CSUN HAS NO TROUBLE IN WIN OVER BETHANY CSUN 117, BETHANY COL. 51.

Byline: George Vranau Special to the Daily News

After earning his 100th career victory last week at San Diego, Cal State Northridge coach Bobby Braswell didn't take long to start on his next hundred.

After what has become a characteristic slow start, the Matadors went off on the first of numerous big runs to breeze past NAIA Bethany College 117-51 on Saturday in front of 1,019 at Northridge Gym, the Matadors' third victory in a row.

CSUN managed only a 9-7 lead over a Bruins team that had just eight players in uniform, and it appeared that the Matadors were playing to the level of its competition as they had in poor games earlier this year against Portland State and Jacksonville.

But a a 22-2 run by the Matadors (4-2) during a seven-minute span of the first half, beginning at the 13:24 mark, left little doubt in the eventual outcome.

``Part of it has to do with the fact that we are still a very young basketball team, we start three sophomores, a junior and a senior,'' Braswell said. ``As much as I'd like them to do everything well right now, we are only six games into our season, and it's my objective for us to get better every game.''

CSUN forward Chris Davis scored a game-high 19 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for his first career double-double, and John Clarke finished with a season-high 18 points. Teammates Lionel Benjamin and Ian Boylan added 18 and 15 points, respectively, for CSUN.

Bethany (3-5) committed 40 turnovers for the game to CSUN's 13, only four of which came in the second half.

The Bruins trailed 53-23 at halftime and were outscored 31-8 in the first 10 minutes of the second half.

The 117 points were not the most scored by CSUN against Bethany - that was accomplished in 1988, when the Matadors won 118-79.

``Tonight, the way we wanted to start the game was not the way we wanted to play the game, but I thought the guys picked it up and did some better things throughout,'' Braswell said.