CSUN coach Bobby Braswell doesn’t want to give the Aggies their second win of the year. Photo Credit: Mariela Molina / Photo Editor

To say the Aggies are struggling in 2011-12 would be a bit of an understatement. Boasting a 1-21 record that includes not a single win against a Division-I opponent, not many can be faulted for considering UC Davis the laughing stock of the Big West Conference.

And that is the exact reason CSUN head coach Bobby Braswell is concerned heading into tonight’s rematch against these Aggies (8 p.m.).

“They call these ‘trap games,’” Braswell said. “That’s a trap you can fall into.”

Though every team but Division-III UC Santa Cruz has managed to escape the Aggie trap thus far, it hasn’t always been an easy mission. Six of UC Davis’ losses this season have been by five points or less. Two of those were one-point defeats.

One of those close losses came on Jan. 14 at the hands of the Matadors, who obtained the 84-80 win only after digging themselves out of an 11-point second-half hole.

Due to illness, Braswell wasn’t at the Matadome then to presence the near-upset. He watched enough of the tape to note where the Aggies’ strong point lied that night, though.

“They shot the mess out of it,” Braswell said. “They really shoot the ball well. They spread you out. They got a lot of guys who can shoot threes.

“Their shooting is clearly the thing that concerns us the most.”

The second-best three-point shooting team in the conference at .387, UC Davis has three of the top eight long-range shooters in the Big West (Les Tyler, Josh Ritchart and Ryan Howley). They all shoot better than 40 percent.

“We got to know who their shooters are,” CSUN guard Stephan Hicks said. “We got to make it tough on them.”

CSUN, which also faces Pacific on Saturday, is dead last in three-point shooting in the conference. Their percentage took quite a hit during a 100-54 loss at Cal Poly on Jan. 21. CSUN shot 0-for-10 in threes then. Since, Northirdge has made seven or more 3-pointers per game.

Despite the Aggies’ awful record, CSUN can’t look down on them too much. In a season where they’re ineligible to make the postseason, the Matadors are only 6-15 overall and 2-8 in the Big West.

The Matadors have shown signs of maturing at times, but still rank near the bottom of many categories in the conference.

“At this point, we know we’re not going to win a championship this year,” Braswell said. “So at this point, for us, we just have to make sure we’re getting better.”

Let’s not get it twisted, though. The Matadors feel they should win this game. They just aren’t taking the woeful Aggies lightly. That’s also a sign of maturing.

“We got to treat them like a Long Beach State or a UC Santa Barbara,” Hicks said. “Don’t worry about them not having beaten anybody in Division I.”

The Matadors will try to bounce back in 2012 as the they kick off the season this weekend at the Kajikawa Classic held on the campus of Arizona State.

During the tournament, CSUN will face five teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament last year, starting with a doubleheader Friday against Stanford and Syracuse.

The following day, the Matadors have another two-game slate versus Nebraska and Western Michigan. They conclude the tournament Sunday against Arizona.

It will be the third straight year CSUN opens the season with the Kajikawa Classic. A year ago, the Matadors finished 3-2 in the Tempe tournament while dropping their two games versus ranked opponents.

Northridge will return its top hitters: junior catcher Mikayla Thielges and utility senior Jaci Carlsen. Thielges was second in the Big West in RBI (45) and home runs (12) and Carlsen led the Matadors with a .327 batting average and 50 hits.

The Matador pitching staff includes two freshmen and two junior transfers. Mia Pagano is the only returning pitcher, but the junior only appeared in 17 games last season.

Camille Mahlknecht and the Matadors face LBSU Saturday. Photo Credit: Michael Cheng / Daily Sundial

After successful road trips to UC Riverside and UC Irvine last week, CSUN comes back to the Matadome for a three-game homestand, starting with Long Beach State Saturday night.

Long Beach (9-14, 4-6 Big West) is on a three-game losing streak while the Matadors (14-9, 8-2) just tallied their fourth consecutive win in a blowout against the Anteaters, but these wins have not gotten to Northridge’s head.

“We never talk about anybody else. I think when you try to compare yourself to other people or to other programs and other teams, I think you set yourself up for failure,” CSUN head coach Jason Flowers said. “I was brought up not to ever compare myself to other people and just go out and do the best that I could possibly do. And so that’s the philosophy that we take with the program.

While Flowers has his team at the top of the Big West Conference, his focus lies in his team’s performance and not the standings.

