SWEET! CSUN`S CINDERELLA SEASON: MATADOR WOMEN OVERCOME ODDS TO WIN TITLE, CAPTURE FIRST-EVER NCAA TOURNAMENT BERTH.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

They came to the Matadome on Saturday to see if ``Life Is Beautiful'' could eclipse ``Saving Private Ryan'' for the Best Picture Oscar, if a demo tape cobbled together in a garage could knock off Lauryn Hill, if some women's oral history of hard work and persevering against the odds could outsell ``Monica's Story.''

Nearly 1,000 people came to see if, metaphorically speaking, the Matadors could gore the bull.

Since ascending to Division I in 1990, California State University, Northridge athletics has grown used to picking the sand out of its teeth. Disinterest and divisiveness have been CSUN's perennial bullies, each flexing its muscle to keep a once mighty athletic program down.

The school has been an easy target, with its commuter students and comminute facilities and, above all else its substandard chain of command under outgoing President Blenda Wilson and recently ousted athletic director Paul Bubb.

Into this less-than-glorious situation strode a close-knit group of young women, flexing their own muscles and reminding us it isn't the size of your facilities or the size of your support group that matters, it's the size of your heart.

The CSUN women's basketball team, behind the 23-point performance of sophomore standout Edniesha Curry, defeated Portland State 79-65 to secure the Big Sky Conference title and the NCAA Tournament bid that goes along with it.

For the next few days, anyway, the very same CSUN program that won a total of four games two seasons ago will be right up there with such supernovas in the women's basketball constellation as Tennessee and the University of Connecticut.

``I feel like I'm dreaming,'' said Matadors coach Frozena Jerro, who deserves to have the interim label ripped from her title posthaste. ``It just felt like it was a victory for the whole university and not just us.''

It figures that the Matadors' strength was a redoubtable defense that pressured Portland State into 16 turnovers and wrenched them out of their shooting comfort zone. This CSUN team has been under siege since it lost its head coach before it had played a game. So the Matadors know a thing or two about playing with all their weight back on their heels.

After all they've been through, the excuse bar for future Matadors athletic teams has been raised impossibly high. Apathy, substandard facilities; the same old rationalizations won't cut it any more. That, in the long run, might prove to be this basketball team's greatest legacy.

``We sort of showed a lot of other teams just what you can do if you believe in yourselves,'' said Curry, the Tournament MVP.

It's a good thing the players always had one another's backs, as Curry put it, because the extended support system that was so loud and strong Saturday was at one time so scarce as to seem nonexistent.

The 1,019 revelers who serenaded the players before, during and after the game included Wilson, the prodigal president presenting a much higher profile than she did on the October day a major temblor roared through the women's basketball team and shook it from its foundation.

When the shocking news of fourth-year coach Michael Abraham's arrest for drug trafficking rumbled through campus, Wilson was nowhere to be found and certainly nowhere to be heard issuing a soothing statement or two.

She'd surface a few days later and address the team, which is sort of like applying a bandage to a wound after it has started to scab. By then, Jerro, a second-year assistant, had stepped effortlessly into the caregiver's role that Wilson had abdicated.

Bubb was no better, effectively looking the other way when players' concerns over Abraham's behavior were brought to his attention a couple of years earlier. He hadn't shown the program the kind of support then that helps the players' parents rest easier at night but there he was Saturday, leading the cheers on one side of the gym while his short-term successor, Sam Jankovich, did the same thing on the opposite side.

Oh well, better late than never. Bless Wilson and Bubb for finally coming around, literally and maybe even figuratively. How could they not?

You'd have to have a heart harder than the steel rims not to root for Curry's cuts to the basket and Lynda Amari's arcing 3-pointers and Tina Greer's thievery and Keisha Harris' hustle for loose balls and Jamilah Jones' jumping and birthday girl Neda Milic's exuberance.

The cheering grew so loud at times, it jarred the floor. And amazingly, not one member of the Lindley West Coalition felt compelled to lodge a complaint. The neighborhood group opposes the construction of an on-campus stadium because of all the traffic and parking headaches that a full house every Saturday would invite.

But of course. What concerned citizen wants tomorrow's leaders striving and succeeding and screaming with sweet satisfaction if it creates the slightest bit of discomfort for the neighbors?

It's a shame the good vibes that were bouncing off the Matadome walls can't be bottled and sold. There'd be no better fund-raiser for a CSUN athletic program that has always seemed woefully short on cash and caring.

Thanks to Fro-Jo and Co. the caring part no longer is as much of an issue. It figures that this group of women would be the ones to spread peace, goodwill and pride throughout the campus; this isn't a basketball team so much as it is a United Nations assembly, with France, Serbia, Sweden, Belgium and the United States present and accounted for.

No matter what they do from here on out, they've already shown there are no boundaries in life, just one big sky.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) Jubilant CSUN women's basketball players rush the court for a group celebration after their victory over Portland State on Saturday.

(2--Color) Matadors coach Frozena Jerro lifts the Big Sky trophy in triumph.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News