UC Irvine Notebook : He May Be On the Brink of Pitching Stardom

“A Season on the Brink” can seem quite tame when compared to a Season With the Brink.

Actually, UC Irvine pitcher Craig Brink is the kind of athlete Bobby Knight would love. He’s the quintessential competitor, an overachiever who gets the ultimate mileage from his talents.

He’s also the kind of guy who would last, oh, 10 or 15 minutes in Knight’s program.

As it was, Brink just survived his freshman year under Mike Gerakos, Irvine’s easygoing baseball coach.

According to Brink, he and teammate Doug Kline, both 19 at the time, were emptying a shopping cart full of alcoholic beverages onto the checkout counter of a local supermarket when Brink turned around and saw Gerakos standing at the end of an aisle.

Brink, always the take-charge type, walked up to his coach with a big smile and tried to use his 6-foot 3-inch, 210-pound frame to block Gerakos’ view of the transaction.

Kline used the screen as an opportunity to escape. Left holding the bag, Brink reminded Gerakos that they hadn’t actually done anything wrong . . . yet, and retreated.

“We’ve both matured a little,” said Kline, the Anteaters’ starting catcher, who still rooms with Brink. “We’re actually staying out of trouble now, but it was a struggle for a while.”

Staying out of trouble on the field is less of a problem for Brink. The right-hander, who will start against Penn State today (2:30 p.m.) at Anteater Field, is 3-2 with a 3.00 earned-run average. Forget one disastrous outing at Loyola Marymount and his ERA would be 1.27. He has gone into the seventh inning in four of his six starts, and his first start was a predetermined four-inning stint.

“He’s the kind of competitor that, when you hand him the ball, you know you’ll get everything he’s got,” Gerakos said. “He’s improved every year, both physically and mentally. Every time he pitches, you can feel his intensity rub off on his teammates.”

Brink is not a particularly awesome pitcher--he relies heavily on spotting his 85-m.p.h. fastball, mixing in a good changeup and showing the curve--but there aren’t many who are more fun to watch. He’s part showman, part madman.

“I don’t really like baseball much,” he says, unabashedly. “I just love to pitch.”

Pitchers are an idiosyncratic bunch, but Brink has more than his share of mannerisms.

Like his hero, Al Hrabosky, he huffs, puffs and stares his man down. He picks up the rosin bag, tosses it up and catches it on the back of his hand . . . before every pitch. He tugs at his pants and cap and takes strolls behind the mound. When someone in the stands yelled, “Why don’t you go say hello to your center fielder?” Brink liked the idea so much, he did just that.

“He’s got pizazz,” Kline said. “You know, style.”

Nobody much noticed when Brink was in high school at Agoura Hills, though. He sent letters to a lot of college coaches and got no reply. When Gerakos offered him a partial scholarship, he jumped at it.

Brink already has 24 victories in three-plus years. “Pretty big dividends for the investment,” Gerakos said, smiling.

“Every time I pitch, I have something to prove,” Brink said. “It’s still the same. I thought I had a pretty good year last season (he was 9-4 with a 4.26 ERA) and I didn’t even get drafted.”

Not surprisingly, Brinks wants to pitch professionally. He, at least, believes he can be successful if only he is given the chance. Gerakos has come to be a believer, too.

“If they’ll give him the ball and let him pitch rather than label him from the start, he’ll get people out,” Gerakos said. “When you see him day in and day out, he grows on you. He’s the kind of kid you have to look inside.”

After Sunday’s 98-90 loss to Cal State Long Beach, the Irvine basketball coaching staff got together for an informal round-table discussion on how to maximize the Anteaters’ chances in the PCAA tournament, which runs March 9-12 at the Forum.

“It was totally open, with everybody throwing out all kinds of ideas,” said Mike Bokosky, an assistant under Coach Bill Mulligan for eight years.

“We’re going to spend the next week and a half preparing for the tournament, and you’ll probably see some of the new stuff Saturday at Santa Barbara.”

Mulligan and Co. have decided to add a box-and-one, a triangle-and-two, a full-court denial press and a 3-2 zone to the defensive repertoire.

“We watched the tape of the Long Beach game and thought our game plan worked pretty well,” Bokosky said. “We broke their press. What cost us the game was our fatigue in the second half and the fact that (the 49ers’ Morlon) Wiley went off like he did.”

Irvine ran out of gas in the second half, and an 11-point halftime lead evaporated as Wiley took control, scoring 23 of his 32 points after the intermission.

“A coach naturally thinks that the players are in shape by this point in the season,” Bokosky said, “but that isn’t always the case. We’re going to do a lot of running in the next week. And we’ve added the crazy defenses because we’ve decided to make somebody other than the conference’s best players beat us.”

The Anteaters (14-12 overall and 9-8 in conference) and 49ers (16-9, 10-6) probably will meet again Thursday afternoon in the PCAA tournament when the fourth-place finisher meets No. 5.

“We’re looking forward to it . . . We want to play them again,” Bokosky said.

Anteater Notes

There is no football program and the basketball team isn’t in anyone’s top 20, but a couple of Irvine teams are doing great in the ratings game these days. The men’s tennis team (7-3) is ranked No. 7 in the country, the highest ever in Division I for the Anteaters, who were ranked ninth in 1983. Irvine plays host to No. 11-ranked California at 1:30 today. . . . The sailing team is the top-ranked West Coast team, coming in at No. 6 in the latest poll. The Anteaters have won five straight regattas, including Southern Series Nos. 3 and 4 Saturday and Sunday. Skipper Jon Pinckney and crew Connie McKivett won Division A both days, and skipper Nick Scandone and crew Scott Munch won Division B both days.