“When it comes to motivation and all that, (wins and losses) have no factor in what it is that we’re trying to do,” Flowers said. “We’re trying to be the best team we could possibly be and we’re trying to improve every single day. It has nothing to do with standings. It has nothing to do with your last game. It has everything to do with being in the moment and trying to get better right now.”

The game will mark the final meeting between the teams this season. The Matadors defeated the 49ers 57-50 in their first game earlier on Jan. 7. Though Northridge came away with the win, Flowers still remembers issues that his team ran into.

“(The 49ers) are a scrappy team and they play hard,” he said. “They basically play with five perimeter players. Any time you play against a team like that, it’s going to challenge your perimeter defense.”
The 49ers kept themselves in the game the last time out by making seven of 23 3-pointers. The Matadors are aware of their long-range capabilities.

“I don’t think we were very smart the first time we played them,” guard Ashlee Guay said. “Most of the times, when they scored, it was due to our mistakes. We played our zone defense and it’s much better now than it was then. We just made silly mistakes.”

Aside from center Jasmine Erving’s dominant performances on the road, Guay’s awareness of finding open teammates has helped guide the Matadors to their current success.

“As a point guard, you’re supposed to make the plays,” Guay said. “It really is important for me, especially to get the ball to (Erving) in the post, to get them the ball so that they can score because they’re dominant down there. So I need to always be prepared to get them the ball when they’re open and obviously the other guards as well.”

Julius Höefer puts down a kill against LBSU last Friday. Höefer and the Matadors host two games this weekend: against Pacific and Stanford. Photo Credit: Kat Russell / Senior Photographer

CSUN is coming off a lopsided conference loss in Long Beach against a streaking 49ers team, but the squad returns home this weekend for back-to-back games in the Matadome beginning Friday against Pacific.

The hitting game (3-6, 1-4 MPSF) was the focus for Northridge’s practices this week after the team combined to only hit .182 against LBSU last Friday.

“Our passing was definitely one of the biggest reasons we didn’t hit as well,” outside hitter Matt Stork said. “The first match we played them, we passed real well … (Long Beach) was serving right at us and we didn’t have a lot of chances to get our serves on.”

CSUN committed 10 receiving errors at Long Beach en route to their fourth road loss of the year. The stat proved to be vital in the final results of that game, but both Stork and freshman Julius Höefer showed up with their consistent play, tallying seven kills apiece.

Along with the two attack leaders of the Matadors, junior middle blocker Drew Staker also put up solid offensive numbers, with six kills on .500 hitting, pulling his kills’ total to 33.

The play of the CSUN libero will be crucial if the Matadors want to put together a pair of wins this weekend. The usually dependable sophomore libero Charlie Condron committed three receiving errors last Friday after only committing six in the previous eight games of the season.

“We just need to get our reps and focus on passing because it’s clear that our passing was not where it needed to be to win,” Condron said.

The play of both Condron and fellow libero freshman Sina Aghassy will set the pace for the Matadors against an inconsistent Pacific offense.

The Tigers (3-7, 1-4) travel to the Matadome after dropping four of their first five conference matches this year, with their latest pair of losses coming at home against Hawaii.

Pacific’s hitting game has been less than impressive lately after hitting for a mere .133 in its straight-sets loss on Feb. 4.

Leading the way for the Tigers offense this season has been 6-foot-7 outside hitter Taylor Hughes. The redshirt junior leads Pacific in kills with 113 on the year and is averaging 3.3 a game.

Although the Matadors’ coaching staff wants the players to focus on the team’s Friday matchup against the Tigers, a streaking Stanford team will demand attention Saturday.

The Cardinal (7-2, 4-1) have won their last three conference contests and are currently ranked second in the Mountain Pacific Sports Association and fourth in the nation in the coaches polls.

The Clippers won the Chris Paul sweepstakes and, with it, they also won over the title of the best team in town. Courtesy of MCT

Could someone please wake me up and tell me that the last two months have only been some utterly hideous NBA nightmare? Because as a longtime Lakers fan, this is about as bad as it gets.

The Lakers and Clippers are moving in their traditionally opposite directions, and Tuesday night provided another rerun of this sporting version of “The Twilight Zone.”

The Lakers were out-toughed down the stretch by a streaking Sixers team that has won seven of its last 10 while the Clippers picked up a tough overtime road win over Orlando.

Though the Clippers lost guard Chauncey Billups for the season to a torn Achilles and will undoubtedly have to rise to the challenge of replacing his 15-points-per-game average, Lob City is standing strong in first place in the Pacific Division following the night’s events. The Lakers, on the other hand, were exposed for what they are – a talented, but fading squad in desperate need of another big trade to get over their hump.

