COACH: CSUN HAS WHAT IT NEEDS.Byline: CHRIS COCOLES College Baseball College baseball is baseball as played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education, predominantly in the United States. Compared to American football and basketball in the United States, college competition plays a less significant contribution to cultivating Cal State Northridge first-year baseball coach Steve Rousey won't accept the excuse the Matadors are struggling because it lacks the necessities. ``What lack of resources?'' Steve Rousey said from an office no bigger or luxurious than a backyard tool shed. The adjacent diamond was once dismissed as the college game's most dreary dungeon Dungeon - Zork . ``We're in Southern California. There's lots of good baseball players here. The cost of tuition here is not exorbitant. We're a Division I baseball program. We're in a great conference. We have a great coaching staff. We've got some tradition. I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. what the heck else anybody would want.'' Former coach Mike Batesole capitalized on CSUN's Big West Conference championship last season to get the coaching job at national-power Fresno State, but he said the CSUN CSUN California State University Northridge program is in good hands. ``There's nobody responsible for us winning the Big West more than Steve Rousey last year,'' Batesole said. Rousey pitched professionally, helped lead Cal State Fullerton to the 1984 national title, coached Los Angeles City College Los Angeles City College, known as LACC, is a public community college in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, California. A part of the Los Angeles Community College District, it is located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard. for six years and was an assistant at Long Beach State and CSUN. He knows success is all about recruiting, made all the more difficult with perennial national powers USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. , UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX and Cal State Fullerton in the Matadors' backyard. He learned recruiting on the fly when he was hired by Dan Cowgill as an assistant at L.A. City. ``I took the job and school was going to start in a couple months,''Rousey said. ``And (Cowgill) said, `You're the recruiter. Go get players. And I said, `How? Where are they? How do I find them?' '' Cowgill's advice: ``Figure it out.'' Rousey combed mostly inner-city high schools for players that would become the mainstay of the program. ``My mentor (at LACC LACC Los Angeles City College LACC Los Angeles Convention Center LACC Latin American and Caribbean Center (Florida International University) LACC Los Angeles College of Chiropractic LACC Local Aid Coordination Committee ) was life,'' Rousey said. ``Nobody that ever coaches in that environment is going to come to Cal State Northridge and feel like their resources are poor. ``Those were just great experiences for me. I got my rear end tagged a lot. And it forced me to figure some things out, not only in terms of how to coach kids but how to deal with people and administrators and lack of resources. And forcing you to put into play your creativity to get it done rather than a straight-forward approach.'' L.A. City won 50 games in Rousey's final two years after the program was cut and reinstated a few years before. Batesole faced a similar situation when he took over at CSUN. He said he was told many times that 41-17 seasons, conference championships and trips to the NCAA NCAA abbr. National Collegiate Athletic Association Regionals were impossible. Which is exactly what the Matadors accomplished last season. Ant that's why Batesole believes CSUN's 6-27 record heading into Friday's Big West opener at No. 8 Long Beach State won't be a trend. ``Look at the schedule he's playing,'' Batesole said. ``I don't care who you are. You're going to get slugged in the mouth the first time around. And you watch. This deal will be flipped over. They don't know how to win yet. And those things, they will learn.'' The Matadors' struggles are hardly unexpected and probably will spill into a rugged Big West lineup. The Major League Baseball draft The First-Year Player Draft is Major League Baseball's primary mechanism for assigning amateur baseball players, from high schools, colleges, and other amateur baseball clubs, to its teams. , senior eligibility and a transfer gutted CSUN's 2002 roster. But Rousey is concerned only with winning games, not making excuses. ``Whatever happens in the competitive scheme of things, nobody's ever going to outwork me,'' he said. ``I just won't allow that to happen.'' |
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