Irvine Tips Oral Roberts at Buzzer in Overtime

Expect A Miracle .

The slogan, painted in blue-and-white script on the sidelines at Mabee Center, drew the attention of UC Irvine guard Mike Hess moments after teammate Frank Woods’ out-of-nowhere tip at the buzzer gave the Anteaters a 92-91 overtime victory over Oral Roberts Saturday night.

“Look at that,” Hess said, grabbing the arm of assistant Mike Bokosky, “I guess we got one.”

You could call it that. Irvine really had no business winning this game--not after falling behind by 10 points in the second half, not after blowing a seven-point lead with 1:25 left in regulation, not after getting knocked aside like stuffed toys whenever Oral Roberts wanted to score inside, not after Titan guard Peter Partain went to the free throw line with a one-point lead with nine seconds left in overtime.

But when Partain missed the front end of a one-and-one foul situation, it triggered an unlikely set of events that resulted in Irvine’s third victory in its first four games.

Scott Brooks, Irvine’s shortest player at 5 feet 11 inches, got the ball and sprinted down the right side of the floor, wriggled free of a defender and cast off an off-balance 10-footer with three seconds remaining.

The ball kicked off the front of the rim, and Brooks’ heart sank.

“I felt so helpless,” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘God, I just lost the game.’ ”

But enough time remained for Woods, a 6-5 reserve forward, to angle his way around a pair of Oral Roberts players and outleap them to the ball.

Wood flicked the ball back toward the basket. The ball hit the heel of the rim and bounced up and off the backboard as the buzzer sounded.

When gravity regained control, the fell straight through the hoop. Irvine had won, and within seconds, Woods was gang-tackled in the key, swarmed under by a mass of powder-blue uniforms.

“I was basket-hangin’ ,” Woods said, explaining the play. “We practice that.

“I was kind of trailing the play. (Brooks) wound up to shoot, and they (Oral Roberts) went to the ball. That left me there. I didn’t hear any buzzer, so I tipped it.

Oral Roberts Coach Ted Owens couldn’t get over the fact that his team’s inside game, which had carried it that far, had faltered at the critical instant.

“I don’t know where our people were on that tip,” he said. “Three of them went over to Brooks’ side, but that still left us with two under the basket.”

Until then, the imbalance inside between the two teams had been fairly ugly. Oral Roberts center Maurice Smith had 17 points on 7-of-11 attempts, power forward Clinton Hinton added 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting and small forward Akin Akin-Otiko hit 8 of 15 shots for 16 points.

“We had so many problems with their physical guys inside,” Mulligan said. “Our guys in there are so skinny. Finally, I had to power a page out of Jerry Tarkanian’s book and play some zone on the road.”

With 1:25 remaining in the second half, Irvine seemed ready to cash in on such strategy. The Anteaters led, 81-74 . . . .and then, suddenly, could do nothing right.

They left Titan reserve guard Kendell Mack unguarded--and Mack sank the first three-point field goal for Oral Roberts (1-2) this season. They then failed to successfully in-bounds the ball, with Rob Doktorczyk throwing it away to Akin-Otiko, who went in for an easy lay-in, cutting the deficit to two.

Guard Haywoode Workman then stole another Irvine pass and drove inside for a short bank shot that tied the score at 81-81 with 17 seconds left, and after a timeout, Anteater forward Mike Doktorczyk missed an open 10-foot turnaround jumper and the buzzer sounded to bring on an extra period.