Mulligan Gets a Victory to Really Savor

Why is it that I already can imagine what UC Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan is telling players on his current recruiting trip?

Mulligan: “So, in closing, Irvine offers a crackerjack academic environment, an appealing campus and, if I may say so myself, a basketball program on the rise.”

Recruit: “But, Coach, you’re 3-7 this season.”

Mulligan: “Ever hear of UCLA, son?”

Recruit (suddenly interested): “Sure I’ve heard of it. I love UCLA. The only reason I’m talking to you is that your uniforms are almost the same colors. Think you can get me Pooh Richardson’s autograph?”

Mulligan: “Sure I can. In fact, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll rush right over to Westwood and have Pooh jot down his signature and maybe have him add a little note . . . On how we just beat his big, bad UCLA team! Would that be OK for you? Maybe he can tell you how we scored the winning basket at the buzzer Wednesday night. Or how we’ve won 2 of 3 against your precious Bruins. Or how UCLA Coach Jim Harrick still doesn’t believe we beat them--even with Bill Walton sitting in the stands. Would that be satisfactory?”

Recruit: “Uh, never mind.”

You think Mulligan isn’t milking this recent victory over UCLA for all it’s worth? So what if it took an either/or referee’s call near game’s end, at least a half-dozen botched UCLA layups, lights-out shooting by Irvine and a weaving, full-court dribble dash and layup by Kevin Floyd with 5 seconds left to ensure the victory?

Of course, if you’re Mulligan, you don’t quibble over aesthetics. A win is a win is a win--however unexpected.

After all, these have been trying times for the little Irishman. Aside from those seven losses, Mulligan has been tormented by the what-ifs. And with good reason.

What if he hadn’t forced this idea of a pressing defense on his Anteaters, a team ill-equipped for the baseline-to-baseline pursuit needed to make the strategy work?

What if he hadn’t kept changing his mind--and strategies--every time Irvine lost a game?

What if he hadn’t agreed to play the likes of Virginia at Charlottesville or San Diego State at San Diego? How much easier would his life be right now if he would have done what George Raveling did, which was schedule every woof-woof program available?

And what if he hadn’t worn those gawd-awful saddle shoes?

Nagging questions for a man with a stubborn streak as long as the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Some nights you wish the game would just end,” he said this week. “I remember telling (his players) before the Vegas game (Irvine lost by 15) that in addition to the regular timeouts, you get four TV timeouts each half. I’m thinking, ‘Oh, . . . ‘ First of all, what do you tell the guys with that many timeouts? I mean, coaches are really big on saving their timeouts. I may call 5 timeouts in the first 5 minutes. Some guys go ahead and say, ‘Hey, we’re down by 30, but I’ve got all my timeouts left.’ ”

Mulligan’s point is this: Why prolong the agony? If you’re beat, you’re beat. No use delaying the inevitable with a bunch of useless timeouts.

Thing is, Mulligan isn’t keen on getting beat. It angers him. It bruises his considerable ego.

Only one other Mulligan-coached Irvine team has struggled as much as this year’s. That would be the 1984 Anteaters, who finished 13-17, but had an excuse: Mulligan had just recovered from a stroke and, by his own admission, “didn’t do much coaching that year.”

This season, he may have done too much.

Intrigued by the scoring potential of a non-stop running game, enamored of the public’s reaction to a pressing defense, Mulligan went ahead with the crazy combo plan, despite knowing that he didn’t have the right players to make it work on a consistent basis.

“That’s the thing that bothers me,” Mulligan said. “We were trying to get the kids confident in it, get them to say, ‘We believe in this.’ But then, it’s ‘Wait a minute, (the coaches) don’t believe in it anymore.’ Now you just hope they go along with you. I mean, they want to win more than anything else. They’ve even said to me since we quit the press (defense), ‘Deep down, we don’t think we’re a real good pressing team.’ They’ve accepted that.”

So has Mulligan, which helps. No longer does he imagine that this team can do things that it can’t. Gone is the notion that this is a Junior Vegas, Junior Loyola Marymount team wrapped into one. It’s Irvine, a moderately talented, occasionally possessed team that plays best while under control, not while knocking itself silly with halfcourt traps that never work.

It took awhile for Mulligan to figure this out. But now that he’s done it, he said the experience has humbled him, made him a bit less feisty. It shows.

Holed up in his office a few hours before the UCLA game, Mulligan mentioned a radio broadcast he had heard on the way in to work. Something about UCLA having a “cakewalk” against Irvine.

What’s surprising is that Mulligan didn’t disagree with the deejay’s assessment.

“It’s a fact, based on what has happened,” he said.

Then he began speaking of the upcoming game in the past tense, as if he already had added an eighth loss to the Irvine record.

“We were really looking forward to playing UCLA on the schedule,” he said. “I felt we’d be a lot better. We thought we could really go with them.”

Turns out that Irvine, playing it straight the entire game, could go with UCLA and past it, too.

Afterward, the whole thing brought tears to Mulligan’s eyes. He had been humbled once again, this time by his own lack of faith.

The Anteaters might not do much better than the Class of ‘84, but on a wintry evening, in front of a packed house at the Bren Center, they made a believer out of an old coach. That’s worth something in this, Bill Mulligan’s most confusing season.