UC Irvine Survives San Jose’s Phantom Shooter, 78-77

No, UC Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan and his staff didn’t sit around Saturday morning worrying about how they were going to stop Bryan Holt of San Jose State.

Mulligan has enough problems of his own to be chewing his nails over a freshman forward averaging two points and seven minutes a game.

Bryan Holt?

“He was shooting 31% from the field and is a freshman,” Mulligan said. “And he’s the guy they’ve got shooting the three-point play in the end.”

Had Holt’s desperation shot dropped in the final seconds, Mulligan would have had nightmares for years to come.

But Holt missed, and UCI held on to beat San Jose State, 78-77, in a Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. game played before a crowd of 1,385 in Crawford Hall.

UCI improved to 5-6 in PCAA play and 10-12 overall. San Jose State fell to 4-6 and 9-10.

And, for this year at least, the Anteaters can wipe the memory of Holt from their minds.

UCI, which was looking for an easy win, was leading comfortably with 14:11 left when guard Jerome Lee whipped a wrap-around pass to Tod Murphy for a fast-break basket. Murphy was fouled on the play, and his free throw gave the Anteaters a 13-point lead at 59-46.

At that time, Bryan Holt was the least of UCI’s worries.

But, boy, did he become a giant pain in the basket.

Holt hasn’t done a thing all year. Nothing. His previous high in a game was seven.

But Saturday night, he made 13 of 20 shots and finished with 26 points.

In the end, Mulligan and his staff were calling timeouts to figure out a way to stop old what’s-his-name.

In the final 13 minutes Saturday, Holt scored 14 points.

His fade-away jumper with 1:54 left cut the UCI lead to 74-73. His base-line jumper with 15 seconds left cut the Anteaters lead to one again at 76-75. And Mulligan couldn’t believe it.

After Tod Murphy made two free throws with 12 seconds left to put UCI up by three again, the Spartans called time.

They set up their final play to go either to Holt or Herb Simon.

Mulligan put the 6-9 Murphy on the 6-4 Holt, thinking that Murphy’s long arms would force Holt to change the arch on his shot.

“I just Murphy not to foul him,” Mulligan said. “We didn’t want a four-point play on that shot.”

But perhaps rushing his shot with five seconds left, Holt’s attempt was no good. Stony Evans scored on the rebound, but two points weren’t enough for the Spartans.

“I don’t even remember him from the first game,” UCI guard Lee said of Holt. “I thought he was a new guy on the team.”

Considering how much playing time Holt’s received from Coach Bill Berry, he might as well have been.

“I bet you guys (reporter-types) were trying to figure out who that guy was,” said Berry, who was correct in his assumption. “We got him out of a phone booth . . . Obviously, that’s the best he’s ever played, and I’m real proud of him. He did that kind of stuff last year in high school, but he had never shook loose as a college player.”

Until Saturday. Holt, from Aptos (near Santa Cruz), once scored 64 points in a high school game.

“I guess I surprised them,” Holt said.

Oh, yeah.

“It didn’t really occur to us that Bryan Holt was going to kill us, but he did,” said Murphy, who finished with 19 points and 8 rebounds. “The way he was shooting, I thought that three-point shot was going to go in.”

It was lucky that UCI had a couple of hot shooters of its own in Jerome Lee and Troy Carmon.

The senior Carmon, who lost his starting forward spot to freshman Wayne Engelstad, came off the bench to score 14 points (7 of 10 from the field).

Lee finished with 6 assists and 20 points, two of those coming on an off-balanced jump shot to beat the 45-second clock with 1:07 left to put his team up by three points.

Center Johnny Rogers, the team’s leading scorer, finished with only 15 points, 8 below his average.

But when it counted, Rogers came through.

San Jose State had climbed all the way back after trailing by 13 and tied the game at 71 with 2:41 left.

But seconds later, Murphy passed inside to Rogers, who was fouled while scoring a basket. He made the free throw to put UCI up by three points.

It was another one of those weird games for the Anteaters, who are becoming a hard team to figure. San Jose State defeated UCI by 22 points Jan. 3 in San Jose.

Mulligan is warning others not to count his team out just yet.

“Hey, we’re 5-6 and we could be 10-1,” Mulligan said, “and I haven’t been smoking dope. Other than the first San Jose game, we could have won every other game.”