Pennsylvania factory explosion survivor, on fire, fell into chocolate vat

• March 31, 2023

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and ACACIA CORONADO (Associated Press)

A woman pulled alive from the rubble of a Pennsylvania chocolate factory after an explosion that killed seven co-workers says her arm caught fire as flames engulfed the building — and then she fell through the floor into a vat of liquid chocolate.

The dark liquid extinguished her blazing arm, but Patricia Borges wound up breaking her collarbone and both of her heels. She would spend the next nine hours screaming for help and waiting for rescue as firefighters battled the inferno and choppers thumped overhead at the R.M. Palmer Co. factory.

“When I began to burn, I thought it was the end for me,” Borges, 50, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview from her hospital bed in West Reading, Pennsylvania, just minutes from the chocolate factory where she worked as a machine operator. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board planned to interview Borges on Friday.

The March 24 blast at R.M. Palmer killed seven of Borges’s co-workers and injured 10. Federal, state and local investigations are underway. A cause has not been determined, but the federal transportation safety agency has characterized it as a natural gas explosion.

Borges said she and others had complained about a gas odor about 30 minutes before the factory blew up. She is angry Palmer didn’t immediately evacuate. She said the deaths of her co-workers — including her close friend, Judith Lopez-Moran — could’ve been prevented.

Others workers have also said they smelled natural gas, according to their relatives. Palmer, a 75-year-old, family-run company with deep roots in the small town 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia, has not responded to questions about the workers’ claims.

Speaking in Spanish over videoconference, her eyes bruised and her burned right arm heavily bandaged, Borges recounted her terrifying brush with death.

The factory was getting ready for a product switch that day, so instead of running a candy-wrapping machine as usual, she was helping to clean.

At 4:30 p.m., Borges told the AP, she smelled natural gas. It was strong and nauseated her. Borges and her co-workers approached their supervisor, asking “what was going to be done, if we were going to be evacuated,” she recalled.

Borges said the supervisor noted someone higher up would have to make that decision. So she got back to work.

Just before 5 p.m., the two-story brick building exploded.

Borges, who’d been on a ladder, was thrown to the ground. She heard screaming. There was fire everywhere, and the flames quickly overtook her. “I asked God why he was giving me such a horrible death,” she said. “I asked him to save me, that I didn’t want to die in the fire.”

She began to run. That’s when the floor gave way, and she could feel herself falling — into a long, horizontal tank of chocolate in the factory’s basement. At 4 feet, 10 inches tall, Borges landed on her feet in chest-high liquid.

The chocolate extinguished the flames, but she believes her fall is what broke her feet.

The vat began filling with water from firefighters’ hoses, eventually forcing Borges to climb out as it reached neck level. She sat on the lip of the tank, then jumped into a pool of water that had formed on the basement floor. Briefly submerged, Borges said she swallowed a mouthful of water before surfacing. She grabbed onto some plastic tubing.

And then she waited.

“Help, help, please help!” she yelled, over and over, for hours. No one came.

The pain grew more intense. The water was frigid. The main supply pipe for the building’s fire suppression system had ruptured — and water was pouring into the basement. She lost track of time but thought she might be there for days.

“The only thing I wanted was to get out of there,” she said.

Finally, in the middle of the night, she saw a light and screamed anew for help.

Search-and-rescue dogs had alerted their handlers that a survivor might be in the rubble. Now, as rescuers carefully worked their way down to the basement, they heard Borges’s cries.

Calling for quiet, the rescuers followed the sound of her voice. They found her in a tight space, in chest-deep water. She made her way to them and was placed in a litter.

“She was severely hypothermic and banged up,” conscious but “absolutely confused,” said Ken Pagurek, who helped lead rescue efforts as program manager of Pennsylvania Task Force 1, an emergency response team that deploys to disaster sites around the country.

“I think had they not gotten to her when they did, there was a very good chance the number of victims was going to be plus one,” said Pagurek, also a captain in the Philadelphia Fire Department.

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Her rescue gave hope to first responders who already had pulled two bodies from the rubble in the hours after the blast. Rescuers spent two more days at the pile. They found five more bodies but no additional survivors.

Borges now faces surgery on both feet and a long recovery. Her family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help her pay the bills.

