Rogers’ 41 Points Help UC Irvine Beat No. 6 UNLV, 99-92

Nevada Las Vegas has sleepwalked through much of this Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. season, waking up in time to make up occasional halftime deficits against mostly inferior opponents.

Saturday night, somebody forgot to set the alarm.

Combine that with a career-high 41 points from UC Irvine senior forward Johnny Rogers and you get an alarming 99-92 win for Irvine in front of 15,616 spectators at Thomas and Mack Center, where UNLV hadn’t lost a PCAA game in 23 outings.

The loss snaps the Rebels’ 15-game winning streak. UNLV is 12-1 in conference play, 24-3 overall. Irvine is 9-5, 13-10, and may still be celebrating an unlikely victory over the nation’s sixth-ranked team.

Rogers 41 points was the second-best scoring performance in Irvine history. Two-time All-American Kevin Magee once scored 46 points in a game for the Anteaters in 1981. Rogers was 11 of 26 from the field, 18 of 20 from the free-throw line.

Said Irvine forward Tod Murphy: “He was a man possessed tonight.”

UNLV entered this game with a 41-1 record in the Thomas and Mack Center, the lone loss being a 69-67 overtime defeat to Georgetown. But remarks attributed to Mulligan in the Las Vegas media would indicate that the Irvine coach fears the bite of other arenas more than he does the place the locals refer to as “Tark’s Shark Tank.”

Mulligan was quoted in Saturday’s Las Vegas Review Journal as saying the Rebels’ home arena “isn’t nearly as tough a place to play as Fresno or Las Cruces (N.M.).”

Mulligan later said that his comments were taken slightly out of context, and added that there are benefits to playing in an arena in which the Rebels have been so successful.

“I think there’s less pressure on a coach coming in here,” Mulligan said. “You’re not expected to win here. If you don’t win at Long Beach, there’s pressure.”

Irvine didn’t seem to feel much pressure in the first half.

Mulligan’s pregame plan called for a man-to-man defense. He said a zone would leave the Anteaters too vulnerable to the long-range jumpers of Banks and Jones, and the man-to-man would make Irvine rebound more effectively.

It worked well enough to give the Anteaters a 53-47 halftime lead. Rogers had 20 points--including 11 of 13 from the free-throw line--by halftime and helped the Anteaters open a 34-20 lead at the 9:43 mark of the first half.

Irvine was 24 of 29 from the free-throw line in the first half to UNLV’s 8 of 9. Rogers hit four free throws, a baseline jumper and a three-point shot from the corner in a span of about two minutes to help Irvine build a 14-point lead. UNLV pulled to within two points three times in the last three minutes of the half.