UC Irvine Notebook / John Weyler : Mulligan Won’t Skip a Beat on Way to Another Season in Basketball’s Fast Lane

Last season, they were going to defend. Really defend. Chest-to-chest-deny-the-pass-deny-the-shot-deny-everything defense.

At least that was The Plan.

Bill Mulligan, UC Irvine men’s basketball coach, even hired former Bobby Knight assistant Andy Andreas to show the Anteaters exactly how to implement The Plan.

As grand schemes go, this one wasn’t exactly on par with the invasion of Normandy, though.

“Right about the time we held (Bradley All-American) Hersey Hawkins to 51 points, Andy decided he no longer wanted to be associated with the team,” Mulligan said, managing a grin.

About the same time, Mulligan finally admitted that Irvine’s commitment to this defense was something short of a commitment to excellence. But it wasn’t the first time Mulligan has had to switch his game plan in midseason.

Mulligan, you see, views defense as just another way to spring your offense. A life-long devotee of the run-gun-and-giggle offense, Mulligan thinks the Lakers walk the ball up court too often. He figures if you average 120 points, you’re bound to win a few.

“When he was coaching at Saddleback (College),” assistant coach Bob Thate said, “Bill used to call timeout and say, ‘OK, let ‘em score layups for a couple minutes.’ Really. Just to keep the other team running.”

During the off-season, Mulligan and Co. decided the Anteaters--who have only five players returning from last year’s team--finally had the personnel to pull out all the stops.

So this season, the Anteaters will run, run, run and run some more. And they won’t stop until the sun sets on the 1988-89 Big West basketball season. They’re going to run after missed baskets and made baskets. After missed free throws and made free throws. On out-of-bounds plays. Off center jumps. To the locker room and back at halftime.

“We have an overall quickness we’ve never had before,” Mulligan said. “We’ve always tried to run, except late last year when we decided to go with the (Wayne) Engelstad offense. But if you really want to dictate the tempo, you have to full-court press . . . all the time.”

So Irvine will employ a double-teaming, zone press from tipoff to final buzzer. It will mean a few steals for the Anteaters and a lot of dunks for their opponents, but Thate, for one, believes it can work.

“Bill’s going to have to be patient for the first 10 or 15 minutes,” Thate said. “We’re going to give up some points. But we’ve been running the heck out of these guys in conditioning drills and we think we can dominate the last 10 minutes of a running game.

“Bill and I have talked a lot about this. I’m so excited . . . it’s like a crusade for me. If I had a team, this is the way I’d want to play. It’s a chance for this program to be special.”

Mulligan would like to run and win. But you get the feeling he’d almost settle for run and fill the Bren Center.

He long complained about the lack of a good facility and now that he has one, he’s very disappointed that the Anteaters haven’t drawn that well. Average attendance in the 5,000-seat arena last season was 2,631.

“The only way we can fill that place is to be exciting,” Mulligan said. “Well, either that or win every game. We’ve just got to make it the best ticket in town.”

The combination of Irvine’s new gambling defense and opponents such as Maryland, Nevada Las Vegas, UCLA and Pepperdine figure to make for lots of action, anyway.

Here’s the way Thate envisions it:

“We’re at the chalkboard the other day and Bill says, ‘UCLA will just go back-door and dunk on us.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, otherwise they would have had to make two passes to get a dunk.’

“It’s going to be great. I think the fans would enjoy seeing (UCLA forward) Trevor Wilson get seven tomahawk dunks. And they’ll get to see (Irvine’s) Kevin Floyd get a few good dunks, too. So maybe they’re leading, 117-104, with 4 minutes left. But if we win, 134-127 . . . just so we win at the end, just so the place is filled up.”

Maybe it will work. At least at the box office. Irvine sold 234 season tickets to students last season. After the first three days of school, more than 330 have been purchased for 1988-89, the season in the fast lane.

The Irvine women’s volleyball team pulled off its biggest victory ever Friday, beating Cal Poly SLO (which came into the match ninth ranked and undefeated) in San Luis Obispo.

“We’ve never beaten a top 10 team before and never beaten a ranked (top 20) team on the road before,” Coach Mike Puritz said.

The Anteaters (8-3) were brought down to earth in a hurry, though, losing to UC Santa Barbara on Saturday and Cal State Long Beach on Wednesday.

And the going gets tougher. Second-ranked Hawaii will be at Irvine for two matches, Friday and Saturday nights.

Anteater Notes

Men’s tennis coach Greg Patton, always quick with a quip, on his team’s No. 5 ranking in the preseason coaches’ poll: “Wow! Pressure! We’re used to being the underdog, now we’re one of the top dogs. Now, everyone is going to want a bite out of an Anteater.” . . . Patton was relieved when school started this week. He didn’t expect to lose any players from last season’s team, which finished with a No. 6 ranking, but the fact that many of them played on summer circuits caused a degree of anxiety. “Everybody’s back,” he said with an exaggerated sigh of relief. “You never know who might like it so much out there (on the tour) that they’ll just turn pro.” . . . There are three former Anteaters and one current Irvine player on the U.S. Olympic water polo team: Brothers Jeff and Peter Campbell, Mike Evans and Chris Duplanty, who will have one year of eligibility left at Irvine.