Borges, who came to the United States 31 years ago from Puebla state in south-central Mexico, has worked at Palmer for four years. She said she’s seeking accountability.

“I wanted to speak so that this will be prevented in the future,” she said. “For my colleague Judy, I want there to be justice.”

___

Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania and Coronado reported from Austin, Texas.

​ Orange County Register 

School shootings are a stain on America. Set aside the culture war gibberish and focus on solutions.

• March 31, 2023

A little over a week ago, I was visiting Guadalajara, Mexico, getting breakfast, when I struck up a conversation with one of the workers. 

He asked me what’s the most negative impression Americans have of Mexico. 

With the recent kidnappings and killings of Americans in Tamaulipas in mind, I replied something along the lines of, “That everywhere in Mexico is unsafe, with cartel violence ravaging every city.” 

We joked about how ridiculous an idea that is. 

I then asked him, in turn, what’s the most negative impression Mexicans have of Americans.

His response?

“There are people always going into the schools and shooting people.”

“Well, yes, that’s actually true,” I responded. 

“Really?” 

“Yes, unfortunately, it happens every few months. It’s crazy.”

And, sure enough, it has happened again.

To quickly recap, on Monday, six people — three children and three adults — were murdered at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

This time, the shooter was a 28-year-old female who identified as transgender, was in possession of a detailed map of the school and had what police officials described as a manifesto.

Nashville’s police chief told NBC News the shooter legally purchased seven weapons and according to Nashville’s police chief was “under a ‘doctor’s care for an emotional disorder.’”

As is usual in the aftermath of mass shootings, the political discourse is mostly pretty stupid and unproductive.

President Joe Biden’s first press conference after the shooting involved him joking about ice cream before calling for an assault weapons ban he knows won’t happen. Because, yeah, he’s all there and totally serious. Right.

Right-wing pundits, meanwhile, fixated on the shooter being transgender mainly to score culture war points.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went on air to hyperventilate that, “The trans movement is targeting Christians, including with violence.” 

Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson tweeted, with as of now 10 million views, “One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists.”

And Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio tweeted, “If early reports are accurate that a trans shooter targeted a Christian school, there needs to be a lot of soul searching on the extreme left. Giving in to these ideas isn’t compassion, it’s dangerous.”

Most trans people just want to live their lives; they’re not out “targeting Christians.”

This kind of hysterical rhetoric is designed to stir up angry, defensive responses against whole groups of people based on the violence of one disturbed person. 

If the idea is to push back against extremism, the right shouldn’t be using extremist rhetoric of its own. 

That some transgender people are also criminals doesn’t mean that transgender people in general should be painted as dangerous extremists, no more than non-transgender people  who commit crimes define everyone who is not transgender. 

If this all seems like obvious, “duh” stuff, that’s because it is. I’m just spelling it out because America’s political rhetoric is dominated by people constantly trying to out-outrage each other. 

Reducing anything to hysterical partisan talking points is bound to be silly.

Now, I’m not going to leave left-wingers off the hook either.

Left-wingers can be gross too.

Popular left-wing podcaster David Pakman, for example, tweeted, “Very surprising that there would be a mass shooting at a Christian school, given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events. Is it possible they weren’t praying enough, or correctly, despite being a Christian school?”

It’s not new for secular left-wingers to angrily mock people of faith for offering prayers after a mass shooting, but Pakman revealed an obviously callous disregard for the lives of the victims for the sake of a tweet bashing Christians and conservatives, as if that’s a reasonable response to a mass shooting.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ press secretary, Josselyn Berry, thought it was a great idea to tweet out a gif of a woman pointing two guns at an unseen target with the words: “Us when we see transphobes.” She ultimately had to resign, obviously, because her encouragement of threatening gun violence against people isn’t exactly reasonable.

None of these sorts of responses are healthy or productive. 

Which finally brings to the “What should be done/What can be done?” issue.

What to do about public mass shootings is a hard problem. One, because public mass shootings are difficult to predict beforehand, two, because they usually involve handguns (not the so-called assault rifles), and three, we still have that thing called the Second Amendment (and a U.S. Supreme Court with a particular bent).

These are all constraints and complications.