The Lakers’ troubles began before Tuesday’s loss, however, and the Clippers began asserting themselves as the best L.A. team long before their 107-103 gut-it-out win over the Magic.

Maybe, it started with the drafting of DeAndre Jordan in 2008, whose cultivation has been prototypical for how you develop a big man and, subsequently, the antithesis of everything the Clippers have done in the past. Need I mention the slew of failed front-court prospects stretching back from Michael “Candy Man” Olowakandi to Chris Kaman?

And it’s important to note Golden State tried to steal Jordan in the offseason, but the Clippers showed another rare sign of commitment to winning and matched the Warriors’ four-year, $43-million offer. Remember, this is a team that received virtually nothing for Elton Brand and Corey Maggette.

Also, Blake Griffin’s success has been so remarkable it’s almost erased the memory of past Clipper No. 1 picks. Remember, this is a team that used lottery picks on Melvin Ely, Yaroslav Korolev and Shaun Livingston.

Times have changed, haven’t they?

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal no longer dominate the league side-by-side – Kobe now talks of “his history” with O’Neal, which he says made his passing of the future Hall of Fame center in the all-time scoring list against Philadelphia that much more meaningful.

Yes, the three-peat that the duo accomplished certainly feels like ancient history now.

It’s not the Lakers who made the move of the year – remember this is an organization that convinced another team to take Vlade Divac for the draft rights to Bryant, assembled a team of four Hall of Famers in 2003-04 and then, in perhaps the greatest feat in modern sports, managed to obtain Pau Gasol in exchange for Kwame Brown.

This time around, however, it’s the other L.A. team who made the savvy move.

The team’s deft 11th hour maneuvering for Chris Paul, whose 29 points and eight assists made him the star of Tuesday’s show, proved that. They gave up a rising star in Eric Gordon and took a gamble on Paul, who could leave at the end of the season, but so far, it’s paying off.

It’s pretty rare to have something that never happened irrevocably alter the course of two franchises, a season, history itself. But that may have been what happened in December, when David Stern nixed the Lakers’ trade deal for Paul.

Now, with nearly two-thirds of the season left, it might be too early for doomsday calls and suggesting drastic action, such as trading Kobe. Maybe the Lakers just haven’t fully bought into the new system head coach Mike Brown has installed yet.

Maybe the Lakers will take a move from their own playbook and steal Mo Williams from the Clippers’ bench and shore up their point guard need, and then pull off a dramatic, last-second deal for Dwight Howard.

And maybe, just maybe, if and when that happens, NBA Commissioner David Stern won’t get in the way, and allow the Lakers make shrewd moves and return to their nearly-forgotten championship form.

Because I hate “The Twilight Zone” almost as much as I hate running into Clippers fans now.

Matt Stork says the best part of his game is his calmness under pressure. Photo Credit: Michael Cheng / Daily Sundial

Full name: Matt Stork

Date of Birth: February 6, 1990

Place of Birth:  Parma, Italy

Height: 6’5’’

Weight: 180 lbs

Position: Outside hitter

Major:  Psychology

Year: Senior

Stats: 2.63 kpg, 88.5 points

FAVORITES
Food: “A double-double from In-N-Out.”
Music: “Everything except for country.”
Movie: Anchorman
Song: “Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen”
Athlete: Brett Favre

LIFE
Greatest difficulty: “School and staying physically healthy. I’ve got a bunch of ankle sprains and stuff like that.”
Greatest Accomplishment: “Making it to the Final Four my sophomore year or making it to the Pan-Am team.”
Most embarrassing moment: “In high school, I got hit in the face by a serve. That’s pretty embarrassing for a volleyball player.”
Hobbies: “School, volleyball and going to the training room.”

VOLLEYBALL
Best part of your game: “I like to think that I stay calm under pressure. I never get that nervous.”
Part of their game that needs improvement: “Blocking and a little bit of defense.”
Best player you’ve played against so far: “Bruno (Rezende), the setter for the Brazilian national team. He’s one of the world’s best setters.”
Player that he patterns his game after: Karch Kiraly
Pre-game rituals: None
Superstitions: None

GOALS
Team: “Make it to the champions and win the championship. Work on that team communication our team has been talking about.”
Individual: “Put up some good stats and help my team out.”
Future: “Play professional volleyball, maybe for the national team.”

