sunday.
So close, yet so far. The CSUN women’s basketball team was well in position to pick up its second win of the season, its first Big West Conference win, and therefore, jump into the running for a spot in the Big West Tournament. ?CSUN led by as many as eight points with more than five minutes left in its game, led by six with more than three minutes left and by one with 33 seconds left, but was still unable to close out the 49ers, as Long Beach scored 18 of the game’s final 25 points to escape the Matadome with a 49-48 win.
It took a while, and it certainly took a lot longer than the CSUN women’s basketball would’ve liked it to. And, the Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners certainly made them work for it, as the two teams battled tooth and nail through a non-conference matchup at Cal State Bakersfield’s Icardo Center Thursday night.