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Some things can obviously be gleaned from the details of any particular mass shooting. In the case of the Tennessee shooting, there might or might not be something to the shooter being under a doctor’s care and the parents of the shooter saying they believed the shooter should not have owned weapons. I don’t think there’s much controversy to the idea that people who are known to be mentally troubled probably shouldn’t have access to guns; the key is obviously how to put together a constitutionally sound law with due process and clear thresholds. 

Admittedly, every possible set of solutions possible under the existing constraints admittedly feels inadequate and throws up serious trade-offs.

Boosting security at schools seems rational, for example. But at what cost? If we’re talking billions of dollars, is it possible we’d be better off putting that money into mental health treatment or crime prevention more generally? Let’s say sales of “assault weapons” were banned, what’s the next move going to be if/when, inevitably, a mass shooting doesn’t involve an assault weapon? Then what?

There’s something deeply wrong when kids are being murdered in their classrooms and it’s just a fact of life. It’s a hard thing to figure out and even try to solve. And the hysterics on the left and right make it impossible to try to have rational policy discussions. 

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

New school center gives thousands of Fullerton students access to health services and more

• March 31, 2023

Fullerton students have a new go-to place to find the resources they need to thrive in school, including health care or mental health counseling, free healthy meals, tutoring services and more.

The idea behind the new Nicolas Community Center is to provide a one-stop-shop of various wrap-around services for students and their families. With a design aesthetic centered on calming natural wood tones and greenery, the center provides private spaces for students to utilize for telehealth appointments, connections to a local urgent care facility and two pharmacies that can help families without insurance and a free family meal once a week.

Additionally, counselors, social service workers and a full-time community liaison will be on hand to help students and their families, both at the Nicolas Community Center and the six schools the center supports: Commonwealth, Maple, Nicolas, Richman, Valencia Park and Woodcrest.

The goal is to meet students and their families where they are and to provide them with the tools and resources they need to be successful in the classroom and the community, said Jackie Gallardo-Hoffmaster, a program specialist for Fullerton School District.

“What are different things we can provide so our students are feeling safe and ready to learn,” Gallardo-Hoffmaster said. “This is an opportunity for families and students to have a safe space where they can come and be vulnerable with us, and we can help them.”

For now, the community center is open during typical school business hours, but the plan is to extend its availability once it gets off the ground a bit more, Gallardo-Hoffmaster said.

The new Nicolas Community Center was unveiled by Fullerton School District on Thursday, March 30, with a ribbon-cutting and other festivities. California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond was on hand for the event.

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​ Orange County Register 

Real estate news: CapRock buys Phoenix property for $11.9 million

• March 31, 2023

Newport Beach-based CapRock Partners bought a 130,800-square-foot Class A industrial building in Phoenix.

CapRock paid $11.9 million for the property, according to the CRE industry website traded.co. The seller was Sun State Builders.

“The acquisition of 5810 W. Buckeye Road represents an opportunity to meet the ongoing demand for quality industrial space in infill areas in Phoenix and expand CapRock’s portfolio in the region,” said Jon Pharris, co-founder and president of CapRock Partners.

The property has been pre-leased by Metrie Inc., a manufacturer and supplier of solid wood and composite molding.

Construction on the new building was completed earlier this year with Metrie set to take occupancy by summer.

Don MacWilliam and Payson MacWilliam of Colliers International represented CapRock Partners in the marketing of 5810 W. Buckeye Road. Metrie was represented by Mark Seale with Avison Young.

More Western properties for CapRock

CapRock Partners also announced it has wrapped up work on two Class A industrial distribution facilities in Las Vegas.

The facilities span a combined 700,000 square feet.

Tropical Logistics Phase II has three single-tenant buildings in 442,780 square feet. The firm said all of the buildings are pre-leased though it declined to provide the tenant names.

Spanish Ridge Industrial Park also has three buildings for a total 230,899 square feet and is partially pre-leased.

“Newly completed, well-located projects such as Tropical Logistics Center Phase II and Spanish Ridge Industrial Park are benefiting from Las Vegas’ limited supply of new industrial development and the continued high demand from occupiers,” said Jon Pharris, co-founder and president of CapRock.

CapRock, with $2.7 billion of assets under management or advisement, said it is actively buying industrial properties in the western and central U.S., typically investing $20 million and $100 million per acquisition.

