Matadors update: CSUN (aka Cal State Northridge) is in the first year under coach Mark Gottfried, who replaced Reggie Theus after a 6-24 season. One of his assistants is 80-year-old former UCLA coach Jim Harrick. The Matadors have already matched last season’s win total, although the reclamation project still has a ways to go. The best win is against Rider, which is 178 in the NET metric. (CSUN is 275, SDSU is 143). But they’ve won three straight, which is more than SDSU can say this season after failing in three attempts after winning two in a row. “Our guys are playing with confidence right now,” Gottfried said. Lamine Diane, a 6-7 redshirt freshman from Senegal, is averaging a double-double (23.6 ppg, 10.5 rpg). Terrell Gomez, a 5-8 sophomore from Inglewood, averages 18.7 points and is coming off a 29-point performance in a 94-86 win against Morgan State. The roster also includes Mahamadou Kaba-Camara, a 7-0 reserve center from the African nation of Guinea by way of Balboa City Prep in Escondido. The Matadors rank 340th in Div. I in free-throw accuracy at 61.7 percent.
--The San Diego Union Tribune