It’s a quiet basketball madness in Fullerton

At college campuses across the nation, it wouldn’t be March without serious talk of making it to the Big Dance. But at Cal State Fullerton? Not so much.

It’s been a generation and then some since Fullerton or any other Orange County school qualified for the NCAA basketball tournament, the end-of-season playoffs for the top 65 college hoop teams in the country.

And although much has changed since the 1978 Titans made a Cinderella run through the tournament to come within a game of the Final Four, the reaction on campus that the university was headed to the prestigious three-week happening was a very familiar ho-hum.

It wasn’t exactly March Madness on Tuesday afternoon as the Big West Conference champions boarded the bus to the airport and on to Omaha and a first-round date with Wisconsin on Thursday night. The media and players nearly outnumbered the fans at a hastily thrown-together rally in front of Titan Gym.

As Fullerton’s spirit squad waited with the school’s cheerleading squad for the team to appear, a few confused students wandered by on their way to class.

“I don’t really know what’s going on over there,” said Leah Richards, a junior distance runner on the school’s track team. “I’m sorry. I don’t pay much attention to the basketball team. I did go to one women’s game, though.

“Maybe they should have had the rally somewhere else on campus, like the quad. Somewhere else where there’s not cars coming by.”

Kylene Gainey, a senior, was just as bewildered that a basketball rally was being held. “I haven’t been following it,” she said. “When I think of sports here, I think of baseball.”

Fullerton’s baseball team, of course, has had a little more practice organizing rallies. The Titans have made 29 postseason appearances in 33 seasons, made 15 trips to the College World Series and won four national titles.

A beaming Scott Cutley, basketball’s Big West Conference co-player of the year, appeared overjoyed that anyone showed up for the Titans’ sendoff.

“It feels good,” said Cutley, a transfer from Kent State. “It’s usually the baseball team getting all the love. It’s been 30 years, so I don’t think many people around here are used to this.”

There have been several lean years since 1978, including three-year stretches in the mid-1990s and early 2000s where the Titans won fewer than a third of their games and often drew only a few hundred fans to the 4,000-seat Titan Gym.

But since Coach Bob Burton arrived five years ago, the program has made dramatic strides -- winning 20 games three times, including a school-best 24 victories this season.

But getting students to the games has been a challenge. The university is largely a commuter school and classes are not in session for nearly six weeks of the basketball season. Even after last year’s 20-win season, the Orange Curtain student spirit section was nearly empty early in the year. “The Curtain was more like a drape,” said Julie Jessup, a freshman.

“Baseball is still king around here. It’s going to take some time for the program to make a name for itself.”

As the team began stringing victories together and the Orange Curtain’s website was launched, students began piling into Titan Gym.

A few members of the Orange Curtain are headed to Omaha. Jordan Wachter, a junior, is paying for his airline tickets with credit card points. His lodging arrangements are less certain. “We’re going to figure it out when we get there,” he said.

Greg Bunch, 51, a cable executive who was the star of the 1978 team, was court-side at the Anaheim Arena on Saturday night as the Titans defeated county rival UC Irvine to clinch the NCAA berth.

As Fullerton students stormed the court and hoisted mascot Tuffy the Titan in the air, Bunch tried to hold it together. “I really started to feel the emotion,” he said. “My palms and hands started to perspire. There was this sense of relief that the school now gets another opportunity to show itself on a national stage.”

Bunch will be traveling to Omaha with his daughters, one of whom is dating a Titan player. Bunch said he is aware that Wisconsin is a heavy favorite to beat Fullerton, but he isn’t too worried.

“All the pundits say Fullerton is one and done,” he said. “But 30 years ago they said the same thing.”

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