Even With Its Guards Down, UCI Has Plenty

Patchwork works. Kevin Floyd and Mike Hess showed Cal State Fullerton that much Thursday night, although the Titans could have carried on quite nicely without such knowledge.

UC Irvine had entered its Big Game, the cross-county rivalry with Fullerton, with only half a backcourt. Joe Buchanan, the Anteaters’ smooth-as-glass playmaker, the kind of cool head needed in Big Games, was laid up in a hospital bed with a 104-degree fever and stomach pains apparently caused by a viral infection.

That’s no place for your floor leader to be, not on the night you face the school that elbows you along the recruiting trail and tries to squeeze you out for newspaper space.

Especially when that school has you down for the count, 0-and-6, since the L.A. Summer Olympics.

But with no Joe, Irvine had to turn elsewhere for ballhandling and outside offense. It found the former from Hess, who has split time this season between No. 2 shooting guard and occasional small forward. And it found the latter from Floyd, who 18 months ago was described by his shooting coach as “a terrible shooter.”

Together, Hess and Floyd helped Irvine find deliverance as the Anteaters ended a six-game losing streak to Fullerton, upsetting the Titans, 76-70.

Hess, the 6-1 junior from Corona del Mar by way of Texas, played 37 1/2 steady minutes--hitting 4 of 5 shots for 13 points and passing off for 6 assists.

Floyd, the 6-5 sophomore transfer from Georgetown, where his unofficial major had been masonry, cast up no bricks, instead scoring a team-high 24 points. He hit 9 of 15 from the field, most of them long-range jumpers.

In other words, without Buchanan, Irvine finally ended the Great Fullerton Drought.

“I remember the last Irvine win over Fullerton,” said Hess, who’s probably a whiz at Trivial Pursuit. “They had Leon Wood then. I saw the game. I had just left Texas and came here to watch the game.

“That’s a hell of a long time ago.”

Hess wondered if he’d live long enough to see the light of another Anteater victory at Fullerton.

“They’d been talking trash for three years,” Hess said about the Titans. “If we have a rival in the league, it’s them, and they beat us three times last year. Knocked us out of the (PCAA) tournament.

“To beat them in their place is fantastic. When the people started walking out with a couple minutes left, I couldn’t be happier.”

Floyd was a freshman benchwarmer under John Thompson at Georgetown the last time Irvine beat the Titans. He went from Hoya to Anteater as soon as Thompson discovered that Floyd couldn’t float a basketball in the Potomac from the bank.

“Everybody always told me, ‘You’re a great athlete and a great player, but you can’t shoot,’ ” Floyd said. “I got my points inside the paint.”

But Thursday, to the amazement of most at Titan Gym, Floyd got most of the points closer to the stripe that serves as the three-point barrier.

About that jump shot, Kevin . . .

“I’d call it a diamond in the rough that needed to be buffed,” he said with a smile. “Coach Thate buffed it. He’s a diamond specialist.”

Coach Thate is Bob Thate, the Irvine assistant who once averaged 42 points a game playing in Europe. A year and a half ago, he was given his greatest assignment: Teach Floyd to shoot.

“He was a terrible shooter, the worst I’d ever seen on this level,” Thate recalled. “We had to break everything down--pull his elbow in, change his arm motion and the way he put his hands on the ball. Before, the ball was sliding off the side of his hand. He was shooting crooked and flat.”

The tutoring finally paid dividends Thursday--when Irvine needed it the most.

“Without Joe and his 13, 14 (points) a game, I knew we needed more scoring from somewhere else,” Floyd said. “I was looking for the outside shot more . . . and it was falling tonight. I ‘m happy and glad.”

But no more so than Thate.

“We should send the line(score) to Thompson,” Thate said with a giggle.

Either that or to the Smithsonian. It’s in the neighborhood.