Hard Times at the Wayward Home : A Ragtag Crew at Cal State Northridge Reaches End of Delinquent Season

Last week, after Cal State Northridge had lost to UC Riverside, 71-49, Coach Pete Cassidy emerged from the locker room looking like someone had just shot his dog.

He sort of moped around and answered reporters’ questions, saying things like, “I don’t know what happened,” and “We had some mental lapses . . . The whole game was a mental lapse.”

And maybe the whole season.

Going into their final three games, the Matadors were 10-13, 3-8 in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. They managed to win just one road game all year.

Cassidy had used the mental lapse line before. In fact, after watching his team lose to Chapman College in January, Cassidy diagnosed his team’s problem this way: “We turned off our brains and turned on the stupidity.”

Who needed Sigmund Freud?

This CSUN team was a dumb bunch.

Well, not really, of course. Guard Paul Drecksel, an accounting major, had a 4.0 grade-point average last semester. Guard Troy Dueker had his nose in a book all the time. And Cassidy calls center Paul Hobus, another business major, “very intelligent.”

It’s just that when these fellas--cum laude notwithstanding--got together on the basketball court, they made a lot of bad decisions when it came to passing, shooting and dribbling.

Early in the season, Cassidy said, “We’re so inexperienced. That hurts us. None of these guys has been to battle before. Even our older players haven’t played. It’ll take them a while.”

At season’s end, however, it’s still taking them a while. The Matadors have lost 10 of their last 13 games. After the Riverside loss, Hobus said: “We couldn’t put it together. We didn’t run the offense. We had people scattered all over the place.”

In December, CSUN assistant coach Mark Felix said the motion offense the Matadors were using was a “January” offense. In January, though, it looked like a February offense. In February, it looked like . . . How do you feel about next November?

After winning the CCAA championship last year, CSUN, barring a rash of wins in its final games, will finish under .500 for the first time since 1976. And CSUN will miss out on the league’s inaugural postseason tournament--only the top four teams are invited--at the end of the month.

Actually, the Matadors’ showing is no surprise. They lost seven of their top eight players from last year’s championship team. Mike Almeido, who was the league’s most valuable player, Larry White, Wayne Fluker, Tom Ruetten, Mike Lopez, Rafael Meza and Dale Brandsberg were gone.

That left a ragtag group of leftovers, transfers and recruits that Cassidy said no one else wanted.

At center, Cassidy put Hobus, who had come out of El Camino College in Torrance. El Camino won the state community college championship last year, but Hobus didn’t play much.

Still, “he played for a helluva coach--Paul Landreaux,” Cassidy said. It wasn’t a whole helluva lot to go on, but Cassidy invited him out anyway and decided, on the basis that he was a good shooter and a good student, to sign him up.

“He had no place to go and nobody knew about him,” Cassidy said, sounding more like the founder of a boys home, than a coach.

At 6-6, Hobus is really a forward, but he was forced into the middle because the Matadors had no one else to put there. He’s averaged six points a game and just over three rebounds. “Paul’s a little different,” Cassidy said.

Said Drecksel: “Nothing he did would surprise me. He’s strange and he knows it. In the locker room before a game, he hits his head against a locker. Sometimes, during warm-ups, he just throws the ball against the rim as hard as he can. He’s not trying to be funny. He just does weird things.”

Hobus, who resembles comedian Pee Wee Herman, once decorated his bike, put on a beanie cap--”A twirlie beanie,” he said, “you know, like a beanie boy”--took off his shirt, donned a cape and drove around campus.

“I was just letting out some energy,” Hobus said. “If people can’t take me, it doesn’t bother me.”

Hobus has bothered the referees this season. He leads the team in personal fouls, and has fouled out of 10 games.

At forward, Cassidy brought in Jimmy Daniels from Glendale College. Two years ago, Daniels was named the Inland Valley Conference’s most valuable player. Last year, he didn’t play because he needed more credits to be admitted at Northridge.

“We played in a pickup game before the season,” said forward Pat Bolden. “Nobody could stop him. He hit 11 straight shots. I looked over at coach like ‘Where’d you get this guy?’

“When Jimmy’s shot is on, nobody can stop him. But sometimes, eh, it just doesn’t go in.”

Like most of the time. Daniels’ shooting percentage is .391. He leads the team in shots attempted (294), but he has hit only 115.

“On the move, that’s when I’m more effective,” Daniels said. “In Cassidy’s offense, I’m more stagnated. It’s hard for me to adjust to that.”

In other words, he wants the ball more.

“He’s always been the hero where he was before,” Cassidy said. “Now he’s not. It really hurt him not playing for a year. He’s never gotten back into condition. I hope things work out.”

In other words, he won’t get the ball more.

Among other things, Daniels has had to adjust to pregame shoot-arounds. “All my life, I never touch a ball until just before a game. The shoot-arounds really bothered me. I’m superstitious. When I told Cassidy, he thought I was playing around. But if a ball rolled by me, I’d turn around.”

Despite his troubles, Daniels is the second-leading scorer on the team, averaging 12.9 points.

Cassidy considers the other forward, Pat Bolden, the team’s best player. He has averaged 12.7 points a game and leads the team in rebounding.

In recent weeks, with the Matadors falling flat, Bolden has been a bright spot. “Talent-wise, he could play Division I,” Cassidy said.

Fortunately for CSUN, Bolden said he has no interest in moving on. “I like it here. I like the guys. I like the coaches. Once we get some big guys, I think we’ll be good in the future.”

It’s no secret that Cassidy is desperately looking for a center. Last week, Felix spent a week in Northern California recruiting big men. But after returning, Felix said high school centers are scarce this year.

Drecksel, a guard, is a transfer from Brigham Young. Just after enrolling at BYU in 1981, Drecksel began suffering back problems. After spending six months in bed, he tried to come back at BYU, but played little in two seasons. He redshirted last year after moving to Northridge.

He is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 14 points a game.

Part of CSUN’s problem has been that nearly all of its players are out of position. Of the starting five, only Dueker, a point guard, is playing his natural position. But even he says, “It seemed like they didn’t have anyone to play there so they said, ‘Let’s put Troy there.’ ”

Dueker, a sophomore, leads the team in assists with 112. He is 12 short of the school record. But he rarely shoots, averaging 5.2 points a game. “I wish he was bigger and quicker,” Cassidy said. “He’s got limitations. But I recruited him because he’s the type of kid I like. He’s got strong character.”

But slow feet.

“Really, we’ve got a bunch of guys on this team that nobody wanted,” Cassidy said. “Nobody wanted Hobus. Or Troy. We don’t consciously try to find players nobody wants. But we don’t offer full scholarships, so that’s what we get.”

Next season, CSUN will increase basketball scholarships from one and a half to three and a half. Including fund-raising efforts by the coaching staff, that number will grow to five.

“But we’ll still be at the bottom of our conference in scholarships,” Cassidy said. “Riverside, L. A., Bakersfield, Cal Poly SLO, Cal Poly Pomona, Chapman--they all get 10 to 12 scholarships.

“But we’ll make it. Nobody wanted Lopez, Almeido, White and Fluker. All they did was win the conference. . . . If we can find the right pieces, we can win the championship.”