Engelstad Draws Tough Assignment for UCI: Guarding UCLA’s Miller

UC Irvine didn’t particularly care who its opponent would be in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. When you’re 16-12, you can’t be too picky.

On Sunday, the NIT breathed postseason life into a team that figured its season had ended after last Thursday’s 66-58 loss to Cal State Fullerton in the first round of the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament. After that game, the Anteaters would have jumped at a chance to play in the NIT if someone would have told them they had to hitchhike to Chattanooga to do it.

Instead, they will play UCLA, the defending tournament champion for those Not Included in the NCAA’s 64-team field, at 7:30 tonight at Pauley Pavilion.

OK, so UCLA finished 15-13 this season and was 9-9 in a conference struggling to save its national face. And perhaps Pauley Pavilion isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still a sharp contrast from the 1,459-seat Crawford Hall that the Anteaters call home. And it’s still UCLA .

Irvine has gone from looking toward next season to looking toward Westwood and a game that one Anteater assistant coach said could mean more to the program than two wins over Nevada Las Vegas. Somebody pinch this team. This must be a dream.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to play in Pauley,” UCI sophomore forward Wayne Engelstad said. “But it was always my dream to play against them. I never really wanted to be a Bruin.”

It will be Engelstad’s job to see that one UCLA player doesn’t turn the whole thing into a nightmare. He will be assigned to guard junior forward Reggie Miller, whose 26.2 regular season scoring average is second only to Lew Alcindor in the UCLA record books.

The thinking of UCI Coach Bill Mulligan and his staff is that Engelstad did a reasonably good job of containing UNLV forward Anthony Jones in UCI’s two upsets of the Rebels. Jones, the PCAA’s co-player of the year, had 15 points in UCI’s 99-92 win over Las Vegas on Feb. 15, and 19 in the Anteaters’ 95-88 victory on Feb. 27. In each case, Engelstad was primarily responsible for guarding him.

But Miller is a bigger part of his team’s offense than Jones is of his. He’s also more apt to shoot from anywhere inside of halfcourt.

“He’s probably one of the best pure shooters in college basketball right now,” Engelstad said.

One Irvine player said he would like to see the Anteaters use a box-and-one or some such “gimmick” defense to contain Miller. But Mulligan will hear nothing of gimmicks. He doesn’t think much of zone defenses, and says his team’s defensive approach against UCLA will be strictly man-to-man.

“We want to get more into individual responsibility,” Mulligan said. “We want it to be, ‘He’s your guy,’ not ‘He plays in your area.’ ”

And Miller will be Engelstad’s guy. Engelstad figures the best way to contain Miller is to keep the ball out of his hands as much as possible. “If he gives it up, I’m gonna try not to let him get it back,” he said.

Granted, that’s not exactly a novel approach. But against Miller, who often shoots from 20 to 25 feet out and still managed to shoot 56% from the field this season, it may be the only one that has a chance. Provided, that is, Engelstad (6-8) stays out of foul trouble.

Engelstad has fouled out of four games this season, including last Thursday’s loss to Fullerton in the Forum. In UCI’s practice on Monday, Mulligan warned Engelstad about getting into early foul trouble against the Bruins.

“He told me, ‘If you get your third foul in the first half, don’t even bother coming to the bench. Just go straight to the locker room.’

“I think he was kidding.”

It is Mulligan’s hope that Miller, the nation’s fourth-leading scorer, won’t give UCI as much trouble as Tod Murphy and Johnny Rogers give the Bruins. Both average 20 points per game, and both would like to extend their senior seasons a little further. Around the basket, Murphy has an edge in both ability and experience against UCLA center Jack Haley. Away from the basket, Rogers has the shooting ability to turn the game into a long-range shootout with Miller.

Said Hazzard, when asked how he intends to stop Rogers: “We’ll see if we can put handcuffs on him before he gets into the building.”

Rogers and his teammates are just happy to be getting into the building without buying a ticket.

“I was as shocked as anyone when I heard we were in,” he said. “Our season ended on such a down note, with another loss to Fullerton. I think we backed into the tournament. But the important thing is we’re here now, and we’ve got a chance to do something.”

UCI Notes

Irvine officials said this game has created the most demand for tickets since two-time All-American Kevin Magee was at UCI. Associate Athletic Director Rob Halvaks said Wednesday afternoon that 1,000 student tickets had been sold and more were expected to arrive by courier from UCLA this morning. More than 600 general admission tickets also have been sold, meaning there could be more UCI supporters at tonight’s game than there are at a sellout at Crawford Hall. . . . According to Halvaks, UCI grossed about $23,000 for playing two NIT games in 1982. . . . This will be Rogers’ third game in Pauley Pavilion. Before transferring to Irvine, he played against the Bruins as a freshman and sophomore at Stanford. In two games, he scored 36 points and made 14 of 28 shots from the field. . . . This is the first-ever meeting between UCI and UCLA, but it’s not the first time Mulligan and Hazzard have coached against each other. In 1982, when Hazzard was still the coach at Chapman College, Mulligan’s Anteaters beat the Panthers, 104-88.