CS Northridge Waited for Miracle Finish That Never Came : College football: Last-minute heroics, which had saved the Matadors before, did not materialize against Cal Poly SLO.

Terrell Taylor stood on the sideline expecting a miracle. His prayers, after all, had been answered before.

It happened against Portland State. It happened last week at Santa Clara.

The Cal State Northridge offense had wobbled and bobbled before and come through at the end. Why should it be any different Saturday against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the game that would decide the champion of the Western Football Conference?

So Taylor watched and waited.

“I thought something good was going to happen right up until the end of the game,” he said.

It never did.

Northridge pulled inside the San Luis Obispo 20-yard line three times. Its opponent penetrated that deep just once--after an interception. And still the Matadors lost, 6-3. A pass was dropped at the goal line and a pair of field goals were blocked.

Had either kick been good, Northridge would have won the conference title outright. Instead, the Matadors share it for the first time since 1983.

Few found comfort in that afterward.

“These guys went out and played their. . . . off,” safety Eric Treibatch said of his counterparts on the Northridge defense. “They left everything on the field. I went in after the game and cried. Not for me, but for the other 10 or so guys. We didn’t deserve to lose this game.”

But there was that first-quarter interception of a Sherdrick Bonner pass. Mustang linebacker Lee Jaitt returned the ball from CSUN’s 35 to the 12.

“If they would have got that turnover at any other point, they never would have got in the end zone,” Matador linebacker Ken Wallace said. But San Luis Obispo did--on a one-yard dive by Daryl McChristian.

And the Mustang defense, rated second among NCAA Division II teams coming into the game, made it stand up.

San Luis Obispo allowed 219 yards in offense, only 79 on the ground. Fifty of that came on a run by Victor DeVaughn, CSUN’s reserve tailback.

DeVaughn, subbing for All-American Albert Fann, moved the ball to the Mustang 10 in the fourth quarter. Three plays later, the Matadors were back at the 23. So it went.

But other times it worked out in the end. Against Portland State, Bonner hooked up with Billy Nealy for a touchdown pass with 41 seconds left to give CSUN a 19-18 victory.

Last week against Santa Clara, the Matadors scored twice in the last two minutes to win, 10-7.

There were no such heroics this time. A fact that left Northridge defenders counting their own opportunities afterward.

In the fourth quarter, linebacker Danny Abraham recovered a fumble at the Mustang 20 and returned it to the 11. That drive ended when Abo Velasco’s 27-yard field-goal attempt was blocked.

“I shouldn’t have juked,” Abraham said of his runback. “If I’d ran it straight, I would have scored.”

A short time later, Abraham forced another turnover, sacking David Lafferty and forcing a fumble. It was picked up by Wallace at the 50 and he raced to the end zone for an apparent touchdown.

It was disallowed. Fumbles that occur behind the line of scrimmage cannot be advanced.

Wallace was celebrating in the end zone when informed of the rule. “He let me run all the way down there,” Wallace said. “I was like, ‘Dude, you should have blown the whistle before I ran all the way down there.’ ”

What was billed as a battle of defenses was played true to form. The blocked field-goal attempts were important but when San Luis Obispo Coach Lyle Setencich was asked about it afterward, he clammed up quickly, refusing to say if he spotted a weakness while watching films.

“I won’t respond to that because we’ll probably play them again in the playoffs,” Setencich said.

Taylor, for one, hopes it happens.

“We give credit to Cal Poly tonight,” he said. “They played a good game and played rock ‘em, sock ‘em like we like. Maybe we’ll see them again.”