SAN DIEGO COLLEGE NOTEBOOK : Mickelson Longs to Get Back to the Classroom

Over the weekend, he had played the biggest 72 holes of golf in his life and come away with a stunning victory in the Tucson Open. But all San Diego’s Phil Mickelson wanted Monday was to be a student again.

The off-campus apartment he shares with two teammates from the Arizona State golf team had turned into a media outpost. At 6 p.m. Monday, his telephone was still ringing.

Mickelson, 20, answered the phone and said, “I just got done talking to The New York Times and I’m getting ready to leave for class.”

Who could blame Mickelson, a two-time San Diego Section champion at USDHS, for sounding weary? When he returned to Tempe Sunday, a huge welcoming party was waiting at his doorstep.

“We had an all-nighter,” Mickelson said.

Did he call the shot? Ben Weir, a sophomore from Moline, Ill., said his celebrity roommate made a prophetic statement on the eve of his departure for Tucson.

“Phil said: ‘Ben, I’m going to win this thing,’ ” Weir said. “I said, ‘Phil, there’s nobody in your way.’ He said, ‘You better have a party for me when I win.’

“He pretty much called the win before he won it. He even consulted me about what to wear Sunday if he was among the leaders. He wanted to look good in front of the camera.”

More Mickelson: Dave Thoennes, Mickelson’s coach at USDHS, was kicking himself Monday. Thoennes said he watched the Raiders-Bengals playoff game Sunday, thinking the final round of the golf tournament was not being televised.

Mickelson, reacting to the news that his former coach missed his heroics, said: “Oh, no. That hurts. We haven’t been in close contact, and that’s mainly my fault. But I think the world of him, even if he did dog me out on the telecast.”

Among Thoennes’ most vivid recollections of Mickelson in his high school days was how opposing players were intimidated by him until he would take time out in the middle of the match to give them pointers. Thoennes said Mickelson will go down as the school’s most famous alum, surpassing Cameron Crowe, who wrote the screenplay for the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and was a teen-age staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine.

The flip side: Something got lost in the luster of Kevin Bradshaw’s NCAA-record 72-point scoring performance in U.S. International’s 186-140 loss Jan. 5 to Loyola Marymount. Five Lion players set new career highs against the Gulls. And LMU, which established a new single-game mark for points by one team, also set new school standards for points in a half (94), assists in a game (40) and blocked shots (12).

LMU’s Rahim Harris (24), Chris Knight (27), Richard Petruska (28), Ross Richardson (24) and Greg Walker (10) each enjoyed his best collegiate scoring game against USIU. Those would have been career games for any Gull player other than Bradshaw and Isaac Brown, who had a career-high 35 against Chico State Dec. 8. Walker, an LMU walk-on, also had 10 assists in 15 minutes.

Bradshaw enshrined: LMU sports information director Bruce Meyers said he had Bradshaw sign the game ball and the reserve ball after he broke Pete Maravich’s 20-year-old scoring record. LMU plans to add them to its sports hall of fame. But in the interim Meyers, who admits to being a memorabilia buff, has apparently had trouble keeping his hands off the souvenirs.

Said Meyers: “I’m taking very good care of them, spinning them on my fingers . . . but I’m not dribbling them.”

A reliable source, however, said he caught the SID dribbling the autographed balls around his office and attempting wrap-around passes.