NOTEBOOK : CSUN Feeling at Home With Local Talent

Recruiting locally is a sound idea for image-conscious college athletic teams, but the Cal State Northridge men’s volleyball team has taken the practice to an extreme.

CSUN’s six starters and its top reserve all hail from Valley high schools. Coley Kyman is from Reseda, Gary Reznick is from Taft, Ken Lynch is from Crespi and Raphael Tulino, Neil Coffman, Mark Root and Mike Mesnick are from Chatsworth.

Coach John Price, who played at Northridge, concentrates his recruiting efforts locally because he believes CSUN can win by attracting the area’s top players.

This year’s team is showing the strategy can work. Northridge, which plays at Stanford tonight, is 3-3 overall, 2-1 and in a second-place tie with Pepperdine in the Western Intercollegiate Volleyball Assn.’s DeGroot Division.

Two of the Matadors’ best performances have come in the past two weeks--a five-game loss to top-ranked UCLA and a three-game sweep of seventh-ranked Pepperdine on the Waves’ home court.

Price is not always successful recruiting locally, but players who at first slip away seem to make their way back. Tulino, a middle blocker, and Coffman, an outside hitter, are transfers from UC Santa Barbara. Root, an outside hitter, came to CSUN after playing two seasons at Pepperdine.

The three transfers are juniors. Kyman, Reznick and Lynch are freshmen and Mesnick, the team’s seventh man, is a sophomore.

Price is hopeful that CSUN can earn its first berth in the WIVA’s postseason tournament this season. And with the squad expected to return intact, future goals might not be so modest.

Suddenly, the prospect of gaining a berth in the NCAA Final Four hits rather close to home.

Two-liners: Bill Mazurie, a 6-foot-2 guard, is the most fundamentally sound freshman to play basketball for Northridge in years. Too bad he is not 6-9. . . .

Football Coach Bob Shoup’s feud with the Cal Lutheran administration seems to be simmering. Sources say Shoup is ready to go to court if efforts to negotiate a settlement fail. . . .

CSUN’s Derrick Gathers could improve his free-throw shooting several percentage points by concentrating harder. Gathers, shooting 52.7% from the line, is noticeably better on second attempts after he misses the first. . . .

Kudos to Coach Rob DiMuro for putting together a competitive women’s basketball team at Pierce, which is playing its first season after a four-year hiatus. Pierce’s record is only 9-14, but it has not been blown out often. . . .

Nevada Las Vegas could use Dedan Thomas, the former Taft High standout who is playing basketball for Antelope Valley College after failing to meet Proposition 48 entrance requirements. Thomas would be a better backup point guard than former Santa Clara High star Stacey Cvijanovich, who struggles when pushing the ball up the court against a good press. . . . Northridge used a lineup of four freshmen, five sophomores and a senior (designated-hitter makes 10) to knock off top-ranked USC in baseball for the second year in a row. This might become routine.

Crew of two: Cal Lutheran continues to be a one deLaveaga basketball team.

Steve deLaveaga, who led the Kingsmen in scoring four consecutive seasons, has exhausted his eligibility but brother Jeff has picked up the slack.

Last season, Steve averaged 28.1 points a game. This season, Jeff is averaging 26.8. And still CLU (4-16) struggles.

What occurred Tuesday night is indicative of the team’s woes. DeLaveaga scored 33 points and Mike Demeter had 28, but the rest of the Kingsmen combined for only 20 in an 82-81 loss to Southern California College.

Take away Demeter, and other CLU players are averaging six points more than deLaveaga.

Draft dodging: Barry Voorhees’ bid to become the first Northridge football player selected in the NFL draft received a minor blow last week when he was not invited to the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis.

Bob Burt, CSUN’s coach, said scouts have told him that Voorhees was the victim of a numbers game but to still expect a middle-round selection in April’s draft.

Voorhees, an offensive guard, reportedly played well in the Martin Luther King Jr. all-star game in San Jose last month. However, his best impression might have been made before the game. In testing by professional scouts, Voorhees was measured at 6-4, weighed a rock-solid 290 pounds and was timed in 4.8 seconds for 40 yards.