Industry people on the move

Snyder Langston has a new executive team, appointing Jason Rich as its chief executive officer, Lee Watkins as president and chief operating officer, and Jo-E Lopez as chief relationship officer. The announcement for the 64-year-old commercial and multifamily building company comes as it enters year eight of a 10-year succession plan. Rich joined Snyder Langston in 2002, Watkins in 2013 and Lopez in 2006.

Kellie Reed has been promoted to vice president of sales and healthcare at Tangram Interiors’ Newport Beach office. She first joined Tangram in 2012 as general manager in the Central Valley market and then shifted three years ago to Orange County director of sales. The firm said Reed was a key player in establishing its presence in the Central Valley when she also acquired responsibility for Tangram’s Bakersfield operations.

Bea Kissinger has been promoted to operations manager at Newport Beach-based P11, a creative agency that works in the real estate trade. She began her career at P11 in 2012. Kissinger oversees client invoicing, accounting procedures and payroll.

Mike Ruppert is Newmark’s new senior vice president of property management for Southern California. He has 30 years of experience in commercial real estate services, client relationship management and property management.

Bill Roberts has joined Irvine-based Ware Malcomb as its general counsel. In this new role, he will oversee the firm’s legal functions. Roberts also is a member of the advisory council of the Risk Management Program at the USC.

Rancho Mission Viejo executive Paul Johnson has retired as executive vice president of community development at the homebuilder. (Courtesy of Rancho Mission Viejo)

Milestones

Rancho Mission Viejo executive Paul Johnson has retired from his role as executive vice president of community development at the homebuilder, effective March 31.

A part of the leadership team at The Ranch for more than 35 years, Johnson played a key role in creating the master-planned community.

“Paul’s imprint upon the Rancho Mission Viejo community has been significant and meaningful,” said Anthony (Tony) Moiso, chairman and chief executive officer at Rancho Mission Viejo. “He took to heart and implemented the wisdom of my grandmother Daisy O’Neill, who noted ‘Take care of the land and the land will take care of you.’ We have all benefited from his dedication, creativity and vision and multi-faceted expertise. We are enormously grateful to Paul for his many contributions.”

TMG expands offices to Vegas, New Mexico

Costa Mesa-based The Mogharebi Group has expanded its Western presence to Las Vegas and Albuquerque.

The brokerage founded in 2016 by Alex Mogharebi said it has closed $8 billion in transactions for a combined 75,000 apartment units throughout California, the Pacific Northwest and the mountain states.

TMG in two years has expanded to Salt Lake City and Seattle. The latest office expansion brings the firm to 8 offices throughout the West.

Bill Ketcham and Robert Gallegos, with a combined 45 years of real estate investment experience, will lead the two offices. Ketcham joins the firm as vice president and will lead the Las Vegas office. Gallegos joins TMG as senior vice president to lead the Albuquerque office.

Real estate transactions, leases and new projects, industry hires, new ventures and upcoming events are compiled from press releases by contributing writer Karen Levin. Submit items and high-resolution photos via email to Business Editor Samantha Gowen at [email protected]. Please allow at least a week for publication. All items are subject to editing for clarity and length.

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​ Orange County Register 

Long Beach’s Virgin Orbit to lay off 85% of workforce, wind down operations

• March 31, 2023

Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc., the Long Beach satellite-launch company tied to British billionaire Richard Branson, is ceasing operations indefinitely, succumbing to growing cash-crunch pressures that have paralyzed startups in many emerging technologies.

The company said in a filing this week that it was cutting 675 jobs, or about 85% of its workforce, “in order to reduce expenses in light of the company’s inability to secure meaningful funding.” A spokesperson for Virgin Orbit said the remaining 15% of employees will work on winding down the business.

The move punctuates a rapid fall after its high-profile launch failure in January and a collapse in its stock price. Virgin Orbit temporarily suspended operations earlier this month while it sought additional capital. The firm — part of Branson’s empire that includes airline Virgin Atlantic and spaceflight company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. — hasn’t turned a profit as a public company.

Virgin Orbit shares fell 45% in extended New York trading as of 7:20 p.m. Thursday, March 30, trading at just 19 cents each. The stock was worth more than $7 a year ago. Charges will amount to about $15 million, consisting primarily of $8.8 million in severance pay and employee benefits, and $ 6.5 million in other costs such as outplacement services, Virgin Orbit said in the filing.

