CSUN Upset in Middle of Upset, 25-20

HAYWARD, Calif. —  Borrowing from a book of historical quotations, and altering one a bit, you might say this about the performance Saturday by the Cal State Northridge Matadors: They came, they saw, they were conquering.

And then they dropped dead.

For three quarters CSUN throttled Cal State Hayward, the No. 6-ranked Division II team in the nation, while building a 15-point lead. If the original pioneers had been treated as rudely as the Hayward Pioneers were for the first 36 minutes of the game, most of us would still be living in New England.

But suddenly, in the fourth quarter, this tidy little bundle CSUN had wrapped and labeled “upset” came apart as Hayward rattled off 20 consecutive points for a 25-20 victory that left the Matadors with a long and lonely bus ride home.

“I don’t know how they’re ranked sixth in the nation,” CSUN quarterback Chris Parker said. “We gave them the game. We had it and we let it go. We had ‘em beat, but then we made some mistakes--I made some mistakes--and it went right down the drain.”

The loss dropped CSUN to 2-2. Hayward is 4-0.

The dramatic turnaround was ignited by a 62-yard kickoff return by Hayward’s Marcus Whitten after Mike Doan had equalled the CSUN record with his fourth field goal of the game. That field goal gave the Matadors a 20-5 lead on the first play of the fourth quarter.

The second play of the quarter, though, was much more spectacular. Whitten was finally run out of bounds at the Northridge 37, but six plays later Mike Matthews burst up the middle on a five-yard draw play for a touchdown that cut the deficit to 20-11.

A word here about the Hayward draw play: Devastating.

The Pioneers ran it all day, and CSUN never figured out how to deal with it. It routinely went for 15 and 20 yards. Police composite artists should draw so well.

Parker then committed one of those mistakes he mentioned, under-throwing receiver Vincent Chambers and watching as Danny Brown intercepted. On Hayward’s next play, quarterback Jeff Keppert hit Kevin Conway with a 23-yard touchdown pass and, in a span of just a minute and a half, the Pioneers had crashed back into the game, trailing only 20-18.

A horror show that would make Vincent Price scream and run from the room continued for CSUN, which was assuming a three-play-and-punt offense.

Hayward got the ball back again with 8:38 remaining in the game, and on the second play Coach Tim Tierney called for the draw. Brilliant.

Lonell Conner carried it 36 yards through a Matador defense that seemed to have adopted the motto, “It is too late to learn.”

Three plays later Conner again used the draw play to perfection, running untouched into the end zone on a two-yard jog that pushed Hayward to a 25-20 lead with seven minutes remaining.

CSUN got another chance with 1:57 left when Conner fumbled and Pat Ricciardi recovered at the Northridge 37, but two plays later a Parker pass was deflected at the line of scrimmage and intercepted by Michael Grayson with 1:27 left. A final chance for CSUN came with five seconds left, but a desperation pass by Parker was intercepted--this time by Walter Washington--as the game ended.

There was some bright news for CSUN. In addition to Doan’s record-equalling performance, junior tailback Mike Kane became the school’s all-time leading rusher, surpassing in slightly more than two seasons the mark of 1,764 yards set in a three-year career (1976-78) by Mike Maglione.

The bad news, and strange news, however, is that Coach Tom Keele turned to his star running back roughly as much as Orson Wells turns away from a good meal.

Kane carried the ball only nine times and finished with 44 yards and one touchdown, despite the fact that Hayward commonly used five, six and even seven defensive backs to combat CSUN’s run-and-shoot offense.

Parker completed 28 of 53 passes, including 10 in a row, for 270 yards. But a quick and strong Hayward defense--which correctly figured that it was going to see a Northridge running play as often as it might an outdoor skating rink in Puerto Rico--teed off on him on every play. The junior quarterback never had a chance.

He was intercepted five times, sacked twice and forced to run for his life or hurry a pass nearly two dozen times.

And he didn’t like it.

“I’d look down the field sometimes and see seven defensive backs. There were cornerbacks and safeties all over the place,” Parker said. “That’s tough for any quarterback. Joe Montana wouldn’t have been able to do much against that kind of defense. I figured we should run more and open the game up, make them play us honestly, but we didn’t. Coach Keele must have figured the passing game would eventually click, but I don’t think it ever really did.”

The only thing clicking in the final minutes was the scoreboard clock.

“We didn’t go to the run enough,” Keele admitted. “But once they got going they scored so quick that we had to play catch-up. And then I thought we had to stick with the passing game. That was the only way we could have come back.”

And how about that Hayward draw play that accounted for close to three-fourths of the team’s 206 rushing yards? Well, with the ball on the CSUN five early in the fourth quarter, the Pioneers ran the play to Matthews, and he scored easily.

“When we were down there I figured, ‘What the heck, they haven’t stopped the draw play all day, let’s see if they can cover it down there on the goal line.’ So we ran it, and they didn’t stop it,” said Tierney.

The win will probably boost the Pioneers even higher in the national rankings, which are about as important to Tierney as the outcome of the world championship chess tournament currently being held in Moscow.

“It’s hard to take that ranking serious at this stage of the season,” he said. “It’s pretty meaningless I think. If we’re still ranked that high or higher after seven or eight games, then it’ll get me interested. We haven’t even played a conference (Northern California Athletic Conference) game yet.

“We won today, but we weren’t a good football team. This could be a great team. I know we are much better than we played today.”

The game began a bit strangely with Hayward taking a 2-0 lead with a safety on a blocked punt in the end zone (Parker, also the CSUN punter, didn’t have much more success with his feet than he did with his arm), and boosting it to a baseball-like 5-0 with a field goal by Vito Cangemi.

CSUN grabbed an 8-5 lead on Kane’s one-yard touchdown run in the second quarter and a Parker-to-Kane two-point conversion, then made it 11-0 with three seconds left in the half on Doan’s first field goal, a 48-yarder.

Doan’s 22-yard field goal in the third quarter made it 14-5 and a 37-yarder a minute later, following a fumble recovery, boosted CSUN’s lead to 17-5. His fourth of the game, from 39 yards, made it 20-5.

The Matadors appeared on their way to their biggest win of the season.

But soon it all turned to sludge for CSUN.

“It’s better to get blown out than to lose like this,” said Keele, whose team was destroyed in its first game of the season against Division I-AA opponent Nevada Reno. “This really hurts. We should have beaten this team. We had ‘em and we let ‘em get away.”

Notes

About 1,000 fans watched the game in University Stadium, which seats about eight times that many. It was obvious before the game that the fans were not from Southern California. Under a brilliant sun with temperatures in the 80s, many of them huddled under umbrellas. . . . CSUN now plays three straight home games before venturing back onto the road Nov. 2 for a trip to Davis.