EXTRAS
First sport: Roller hockey
Other sports they’ve played while growing up: Soccer, baseball, badminton, racquetball, basketball, water polo and croquet.
When he started playing volleyball:
13 years old
What he does to stay in shape during the offseason: “Beach volleyball and bike trails near my place.”
Person they would most like to meet: Benjamin Franklin

Opposite Julius Höefer (12), who had seven kills against Long Beach State Friday, has been one of the most consistent Matadors during 2012. Photo Credit: Kat Russell / Senior Photographer

The Matadors’ play on the hardwood as of late has been less than desirable for head coach Jeff Campbell and the rest of his staff.

A week after dominating most of a five-set non-conference win against Cal Baptist at the Matadome, CSUN’s defense committed 10 receiving errors en route to a straight-sets loss to conference foe Long Beach State Friday night.

“The week before, in practice, we did a little more playing instead of getting a lot more reps,” said freshman libero Sina Aghassy. “I think this week we need to focus more on getting some reps and being a little more confident in our passing.”

After putting on an offensive clinic against the Lancers, a game in which the Matadors hit .500 on 102 attacks, CSUN’s offense combined to hit for a horrid .182 on 66 swings against the 49ers.

“Our passing was definitely one of the biggest reasons we weren’t hitting well,” said senior outside hitter Matt Stork. “The first match we played them, we passed real well … (Long Beach) was serving right at us and we didn’t have a lot of chances to get our serves on.”

There’s no place like home

The road loss by the Matadors on Friday was just the latest misstep by a team that has seen their fair share of struggles away from home this season.

CSUN has lost all four of its road games so far this year and has only managed to win a single set in the road losses. Out of the next 14 games for the Matadors, 11 of them will be in the friendly confines of the Matadome. CSUN is 2-0 at home. Both games were won in five sets.

“It’s a huge advantage,” said sophomore libero Charlie Condron about the upcoming home games. “Playing in front of our fans, our family, our friends, it’s a huge advantage getting their support.”

With this crucial stretch on the Matadors’ schedule, the advantage of getting to play in front of their school’s crowd can’t hurt the young squad’s chances.

“We’re a lot better at home than we are on the road,” Campbell said. “Most of our starters against Long Beach State had never even been to that building … Being in a facility for a long period of time, like the Matadome, that’s a big advantage for us and a big disadvantage for anyone coming in.”

Back-to-back shifts

The Matadors return to action Friday on the first day of a set of back-to-back conference matchups. The rival of turn that day will be the Pacific Tigers (3-7, 1-4 MPSF).

Following a win against  UC Santa Barbara on Jan. 20, the Tigers have lost five consecutive games, including three conference matches.

Stanford (7-2, 4-1) comes into Saturday’s matchup against CSUN ranked second in the MPSF. The Cardinal are coming off a weekend in which they beat the No. 1 team in the nation, BYU, in back-to-back days.

“It’s two matches, but right now our only concern is our game against Pacific,” Campbell said. “We have not talked about Stanford, we’re not going to talk about Stanford. We just need to win on Friday night, so all of our practice is going to be going towards beating Pacific.”

CSUN guard Josh Greene, right, had a career-high 26 points, but the Matadors lost at Long Beach State 75-67 Saturday night. Photo Credit: Tessie Navarro/Multimedia editor

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Instead of taking the moral victory against the top team in the Big West Conference, CSUN was thinking of what could have been.

With the game tied at 54-54 and a little over nine minutes left in regulation Saturday night at the Walter Pyramid, the young Matadors had the first-place 49ers on the ropes.

CSUN was the underdog trying to record only its third league win while Long Beach State had its Big-West regular season and home winning streaks on the line.The Matadors were doing everything right, even holding the reigning Big West player of the year, guard Casper Ware, to a season-low five points.

Matador center Jasmine Erving posted a career-high 36 points in a 80-59 victory over UC Irvine Saturday night. Photo Credit: Michael Cheng / Daily Sundial

IRVINE – Consistency was something CSUN head coach Jason Flowers has rarely seen with his team. In most of their Big West Conference wins, the Matadors have usually found themselves either trying to hold on to a slim lead or coming back from a deficit.

“Some games we put together 20 minutes, some games 15. In some games we turn it off after five and some games where we didn’t show up at all,” Flowers said.

That wasn’t the case for Flowers’ squad Saturday night as CSUN (14-9, 8-2 Big West) steamrolled its way past UC Irvine (10-13, 6-4) in an 80-59 blowout at the Bren Events Center.

“I think this game was as close to 40 minutes as we’ve played all year,” Flowers said. “It was a situation where we got off to a really good start, which was good for us because we’ve been starting slow.”