Just two weeks ago, the company approved a severance plan for top executives, with Chief Executive Officer Daniel Hart standing to collect a payout of twice his base compensation, a cash payment equal to the pro-rated annual target bonus, as well as as much as six months of health insurance cover.

Branson injected $10.9 million by buying a note convertible into shares through his Virgin Investments Ltd., allowing the failed business to fund severance pay and other costs, Virgin Orbit said in the filing.

Business sale

The Long Beach company is one of several space-related startups with once high-flying valuations that have seen their shares plunge as investors shy away from untested business models and money-losing operations.

Astra Space Inc. reported Thursday that its cash and cash-equivalent reserves fell by 32% in the quarter ended Dec. 31, and Rocket Lab USA said last month it expects to its quarterly loss to be three times bigger than analysts had estimated.

Virgin Orbit is still looking to sell all or part of its business, according to a person familiar with the matter. Those discussions for a possible transaction don’t include Matthew Brown, a little-known Texas-based venture capital investor who had said he was interested in a deal earlier this month, said the person, who asked not to be identified revealing private conversations.

Brown had touted himself as a possible savior of a business that was worth billions just a year ago. But his financing deal collapsed over the weekend, CNBC reported March 27.

The launch company officially began in 2017 as an offshoot of Virgin Galactic before going public in 2021 through a combination with a blank-check firm. Virgin Orbit’s business centered on launching small satellites into orbit, distinct from Virgin Galactic’s focus on sending humans to the edge of space and back.

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First mission

Unlike some competitors that launch rockets from the ground, Virgin Orbit uses a technique known as air launch, in which its LauncherOne rocket is deployed at a high altitude from underneath the wing of a modified Boeing Co. 747 plane. The company began developing the rocket at Virgin Galactic, years before the satellite-launch business was formally created.

Virgin Orbit successfully launched its first mission to orbit in January 2021 and completed four successful flights through 2022.

The company had planned to increase its launch frequency this year but had to reassess after the failed January mission, which was slated to be the first orbital launch from British soil. Its vehicle never reached orbit after incurring a problem with a fuel filter during the flight, leading to the loss of nine small satellites.

​ Orange County Register 

Fire at Garden Grove strip mall causes $1.25 million in damage

• March 31, 2023

Authorities were investigating what caused a fire to rip through a Garden Grove strip mall Thursday night, March 30, causing an estimated $1.25 million in damage.

More than 40 firefighters responded to the blaze in the 12500 block of Valley View Street at about 8:40 p.m.

It took an hour to knock it down. The building’s roof partially collapsed and four units suffered damage.

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Damage was estimated at $1 million to the building and $250,000 to its contents.

No injuries were reported.

​ Orange County Register 

California’s shakedown government expands under Gavin Newsom

• March 31, 2023

If you thought Governor Gavin Newsom’s new gas tax, SBX1-2, was about punishing big, bad oil companies, it’s not. It’s actually about much more – and none of it is good news for taxpayers.

For those who weren’t paying attention last week, SBX1-2 was Newsom’s attack on California’s oil producers who, he alleges, have been gouging consumers with high gas prices. This is horrible legislation, not only for its substance, but also for how it became law. The bill’s unusual number, SBX1-2, is the first giveaway that this was not normal legislation, but rather the product of a “special session,” which Newsom called last December.

After no action on Newsom’s declared “crisis” for months, the bill was jammed through in less than a week. There were no meaningful hearings, no public testimony, no opportunity for those directly impacted to present opposing views. Because the legislation was moved during a “special session,” it was able (by design) to avoid many of the procedural requirements of normal legislation. This was a shameful display of raw political power which, thanks to one-party rule, is now all too common.

As for substance, SBX1-2 sets a new speed record in California’s headlong rush toward Soviet-style central planning. The Newsom gas tax law creates a new agency under the California Energy Commission with powers to investigate petroleum companies and impose new penalties, costs and regulations. This new agency is vested with the authority to decide how much profit oil and gas businesses are allowed to make.

