L.A.'s most exciting basketball team?
If it promised to score 159 points every game, the Cal State Northridge basketball team would have a fan here.
A few seasons back, I went to games at about a dozen L.A.-area colleges in a short span, sampling the unique ways the campuses express their hoops spirit.
Minutes before tip-off for a Northridge game, I drove up to the guard shack at a campus entrance, wondering where I should park and how much it would cost.
"I'm going to the basketball game ...," I told the guard.
"Is there a basketball game tonight?" he said.
That was a unique way to express hoops spirit.
Wednesday night, the Matadors opened their home schedule with a 159-97 victory over Redlands.
That's right, 159. A record for a Big West team. The Matadors had 43 assists. Which tied an NCAA record. Seven Mats scored in double figures, led by forward Jonathan Heard's 22 points. A special citation to starting center Thomas Shewmake, who failed to score. We like a man who doesn't just go along with the crowd.
Speaking of the crowd, there wasn't much of one to witness the performance, in which the Mats fell one free throw short of the four-points-a-minute mark. There were 1,016 fans in The Matadome, formerly the Northridge Gym, formally Kinesiology Building Room 140.
Is There a Game Tonight? ought to be this program's slogan. For Matador Fan (the singular is almost literal), coming off an 11-17 season, too much of the intrigue surrounds the status of longtime coach Bobby Braswell as he starts the last year of his contract and the first under a new AD.
But maybe this game can show Northridge the way. If you can't be good, at least be memorable, I always say.
So, Mats, make 159 your trademark. Make running and gunning your identity.
It would help if you played Division III schools like Redlands every night. Redlands is so weak, cynics in our office Thursday were saying the feat shouldn't really count. All I can say is I wish I'd been there to see it.
Apparently Pepperdine likes to run a bit. So Saturday's game (2:05 p.m., Room 140) cries out for a Northridge encore. Roll up triple digits again, and I'm coming back to that guard shack.