For UCI, It Was Year of Peaks and Valleys : Anteaters Earned Some Respect With Upset of UCLA, but There Were Many Low Points for Team Along the Way

Excerpts from the pages of Bill Mulligan’s 1985-86 basketball diary would make it difficult to determine whether the UC Irvine coach was having the time of his life or seriously considering a different line of work.

One page would be overflowing with words of optimism, of comparisons to the the 1983-84 team Mulligan repeatedly says is the best he’s had in his six seasons at Irvine.

The next would read like the emotional outpourings of a man at wit’s end.

Mulligan compares winning basketball games to some of life’s finest pleasures. Two victories over nationally ranked Nevada Las Vegas and another over UCLA in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament left him deep in the heart of Nirvana. But there were times this season when Mulligan’s paradise was lost. There was one point, in fact, when he feared this season might turn as distressing and depressing as the one that preceded it, one which saw the Anteaters finish 13-17.

It was two days before Christmas, and in Crawford Hall, Mulligan watched his team take a terrible fall. The opponent was Oral Roberts, a team that would finish 10-18, but one good enough on this night to hand the Anteaters a 69-63 loss. Mulligan was visibly and verbally shaken.

“I’ve never been so frustrated with a team in my life,” he said afterward. “I’d cry, but I’m too old to cry.”

Senior forward Johnny Rogers quietly questioned the desire of some of his teammates, and later admitted it was a time of reaching for panic buttons. “It looked like we were on the verge of crumbling,” he said.

In a season of peaks and valleys, this may have been rock bottom. But, in their next outing, the Anteaters beat a Loyola Marymount team that had beaten them by 22 points just nine days before. And they beat the Lions by 24 points.

Nothing better illustrated the season of ups and downs Mulligan enjoyed and/or endured. What this team lacked in consistency, it made up for in resiliency; in the ability to bounce back from embarrassing and potentially disastrous defeats.

It happened again midway through the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. season. Four days after the Anteaters were humiliated in a 71-55 loss to San Jose State in a regionally televised game, one Mulligan referred to as “the San Jose TV debacle,” they beat Fresno State, 60-58, in Crawford Hall. And they did it despite a serious dose of adversity. Rogers, who had the flu, suited up but couldn’t play. Guard Scott Brooks was ejected late in the first half for his part in a rather mild altercation with Fresno State guard Leo Walker.

It was another turning point in a season in which Mulligan didn’t know which way his team would turn next. The Anteaters finished 17-13, a complete reversal of their dismal 1984-85 season. The wins over UNLV gave them a chance to participate in the NIT, where they beat defending tournament champion UCLA and earned both national attention and local respect.

Those three nights were incomparable highs for Mulligan and his program, and made the lows much easier to take. All things considered, this was a successful season for a team with a starting lineup consisting of two undersized point guards, a power forward who’s done his share of power eating, a center who plays forward and thinks he’s a guard, and a career scoring leader who’s the kind of guy you’d like your sister to date. They are, in order, Brooks, Joe Buchanan, Wayne Engelstad, Rogers and Tod Murphy. And they were the main characters in UCI’s season.

Murphy and Johnny Rogers were, as anticipated, the cornerstones. Rogers averaged 20.7 points per game and led the Anteaters with an average of 8.6 rebounds per game. He scored 102 points in the wins over UNLV and UCLA, including a career-high 41 against Las Vegas in Thomas and Mack Center. Murphy, who Mulligan and his staff consider a model citizen a prototype player for their program, became UCI’s career scoring leader, surpassing two-time All-American Kevin Magee, Ben McDonald, and Dave Baker, now the mayor of Irvine, along the way.

Mulligan said that when Murphy and Rogers were introduced for their last games in Crawford Hall, he felt like crying. UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian later said he would attend their graduation, adding, “I’ll be glad to see those guys go.”

The play of guards Brooks and Buchanan qualifies as Mulligan’s most pleasant surprise of the season. Brooks went from an anonymous, 5-10 transfer from San Joaquin Delta College who nobody talked to on UCI’s media day to the Anteaters’ third-leading scorer and a darling of Crawford Hall. Buchanan, a transfer from Notre Dame, recovered from early season injuries to become UCI’s best all-around guard. Mike Hess, a transfer from Texas, was a more than capable reserve, particularly when he had confidence in his shot.

“I was pretty happy with the guards, which is a rarity,” Mulligan said. “I wish they were bigger, but I thought they played well.”

Engelstad, one of Mulligan’s most high-profile recruits two years ago, was inconsistent but showed a few signs of becoming the kind of player the Irvine coaches think he could be. Next season will tell.

And what of next season? Murphy and Rogers will be gone, as will reserves Troy Carmon and Rick Ciaccio. The Anteaters will have another ambitious nonconference schedule, including Pepperdine, Nebraska, Bradley, Iowa and Tulsa, all of which reached the NCAA tournament this season. (Said Mulligan: “If I had it to do over again, I’d schedule a few more dogs.”)

Mulligan, who was interviewed for the USC coaching position this week but not offered the job, has announced he will stay at Irvine. Details are being completed on a two-year extension that would keep him under contract through the 1990-91 season.

Mulligan and his staff have some recruiting work immediately ahead of them. They already have letters of intent from Arthur Phillips, a 6-10 center from Murphy High School in Los Angeles whose specialty is blocking shots, and Mitch Parrott, a 6-4 swingman from Camarillo High School. They have received an oral commitment from Jason Turner, a 6-0 guard from Crepi High School who Mulligan called “as good a pure shooter as we’ve seen all year.” Kevin Floyd, a 6-4 transfer from Georgetown, will be eligible in January to give Mulligan the backcourt size he so desperately wants.

But the player at the top of UCI’s recruiting list--Brea Olinda’s Kevin Walker--got away. Walker signed with UCLA last November, four months before UCI beat the Bruins in the NIT. Capistrano Valley’s Nathan Call and Mater Dei’s Stu Thomas were heavily recruited by UCI, but Call decided to attend Brigham Young, and Thomas decided to go to Stanford.

“I really feel that if we didn’t have that early signing date, we’d be in good shape this year,” Mulligan said. “A lot of those high school kids that we wanted signed early. But I think we’ve got some ammunition now for early signings next November.”

Part of that ammunition will be the long-awaited opening of Bren Center, a 5,000-seat, on-campus arena, which is scheduled for sometime next January. Mulligan has spent much of his six seasons at UCI lobbying for a bigger place to play in.

“It gives us a chance at some respectability,” he said. “Nobody will be snickering about the kind of place we play in anymore.”