SBX1-2 is a gross insult to taxpayers. First, the Legislature’s own analysis projects that it will cost nearly $10 million annually with a minimum of 34 new enforcement bureaucrats. Specifically, according to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, “this bill will result in significant ongoing costs to the [California Energy Commission] in the millions of dollars annually, to develop rules and review data submissions; to establish and administer the Advisory Committee and the Division; to exercise its new authority to set a maximum margin; and to administer a penalty, if created.”

But this cost is a bargain compared to what the creation of this new Orwellian agency will do to the price of gas and other petroleum products. The regulatory scheme created by SBX1-2 is almost certain to disrupt California’s energy market and threaten the reliability of the state’s already fragile fuel supply.

More fundamentally, ponder the notion of the heavy hand of state government judging what an “excessive” profit is. What industry is next? Will there be a new state agency to put a price cap on automobiles? (Oh wait, there is already a bill that would do that).

But SBX1-2 poses another threat that few are talking about. If the Covid era taught us anything it is that government-declared emergencies – real or imagined – create more opportunities for corruption.

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Recall that during the pandemic when no-bid contracts were being handed out, behested payments on behalf of the governor surged. These are “donations” for charitable or governmental purposes that are specifically requested by elected officials, often from companies with business before the state. In 2020 alone, hundreds of millions were “donated” at the “behest” of the governor. The practice was so pervasive it even caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times which wrote that “many of the donors have other business before the governor, received no-bid government contracts over the last year or were seeking favorable appointments on important state boards,” which “creates the appearance of a pay-to-play system.”

With SBX1-2, one can easily envision politicians extorting petroleum companies to give campaign contributions or “behested payments” as “protection” money. (“That’s a nice refinery you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”)

So yes, the way SBX1-2 became law was a perversion of the legislative process and, yes, the bill is substantively destructive. (Justifiably designated as a “Job Killer” by the California Chamber of Commerce). But the real threat is the expansion of oppressive state government creeping into more areas of our personal lives and businesses. And that inevitably opens the door to more “pay-to-play” corruption and the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

​ Orange County Register 

Dedrique Taylor reflects on Cal State Fullerton’s memorable season

• March 31, 2023

The moment Dedrique Taylor realized what kind of special team he had at his disposal this year came after a five-game losing streak and well in the middle of an eight-game winning streak. Both of which bear testament to the kind of basketball Nirvana he achieved as a coach this season.

It came during a game with the team that eventually ended an eight-game winning streak that brought the Titans to the cusp of their second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament. That UC Santa Barbara ended Cal State Fullerton’s run one game short of a return trip to the NCAA Tournament — which would have been Taylor’s third since 2018 (not counting the pandemic-ended 2020 season) — was notable only because of the opponent.

Yet the fact there are no coincidences in life wasn’t lost on Taylor. Understanding your ceaseless efforts to get your team to buy into what you’re teaching paid off with interest can transpire at any time. That it transpired against the eventual conference tournament champions came with a byproduct that Taylor said defined this year’s Titans.

“I noticed a lot of the key elements were present when we played Santa Barbara up there. We had our way with them,” Taylor said. “I could feel the energy. I could feel the togetherness of our ballclub. The pace from an offensive standpoint was really, really fast. The ball was on the floor, it went into someone’s hands and it went into the hole. We could really mess around with people. …

“Those elements: our ball movement was at a premium, our decision-making was at a premium. These guys were able to digest our scouting reports and execute the details they needed to move forward. I noticed it in that game. I’m trying to call a play and they’re already gone. They’re gone. They know the only reason I want to call a play was to ensure we’re all on the same page. But they already communicated to each other. They already knew what they wanted to do, and they would go and execute. It’s an unbelievable feeling.”

That unbelievable feeling Taylor experienced in that 74-60 victory on Feb. 20 went beyond the Xs and Os on an iPad or whiteboard. Taylor often speaks about a coach’s ability to reach his players, that elusive quality that separates the merely technically astute coaches from the truly gifted ones, with the quip that “It’s not about the Xs and Os. It’s about the Jimmies and Joes.”

This year’s Jimmies and Joes bought in. And they kept the receipts, which is why Taylor looked far beyond the 20-12 record and far beyond the eight-game winning streak that spanned 37 days between losses. On Feb. 2, Long Beach State came into Titan Gym and finished off a season sweep of the Titans with a 70-67 victory. The Titans wouldn’t lose again until March 11 in Henderson, Nev., when UCSB pulled past a tired Cal State Fullerton team in the stretch for a 72-62 victory in the Big West Tournament finale.

