Las Vegas May Take Out Wrath on UC Irvine Tonight

UC Irvine is still high from a sweet victory, Thursday night’s 81-73 win at rival Cal State Fullerton, and Nevada Las Vegas is still reeling from its first home loss in almost two years, Thursday night’s 62-60 defeat at the hands of UC Santa Barbara.

This combination could mean that the Anteaters, who play the Runnin’ Rebels tonight at 8:05, will have less fun here than a guy from Peoria who drove 2,000 miles to lose his entire bankroll in half an hour at the crap table.

UNLV is 65-3 at home in the 18,500-seat Thomas and Mack Center, the losses coming to Georgetown in 1983, Irvine in ’86 and now Santa Barbara. The Rebels had the ball with 36 seconds left Thursday night, but failed to run the play called for by Coach Jerry Tarkanian. Jarvis Bastnight’s 15-foot free-lance jumper at the buzzer was short and the Rebels probably didn’t have much fun in practice Friday.

The 13th-ranked Rebels, 11-1 overall and 2-1 in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn., are not the team they were last year when they went to the Final Four, but they still have enough talent to embarrass a lot of teams.

Irvine (6-5 and 1-1), which seemed bent on allowing at least 100 points a night in its first nine games, unveiled a slowdown, spread-court offense in the second half Thursday night.

“It wasn’t really a four-corners,” Coach Bill Mulligan said, “but when Fullerton went into that half-court trap, we did spread it out.”

Irvine also shot a school-record 80% from the floor in the second half (67% for the game), which took the wind out of Fullerton’s pressure man-to-man defense.

The reduction of run-and-gun has also meant increased playing time for Irvine’s best players. Point guard Kevin Floyd, who is averaging 14.1 points a game, played 34 minutes against Fullerton. Off-guard Mike Hess played 32. And senior post players Frank Woods and Wayne Engelstad had 32 and 31 minutes of playing time.

Engelstad is Irvine’s top scorer with a 22.6 average. Woods, who started slowly this season, has scored 58 points in his last three games.