Irvine Wins in a Familiar Exhibition : Anteaters Hang On for 121-119 Victory Over Czech Team

The UC Irvine Anteaters learned a potentially valuable lesson about life in basketball’s fast lane Saturday night: When you play the game at a racehorse pace, big leads can disappear in a hurry.

The Anteaters broke out to a 77-63 halftime lead over the Czechoslovakian national team and then had to hang on for a 121-119 exhibition victory in front of 2,161 in the Bren Center.

“I think we got a little lackadaisical,” senior guard Kevin Floyd said. “We were up by 14 at the half and everybody seemed to take the attitude that the whole second half would be garbage time.”

Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan sounded like he might like to take the videotape of the second half and throw it in the nearest dumpster.

“I thought at the half we had progressed quite a bit,” he said. “Now, I’m not sure we’ve progressed at all.

“We didn’t defend well at all. Hell, we just plain didn’t play well in the second half.”

The Anteaters made just 6 first-half turnovers, but they gave the ball away 11 times after the intermission.

“(Point guard Rod) Palmer made a lot of bad decisions tonight,” Mulligan said. “We’ve just got to make some adjustments and get some things squared away.”

Improved rebounding might be a good place to start. Irvine was outrebounded, 58-36. And if the Czechs, who shot 54% from the field, hadn’t missed about a dozen offensive tips and follow shots, Irvine would still be winless in 1988.

As it was, manpower and endurance were the keys to this victory. Fourteen Anteaters played, with only Floyd and forward Mike Labat seeing more than 25 minutes of action. The Czechs used just nine players, three of which played more than 30 minutes.

“With 8 minutes to go in the first half, I thought they started to wilt,” Mulligan said. “Then we got totally complacent and didn’t even try to run the offense.”

Freshman center Brian McCloskey led Irvine with 20 points, hitting 8 of 12 shots from the floor. Floyd and Palmer had 19 each. Freshman Etop Udo-Ema, who was ineligible for Irvine’s exhibition against Athletes in Action Tuesday, scored 17 during just 10 minutes of action in his Anteater debut.

Forward Richard Petruska and guard Josef Jelinek led the Czechs with 26 points each.

“We had a lot of guys who didn’t take care of the ball tonight,” Mulligan said. Then he paused as images of one of those player’s miscues filled his mind.

“Just a minute, I gotta go yell at somebody,” he said, turning to re-enter the locker room.

Mulligan may have stepped up the pace this year, but some things at Irvine never change.