FULLERTON — The Cal State Northridge basketball team hasn’t won a postseason game since 2014, but the Matadors are close to earning a first-round bye in the Big West Conference Tournament next month.
Northridge moved a game closer to that reality with a 65-60 victory over Cal State Fullerton on Saturday night at Titan Gym.
CSUN (18-11 overall, 9-8 Big West) is alone in fifth place in the standings and the third- and fourth-place finishers earn first-round byes at next month’s conference tournament in Henderson, Nevada, while the top two finishers advance directly to the semifinals.
UC San Diego (19-9, 13-3), which moved into a tie for first with UC Irvine (20-8, 13-3) after beating the Anteaters earlier Saturday, is not eligible to participate in the tournament because the Tritons are in the fourth and final year of the reclassification process to the NCAA Division I level, so a fifth-place finish for the Matadors would earn them the No. 4 seed in the tournament.
“It’s huge,” first-year CSUN coach Andy Newman said of that possibility. “It’s really hard to win four games in four days, everybody knows that, but you can win three.”
Newman has already accomplished something that no Northridge coach has done since the 2007-08 season and that’s win 18 games.
“We’re really excited about the direction of this program,” Newman said. “Happy to be a part of it and I know these guys are happy to be a part of it as well, so having a lot of fun.”
De’Sean Allen-Eikens led the Matadors with 20 points, Dionte Bostick finished with 18 points and Mahmoud Fofana contributed 12 points and nine rebounds for Northridge, which owned a 44-20 advantage in the paint.
The Titans (12-16, 5-11), meanwhile, are in danger of missing the conference tournament entirely.
The tournament was whittled from a field of 10 teams to eight by the Board of Directors last June and the loss to CSUN, coupled with Cal State Bakersfield’s 75-56 victory over UC Davis on…
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