“I thought we got as much juice out of the peach as you could possibly get,” Taylor said. “I don’t think there was any more juice in this peach.”

The juice that came out of that peach came in a season when the Big West was as deep as it’s been in at least a decade. Five teams: CSUF, UCSB, UC Irvine, UC Riverside and Hawaii hit or surpassed the 20-win mark. Against their fellow 20-win teams, the Titans went 6-2 in the regular season. They swept a surprising UC Riverside team enjoying its best-ever Division I season and Hawaii and split with UCI and UCSB, the conference’s top two teams.

Looking at the numbers explained where Taylor’s juice came from. The Titans were third in the Big West in team defense, allowing teams 65.1 points a game. They were second in opponent 3-point percentage (31.2%).

At the same time, the Titans were second in both 3-point percentage (36.9%) and 3-pointers made (253). CSUF led the conference in turnover margin, committing 2.27 fewer turnovers than it forced from opponents. Nobody else in the Big West had more than a plus-.094 mark.

“You know all the things you’re trying to impart on your ballclub, all the little things you’re trying to accomplish? They were accomplishing it,” Taylor said. “They were not only accomplishing it, but accomplishing it together. They could make the adjustments as they saw fit.

“Literally half the time, I would sit and marvel and say, ‘Look, they did that. Look at that. That’s impressive.’ I would watch the film and say, ‘Dang. They did that?’ I was looking in astonishment at these guys and their ability to be together and their ability to accomplish things and execute the details of the game.”

Two players epitomized the lofty basketball IQ Taylor spoke about: junior guard Latrell Wrightsell Jr. and senior guard Tory San Antonio. They both did it in complementary ways that not only showed off their leadership skills but carried the Titans in key areas.

Wrightsell spent his first two-plus years as a complementary cog in the wheel. This year, he was the offensive hub. En route to earning First Team All-Big West honors, Wrightsell averaged 16.3 points a game (fifth in the conference). His 72 3-pointers (2.4 per game) were third and his 1.5 steals were fourth. All while playing an average of 33.2 minutes a game (eighth in the conference).

Wrightsell’s ability to score from anywhere on the court, his innate basketball sense that created scoring opportunities for the likes of transfer Max Jones, who earned all-conference honorable mention honors for his 12.2 points per game, made Wrightsell one of the most valuable players in the conference.

“He didn’t come here as a support guy. When we recruited him, we knew he could score at all three levels,” Taylor said. “Trellie has an exceptionally high basketball IQ and you could see it before this season, but this year, it was a different limelight focused on him. Last year’s team was built for older guys, and his voice wasn’t as loud as it was this year.”

Wrightsell will be back next year. So will San Antonio, who gets another year due to COVID. You won’t find San Antonio’s name prominent on any of the conference’s statistical leaderboards. He averaged 7.2 points and 4.5 rebounds this season.

But you will find it on the Big West Defensive Player of the Year trophy. San Antonio became the second CSUF player — and first since Frank Robinson in the 2007-08 season — to be named the conference’s best defensive player. Deceptively stronger than his 6-foot-3, 165-pound frame belies, San Antonio found himself guarding the conference’s best players: Player of the Year Ajay Mitchell of UCSB, Zyon Pullin of UC Riverside and D.J. Davis of UC Irvine for starters. And he often found his way into penthouse suites in their heads.

“Not only did he guard them, but he would shut them down. He looks slender and slight of frame, but physically, he was our most physical guy,” Taylor said. “He would beat guys up. … From a defensive standpoint, he was nothing short of masterful. He would physically guard the other team’s best guard. He knew their strengths and their challenges and would take away their strengths.”

Wrightsell, Jones and San Antonio are three reasons why Taylor can’t wait for next season. He’s already scouring the transfer portal, looking to get bigger with that 6-8, 6-9, 6-10 player who can score with their back to the basket on offense and be a human eraser on defense. Already, Taylor has a commitment from 6-11 Kendrick DeLuna of TMI Prep in San Antonio, who played for former CSUF star and longtime NBA  player Bruce Bowen.

“I don’t like this team,” Taylor said, summing up the year. “I love this team.”

​ Orange County Register