MMBOW #14: Tremaine Townsend, Cal State Northridge

There's no doubt that Cal State Northridge, a school with just two winning seasons since joining the Big West in 2001, has gone from pity-party to postseason candidate in short order. At 16-6 overall and 8-2 in the conference, the first-place Matadors are on track for their first Big West men's basketball championship and CSN's first NCAA appearance since a Big Sky autobid in 2001. For that, you can credit coach Bobby Braswell for successfully mixing in productive new players, and one of them we will honor here today. Tremaine Townsend is our fourteenth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.

Townsend missed only four of his 19 shots from the floor last week during Northridge's NoCal swing, which is pretty good. OK, it's awesome. In 38 minutes of play in a 78-73 overtime loss at Pacific last Thursday, the Phoenix native hit 5-of-7 shots for 12 points. But up the road at Davis on Saturday, Townsend brought a bitter, sour taste to the Aggie Pack's "Candy Madness" by hitting 9-of-11 shots for a game- and career-high 21 in the Matadors' 77-57 pullaway win. And all that's impressive enough, but we haven't even got to the rebounds yet. In the Pacific game, he nabbed 13 boards. But on Saturday at UCD, he muscled and tussled his way to 22 caroms, two short of the school's 37-year-old school record and tied for the fourth-higest total of anyone, anywhere in Division I this 2007-08 season. The performance was dubbed as one of the finest in school history and Tremaine was, quite understandably, the Big West Conference player of the week.

Mr. Townsend is having a fantastic year in his first campaign at Northridge, after transferring in from Saddleback Junior College in Arizona last summer. He's an inside-outside threat who averages 10.5 ppg, and is often the fourth option in a deep Matador rotation. Tremaine leads the team with 9.2 rpg, shoots 55.6 percent and has earned seven double-doubles on the season, including the two from the weekend that was. He claims that he once scored a basket for the other team in a game, but that's not happening lately -- he's helping lead the Matadors to what could be a dream season. Congratulations, Tremaine, you're the Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.