UC Irvine Tournament : UCI, Eye on Iowa, Plucks Eagles : Tops E. Washington, 97-68, Plays No. 3 Hawkeyes Tonight

UC Irvine will get its day on court against mighty Iowa and all that that means--the 11-0 record, the No. 3 national ranking, Roy Marble and the other front-line pillars, the busloads and busloads of black-and-maize crazies. And isn’t that all the Anteaters ever wanted?

Irvine put together its very own two-day, four-team tournament in order to lure the Hawkeyes out here. To accommodate the traveling bands of Iowa fans, the Anteaters even switched playing sites--abandoning friendly but puny Crawford Hall for spacious but neutral Long Beach Arena.

And then, just to make sure an Iowa-Irvine matchup would materialize in tonight’s Anteater Tournament final, Irvine brought in one whale of a first-round opponent named Eastern Washington University.

Maybe next year, the Anteaters can just schedule themselves a bye and be done with it.

Irvine extends itself more in shoot-arounds than it did in Sunday night’s 97-68 victory over a pitiable Eastern Washington team that has been ravaged by graduation, injury and player defections. What did it all prove? Irvine sleepwalked into the 8 p.m. title game against Iowa, an 84-65 winner over Portland, and Eastern Washington received its eighth straight thrashing.

The Eagles are 1-9 but that only tells part of the story. All five starters from last season are gone, as are junior guard Tracey Mackey (left school), junior center Orville Butler (quit team) and junior forward Randy Smith (knee surgery). Their only victory came against state rival Gonzaga, which came back four weeks later to beat EWU by 29 points. Of their nine losses, the smallest margin of defeat has been 18 points.

The Anteaters, making an attempt at diplomacy, tried not to say the obvious.

But it all eventually came out.

“I don’t want to become a bad guy,” said Irvine guard Scott Brooks, who scored 29 points, “but they were pretty bad. Well, their guards were good. I can say that with a straight face.”

From center Wayne Engelstad: “We kinda played down to their level. They played hard and they had a couple good players . . . but they’re a ways away from being a legit Division I team.”

From Coach Bill Mulligan: “They’re well-coached. They just don’t have any players.”

From last-man-on-the-bench Peter Strauss, who played three minutes and scored two points: “If I can score off them, they must be pretty bad.”

Irvine (5-3) could scarcely maintain interest for more than a half. The Anteaters shot 54% from the field in the first half--Brooks was 5 of 7 from three-point range--while Eastern Washington shot 42%, its season average. Hardly working at it, the Anteaters led at the half, 49-28.

The next 20 minutes amounted to little more than garbage time--”a pickup game,” as Engelstad put it. Irvine made 11 turnovers, cleared the bench and still wound up adding to its lead.

It was the type of game that left an ugly taste in the mouths of everyone involved.

“We beat them pretty easily but we didn’t play well,” Brooks said. “We didn’t execute our offense at all, our defensive intensity was horrible. We were nonchalant all the way.”

Had the Anteaters been guilty of looking ahead to their appointment with Iowa?

“Oh yeah,” Mulligan said without skipping a beat. “I was disappointed in our intensity but our guys can read. They knew what Eastern Washington’s record was. And we’d had two lousy practices. I was scared to death about this one.

“But this was our last easy game. Next, we got Iowa and Las Vegas (Saturday night). I’m not gonna have to jack ‘em up for these next two.”

Mulligan had better not, according to Brooks.

“Iowa is No. 3 in the nation. If you can’t get up for that, you have no business being in basketball,” Brooks said. “We’ll need so much more intensity. If we play Iowa like we played (Sunday), we’re gonna look like Eastern Washington did. We’ll lose by 30 points.”

Tournament Notes

Iowa scored a methodical victory over Portland. Senior guard Kevin Gamble led the Hawkeyes with 16 points. Roy Marble, the touted sophomore forward, had 14 on 6-of-8 shooting. . . . Irvine reserve center Arthur Phillips missed practice Saturday and was held out of the tournament. “He called me before practice and said he couldn’t make it because he had tendinitis in his right knee,” Anteater Coach Bill Mulligan said. “I told him, ‘Come on in and we’ll have the trainers look at it.’ He’s in L.A. and he says, ‘It hurts so bad, I can’t even drive a car.’ So I told him, ‘You’re not gonna suit up for the tournament.’ ” Phillips, a 6-10 freshman, has not played since Dec. 4. He missed the Boise State-Montana trip because of the flu. . . . Sunday’s attendance for the two first-round games was 3,467. . . . Portland will play Eastern Washington tonight at 6 in the consolation game. That attendance figure should be interesting.