Cal State Northridge hopes to be able to add a historical basketball season when it travels to Northern California to take on Stanford in the opening round of NIT on Tuesday evening.
Matadors (22-10) tied a school record for victories-seated 24 years ago-when they beat Hawaii 82-73 in the Big West Conference regular season final on March 8.
Northridge had a chance to put all the time in the quarter final in the Big West tournament but fell 78-72 to UC Santa Barbara last Thursday.
“I’m really proud of our guys … what they have done for school, for this program and for themselves,” Gusade Northridge coach Andy Newman grew after the Santa Barbara loss. “Putting school records says a lot. It’s huge.”
“The effort, endurance, focus and victim required to do such a thing is huge.”
The story indicates that Matadors can have its hands full of cardinal (20-13), which had a post-season in their first season in the Atlantic Conference. Stanford won the NIT championship 1991, 2012 and 2015 and has never lost to Northridge (6-0).
Cardinal, who finished in seventh place in ACC before he beat California 78-73 and lost to No. 13 Louisville 75-73 in the ACC tournament, was selected as a “host” school for the first two rounds of the tournament. With a victory Tuesday, Stanford would stay home against either St. Bonaventure or Kent State in the second round of the 32 team event.
Thanks to a large extent to the game by the Star Center Maxime Raynaud, who leads Stanford in both points (20.1 points per match) and rebounding (10.6), Cardinal received a post -season reward after being almost universally picked near the bottom of the ACC posting in presence projections.
“We didn’t really pay attention to it. We just talked about the process and just (do) your best every day,” noted first -year coach Kyle Smith. “They did a really good job of staying present and trying to improve.”
The high task of having to deal with Raynaud is expected to fall on the Northridge Senior Keonte Jones, which will give up more than six inches in the matchup. Jones was a choice of all Big West-first team and led Matadors with 9.2 returns per match this season.
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