One player that didn’t start off slow for the Matadors was center Jasmine Erving, who went into halftime with 15 points and ended the night with a career-high 36 points on 16-of-22 shooting.

Though she scored almost half the points for her team, she chose to give credit to her teammates.

“I was definitely in the zone,” Erving said about her second-half shooting performance. “It helps that our guards were attacking the basket and our other posts were making shots also. They weren’t always focused on me. It was a group effort.”

Besides Erving’s all-around dominance on the court, forward Camille Mahlknecht was the Matadors’ second option in terms of scoring. She posted 11 points, four rebounds and three steals for the night.

Despite being up by as many as 22 points, the Matadors continued to crash the boards and find open players in the paint.

“Our kids didn’t fold. They keep fighting,” Flowers said. “It’s a testament to the kind of kids that we have and the character that they have.”

The key to CSUN’s victory was penetration in the paint, where the Matadors scored 20 points.

“We had a height advantage, so we were definitely trying to use that and our guards were getting good looks to us and we were able to catch and finish,” Mahlknecht said.

CSUN’s offense was firing in all cylinders and didn’t seem to be able to miss early in the game. The Matadors looked for a teammate in the paint time and time again and capitalized on nearly every chance they got.

Northridge shot 45.9 percent in the first half. It continued to build on that shooting performance by making 17 of its 29 shots (58.6 percent) in the second half, finishing the game with a solid 51.5 percent.

It was Mahlknecht and  Erving who led the team to their 45-39-halftime lead. Aside Erving’s 15 points in the period, she grabbed six rebounds and had four assists as well.

The Anteaters’ 3-point shooting kept them in the game for a while. They made five of their six 3-pointer attempts in the first half. Guard Kassandra McCalister knocked down all four of her shots from behind the arc and finished 5-of-7 for the night.

The Matadors were swept in their second meeting against Long Beach State Friday night. Photo Credit: Kat Russell / Senior Photographer

LONG BEACH – The Matadors came into the second matchup against the Long Beach State with bragging rights, but were quickly silenced by an aggressive team out for revenge.

Poor hitting and a horrid return game were costly as CSUN (3-6, 1-4 MPSF) fell to the 49ers (5-4, 1-3) in straight-sets 25-16, 25-19, 25-20 Friday night at the Walter Pyramid.

“I don’t think we wanted it bad enough,” said Drew Staker, junior middle blocker. “We have to want to win more out there. We have to have that mentality.”

The Matadors’ .188 hitting and 10 receiving errors were key in the loss along with LBSU’s hitting on the other end of the court. The lop-sided loss came after a CSUN’s five-set win in Northridge just two weeks ago.

“For the first time this year our passing really broke down,” CSUN head coach Jeff Campbell said. “You have to give Long Beach credit for serving so well…We were really unable to respond to their serves.”

Northridge came out sluggish in the first set giving up the early 5-1 advantage and being forced into the early timeout.

Well-placed shots by LBSU outside hitter Taylor Crabb and a dominant five-block performance by the 49ers’ defense extended the lead to 11-6 before CSUN used its second timeout.

Three service errors by the Matadors and a -.062 hitting percentage doomed CSUN as it dropped the first set 16-25.

“When you pass the ball like we did tonight, you’re going to make it tough to side out,” Campbell said. “We didn’t pass so it was tough for us to side out.”

The Matadors’ hitting woes continued into the second set and quickly put them into a 5-0 hole.

The stoppage did Northridge some good as they managed to pull within three after being down as much as seven points. CSUN’s hitting improved drastically with senior Matt Stork tallying his first four kills, seven overall, of the night. The Matadors managed to even the score at 16 apiece before the team’s serve-receive struggles cost it their second set 19-25.

With both teams playing in full stride, CSUN managed to avoid another slow start they had in each of its previous sets and exchanged points with the 49ers early on. Without the early deficit the Matadors managed to keep pace with LBSU throughout most of the set.

Stork continued his attacking onslaught with opposite Julius Hoefer adding solid attacks of his own.

Although the Matadors offense looked to finally be ready to contend, it was too little too late for CSUN as the 49ers pulled away late in the match and sealed the straight-set win 25-20.

Hoefer and Stork ended the night with seven kills each while Staker added six kills on .500 hitting.

Aside from those three, the Matadors struggled to put pressure on LBSU, which managed to put together 20 blocks on the night.

“We didn’t serve poorly but we didn’t serve well enough to effect the other team…We’re going to have to serve…We’re going to have to serve better and we’re for sure  going to have to pass better,” Campbell said of changes the Matadors need to make in order to get back on the winning track.