MEN: MATADORS WORK AROUND EFEVBERHA BENCHING CSUN 59, UCSB 46.

Byline: Ramona Shelbure Staff Writer

SANTA BARBARA - It's hard to say what sight was most surprising: watching Cal State Northridge junior guard Mike Efevberha sit the bench for the entire first half of the Matadors' 59-43 victory over UC Santa Barbara on Thursday night, or that the scoreboard was still in Northridge's favor while Efevberha was stuck there.

Efevberha, the leading scorer in the Big West Conference, was benched for the first half of Thursday's game in front of 2,311 at the Thunderdome for what Northridge coach Bobby Braswell later termed a ``coaches' decision.''

At times this season Efevberha has been the Matadors only consistent offensive weapon, but with as well as the Matadors played defense on Thursday night, they didn't need much in the way of offense. Northridge scored 24 points off its 25 forced turnovers. Santa Barbara scored only four points off its 12 forced turnovers.

``Mike needs to work on some things defensively,'' Braswell said. ``But I thought he was fantastic tonight, coming in off the bench in the second half and making plays. I was very happy with how he handled it. Even when he wasn't on the court, in the first half, he was contributing. He was the one leading all the defensive cheers.''

Sophomore Jonathan Heard scored a game-high 15 points and sophomore Calvin Chitwood had 14 points. Cecil Brown and Chris Devine each had 10 points to lead Santa Barbara.

Northridge built a 25-16 lead at the half behind a stingy defense that forced the Gauchos into 15 first-half turnovers and eight first-half points from freshman Rob Haynes.

Santa Barbara went on a 13-2 run to open the second half and even took the lead 29-27. Efevberha entered the game with 16 minutes, 25 seconds remaining in the second half and promptly hit his first two shots, a 3-pointer to put Northridge up 36-32 and a 5-foot runner to increase the lead to 40-32.

``I just approached it like if I got into foul trouble,'' said Efevberha, who finished with 11 points in 13 minutes. ``I had to keep my team mates hyped and be ready to play when my name was called.''

It was Northridge's first win in seven trips to the Thunderdome since 1981 and the first for Braswell.

``I've never won here, even when I was an assistant at Long Beach State,'' Braswell said. ``It feels good. ...I think this was probably our best performance since (the season opener) we beat USC. I was really pleased with our performance, especially defensively.''

The victory moved Northridge (8-8, 2-3) into fifth place in the Big West, just percentage points ahead of fifth-place Cal State Fullerton (9-8, 3-5), a half game back of fourth-place Cal Poly (5-12, 3-3) and a game back of third-place Pacific (13-6, 3-2).

The normally raucous Thunderdome crowd fell silent as the Matadors went up 50-37 on Terrell Jones' steal and layup with 7:37 remaining. Of course, that could also have been because the Gauchos haven't given their home crowd much to cheer about lately.

Thursday's loss dropped the Gauchos to 7-10 and 1-5 in the Big West, their worst conference start since 1983-84, when they opened 1-9 in Big West play.