FULLERTON – With a nine-point deficit and only 1:45 remaining in the Matadors’ season, senior guard Vinnie McGhee shot a 3-pointer hoping it could possibly spark a comeback and maybe a fairy tale ending to his CSUN career. Instead, McGhee threw up an airball to add misery to an already tough 2011-12 season. “I’m a competitor and we were losing and I just wanted to make a three,” McGhee said. The senior continued competing, shooting another 3-pointer 40 seconds later,… Read more

The Matadors have lost a lot this season: games, their postseason eligibility (due to NCAA violations) and, recently, the final game on their schedule against Saint Mary’s. The cancellation of the March 9 game against the Gaels has given CSUN’s new finale at Cal State Fullerton (19-8, 10-4 Big West) tonight more meaning. “My job as a coach is to keep pushing (the Matadors) forward and not get discouraged, but it’s very difficult knowing this is the last game and… Read more

IRVINE – To say the 16th season of head coach Bobby Braswell’s career at CSUN has been a struggle would be putting it lightly. Already ineligible to play in the Big West Conference Tournament to start the year, Braswell’s Matadors have taken enough tumbles through 2011-12 to ensure the coach will finish with the fewest single-season wins of his CSUN tenure. On Saturday night at the Bren Events Center, it seemed like the whole dreadful year had been concentrated and… Read more

Down two points with 4.3 seconds to go Wednesday night, CSUN head coach Bobby Braswell drew up a play for guard Josh Greene to be the hero who would send his senior teammates off with a win in their last home game of their careers. Greene, who coming into the game had scored 20 or more points in four of the Matadors’ last five games, got the ball on his own end of the court and dribbled as fast as… Read more

With his CSUN career winding down, Vinnie McGhee took Saturday’s loss to Fresno State the hardest. In a postgame interview, after the Matadors shot a pitiful nine percent from the field in the second half en route to a 62-49 defeat, McGhee blamed the woeful performance on himself. “I’m mad the most, I didn’t only let my team down, I feel I let Northridge down,” said McGhee after scoring only three points and turning the ball over six times versus… Read more

In the four years CSUN guard Vinnie McGhee has been with the Matadors, he’s been part of many memorable games, but what transpired Saturday was a night he would like to forget. In what likely was the worst half in the program’s history, CSUN (7-18) collapsed in the second twenty minutes of Saturday night’s BracketBuster match against Fresno State(12-14), only making two baskets and shooting nine percent from the field en route to a 62-49 defeat at the Matadome. McGhee,… Read more

As the last seconds of Wednesday night’s vendetta game against Cal Poly wound down, three Mustangs stared at CSUN guard Josh Greene dribbling into the heart of their defense. The game was out of reach. Cal Poly had already waved the white flag, but Greene looked like he wanted to pour some more salt on the Mustangs’ wound. “They disrespected us (in San Luis Obispo), so I just wanted them to feel what we felt,” Greene said of the ending… Read more

Josh Greene didn’t choose the forget-and move-on route after Cal Poly crushed his Matadors by 46 points in a televised game last month. Instead, the sophomore guard took the embarrassing loss as a sign of disrespect. “When we come out to play (Cal Poly), it’s personal, especially for me,” Greene said. “To be honest, I felt disrespected.” “Hopefully we take this game personal and we come out and do to them what they did to us.” Greene and the Matadors… Read more

It couldn’t get any worse than a 46-point blowout at Cal Poly on Jan. 26. Wrong! The Matadors somehow managed to top their embarrassing defeat to the Mustangs this past week with two grueling losses in the Bay Area, both painful in their own way. First, CSUN fell to the laughing stock of the Big West Conference, UC Davis, a team that snapped an 18-game losing streak on Thursday. It only got worse at Stockton on Saturday. Earlier in the… Read more