CS Fullerton Pulls an Upset of UC Irvine

Bill Mulligan, the UC Irvine coach, and George McQuarn, the Cal State Fullerton coach, are both in the sixth seasons of their programs. They’ve had their share of success, but they took opposite routes to get it.

Mulligan recruits natural shooters and hopes to mold them into all-around basketball players. McQuarn recruits athletes and hopes to mold them into all-around basketball players.

When they go head-to-head, the athletes seem to fare better. Fullerton has won 8 of the last 10 meetings.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way, though, Thursday night at Titan Gym. Mulligan brought a couple of senior front-liners--Tod Murphy and Johnny Rogers--who were averaging more than 20 points each, and McQuarn’s top two scorers--Kevin Henderson and Richard Morton--were sitting on the bench with injuries.

But the athletes (who ended up shooting 66% from the floor) were in the faces of the shooters (who hit just 41%) all night, and the result was a 66-54 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. upset win for Fullerton. The Titans are 3-3 in conference play and 10-8 overall. Irvine is 3-2 and 7-7.

“It was a tremendous effort,” McQuarn said. “I thought we played great defense for 40 minutes. And we got great support from the bench . . . players who knew their roles were just to come in and give someone a rest.”

McQuarn was especially pleased with the job the Titan inside players--Herman Webster, Kerry Boagni, Tee Williamson and Vincent Blow--did on Murphy and Rogers. Murphy scored 19 points, 9 on free throws, and Rogers had 15 points, 7 on seven free throws.

Fullerton’s aggressive man-to-man defense took Irvine out of its offense in the early going, and the Titans scored 11 points in a row to turn a 9-5 deficit into a 16-9 lead. They never trailed again.

Sophomore Henry Turner, who rediscovered his outside shooting touch, led Fullerton with 18 points. The slumping Boagni, who didn’t even play in the second half of Monday night’s loss to University of the Pacific, gave the Titans a lift by hitting 6 of 8 jumpers.

Before the injuries to guards Henderson and Morton, the game was supposed to be a battle between Irvine’s inside men and Fullerton’s outside men.

As it turned out, the Titan guards, in this case Eugene Jackson and Alexander Hamilton, may have been the big difference, anyway. They combined to make 9 of 14 shots from the field and had five steals. Both tied their career-high scoring outputs--13 for Hamilton and 12 for Jackson.