DREAMS ARE SKY HIGH; IMPROVED CSUN SETS SIGHTS ON CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

The roots ran rich at a lower level, but Cal State Northridge men's golf coach Jim Bracken is focused on more than history this time.

Bracken, who has produced nine All-Americans and four teams that advanced to the NCAA Division II championship tournament - the last led by 1990 individual winner Bob Burns - is shooting for success in Division I.

Specifically, Bracken wants to win the Big Sky Conference championship and earn the automatic regional berth that goes with it.

High hopes for a program that turned out the last-place team in the 1998-99 Big Sky standings, but Bracken believes he has good reason for optimism.

``With the guys I've got coming back, we've got to be as good as anybody in the conference,'' said Bracken, a former Northridge golfer who is starting his 12th season as Matadors coach.

``He's looking a little better,'' said Gary Finneran, who helped Bracken's first Northridge team finish fifth in the 1987 Division II finals and is now head pro at Chatsworth Golf Center.

Bracken's long relationship with the program covers many of the glory years of Northridge golf. He played for Collegiate Hall of Fame coach Bill Cullum and alongside Northridge standouts Vik Wilk (Nike Tour player) and Michael Turner (three-time Los Angeles City champion). Bracken coached - in addition to current PGA Tour member and 1998 Nike Tour Championship winner Burns - former Los Angeles City champions Sang Hyun and Shane O'Brien and state amateur champions Jeff Sanday and Tim Hogarth, who also won the 1996 U.S. Public Links Championship.

Bracken thinks his program can return to the strength it showed in Division II because of the early golf success the school enjoyed when it first moved to Division I - before he started undergoing annual anxiety over whether his program would be discontinued as an intercollegiate sport.

``The first few years of Division I we were good, with guys like Burns and Sanday,'' Hogarth said. ``The problem has been lately we've been told we were going to be dropped. I was called in probably six or seven years in a row and told that. And when I was recruiting kids, I told them that - I wasn't going to lie to them.''

The result was Bracken would get the occasional top player but hardly anything constituting the kind of depth he had his first season as Northridge coach. That 1986-87 roster included such talented players as Hogarth and current teaching pros Pat Boyd, Tony Chieffo, Wayne Tyni and Finneran - who combined to nearly earn the Matadors the NCAA Division II title that year.

The depth started to shallow out shortly after Northridge upgraded to Division I in 1990.

``We've had some talent, but we haven't had the depth,'' Bracken said. ``When there's no one to push you (in practice), you can get complacent and it's hard to get better.''

This year's Matadors, however, have the potential for plenty of push, led by returning seniors Tim Wren (a finalist in last month's U.S. Amateur Championship at Pebble Beach) and Anthony Marciano (an alternate for the U.S. Amateur championship).

Incoming freshmen include former high school stars Scott Bashin of Birmingham and Mike Mendoza of Bishop Amat and College of the Desert transfers Paul D'Ambra and Lance Dombroski (who combined to help the Roadrunners win a state junior college title in 1997, both with scoring averages near 73.) D'Ambra also was medalist in a U.S. Open local qualifier this year.

Other prospects for the 1999-2000 Matadors include returning sophomore Rick Metz, St. Mary's transfer Mike Mendez, and Carlos Robledo and Ben Krug from longtime junior college power College of the Canyons. Krug helped Granada Hills win a fourth consecutive City championship in 1996 while Robledo led the Western State Conference in scoring much of 1998, when Canyons won a sixth conference title.

``We have a lot of depth and a lot of experience,'' said Bashin, who qualified for the state amateur this summer. ``We have a lot of backup - a lot of good players. It's going to be a great team.''

The improved depth (including redshirt Chuck Ruiz, the former Alemany star who challenged for the Mission League title in 1998) leaves Bracken confident that his latest Matadors can accomplish that last-to-first Big Sky reversal and perhaps perform well enough in regionals to reach the national finals for the first time since 1990.

``It's going to be tough,'' Bracken said. ``We're competing against a lot of programs that are fully funded, but I have high hopes this year. I think we're going to have a very competent team.''

Outlook for other area teams:

Pepperdine: Fourth-year coach John Geiberger, son of history-making Al Geiberger (who in 1977 became the first man to shoot 59 in a PGA Tour event), directed the Waves to an NCAA title in his rookie season of 1997, then to his second West Coast Conference title last season, when they narrowly missed advancing to the NCAA championship tournament.

He returns his top six players, including sophomore Jason Alred, who won the 1997 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, and junior Bobby Rodger, who reached the state amateur final after his freshman season. Sophomore Michael Beard, junior Alex Rodger (twin brother of Bobby), senior Charles Whiteley and defending conference champion Kelly Craig, a junior, are other top returning players on a young squad that also includes former Calabasas High star Mitch Brown, another junior.

UCLA: Coach Brad Sherfy has reason to expect much from this year's Bruins, who return six players and two redshirts from a team that finished second in the Pacific-10 and came within a few strokes of advancing past regionals to the national championship tournament.

Former area stars Jason Semelsberger (a 1997 U.S. Open qualifier from Hart High) and 1997-98 honorable-mention all-conference Ross Fulgentis (Westlake) are back, as is Westlake alumnus Brandon DiTullio, a team leader on the course and in the classroom. The senior economics major was UCLA's No. 1 player much of 1997-98 before redshirting last season to beef up his already solid grades (a 4.0 winter GPA improved the cumulative GPA to 3.1 for DiTullio, who has been on the Director's Honor Roll five consecutive quarters.)

Jeff McGraw (honorable mention All-American last season), former City Section high school champion Kevin Bodlovich, Parker McLachlin (who shot 59 in December to break Isao Aloi's Waikoloa King's Course record in Hawaii), returning junior Michael Vera and 1998-99 redshirt Steve Wagner make the Bruins deep. So deep that incoming freshmen standouts J.T. Kohut of Westlake (the nation's No. 12-ranked junior) and Travis Johnson (Bellflower), the 1997 Southern California prep golfer of the year, might be redshirted this season.

USC: The Trojans have not qualified for the national finals since 1996, Kurt Schuete's second season as men's coach. But if last month's U.S. Amateur Championship is any indication, they could be a force this season. Returning squad members Nick Jones, Nick Webb and John Ray Leary all qualified for that event, joining 1998-99 USC standout Charlie Woerner, who remains in school but has completed his collegiate golf eligibility.

Sophomore Kevin Stadler, a 1997 Junior World champion and son of former USC All-American and 1982 Masters champion Craig Stadler, came within a stroke of qualifying for the U.S. Amateur. He will join sophomore Leary and freshman David Oh - the 1997 SCGA/CIF champion - as leaders of a talented youth corps on a USC squad whose only seniors are Webb and former San Marcos High star Mike Berg.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) BASHIN

(2) Coach Jim Bracken thinks Northridge has the talent to drive into Big Sky title contention.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News