College Division / Mitch Polin : After Slaying the Giant, UC Riverside Now Must Survive the Pressure

For the UC Riverside basketball team, the easy part may have been defeating highly ranked Iowa in the final of the Chaminade Christmas Classic 3 weeks ago.

Living up to the expectations that come with such a victory, well, that’s where the difficulty begins, said Coach John Masi.

So far, it hasn’t bothered the Highlanders (12-2), who have won 4 straight by an average margin of more than 28 points.

Still, Masi said there has been pressure from the 110-92 victory at Hawaii.

“It’s definitely created more attention as far as the publicity we’ve received,” Masi said. “ESPN mentioned us prominently and they listed it as one of the top 10 upsets of the year.

” . . . It’s definitely brought us attention like we’ve never had before.”

Since the victory over Iowa, which was ranked No. 4 in the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Division I at the time, tickets to Riverside home games have been in demand.

“Expectations on our team are tremendous now,” Masi said. “Our last 3 (nonconference) games were sold out and our (conference) game against (Cal Poly) Pomona was, too. You can just feel the pressure. I call it the Mickey Mantle Theory. Every time we go out, they expect us to hit a home run.”

The pressure does not figure to decrease with Tuesday’s announcement that the Highlanders have been ranked No. 2 behind Virginia Union in the first regular-season Division II poll.

“I think the rankings and the articles that could be written about us are just the kind of thing that can hurt us against other teams,” Masi said. “It’s nice to get the publicity but these are the kind of things that the other teams like to play up. It’s the kind of thing that winds up on bulletin boards.”

Masi said beating Iowa is something that he and his team will probably remember for a long time. It was even more memorable because Iowa was the first nationally ranked Division I team that Riverside had ever faced and the Highlanders were a late entrant into the tournament, having replaced New Mexico State, which had dropped out.

“We’ve always had two or three Division I teams on our schedule and we’ve promised our players that we would schedule along those lines,” Masi said. “We were just hoping for the opportunity to play those kind of teams but we didn’t go over there expecting to win or anything like that.

” . . . I told our players and they just feel it was an experience they’ll always remember.”

Now, though, Masi is hoping his team can concentrate on the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. season.

“You can’t leave your season back with one game,” Masi said. “We’ve discussed it. We’ve brought that up many a time.

“You have to keep it in the proper perspective and sometimes that’s tough to do.”

It’s tougher still now that the Highlanders have lost two starters to injuries. First, forward Jimmy Shorters suffered a broken rib and deflated lung against Iowa and then forward Chris Ceballos broke a finger in the team’s next game, against UC Santa Cruz.

Neither has played since and Masi said it has tested his team’s depth, although you couldn’t tell by the team’s recent success.

“It hasn’t bothered us yet and I guess for 1 or 2 games you can make do,” he said. “But over the course of the league season, I don’t think you can.

“I don’t want to paint a bleak picture but we want all of our players back. We play eight or nine people. That’s our style. So if we don’t have them, we have to change things.”

Masi said Riverside’s depth probably has been most responsible for the success. The Highlanders have five players averaging in double figures in scoring and three others averaging 7 or more points.

“That’s one plus that the depth has done for us,” he said. “We haven’t had to throw somebody fresh into the system.”

Guard Maurice Pullum averages 18.9 points and right behind are Ceballos at 15.8 points, Shorters at 11.7, forward Pat Vieira at 10.8 and reserve guard Reggie Howard at 10.

Even more impressive has been Riverside’s 3-point shooting. The Highlanders, who average 10.1 3-pointers a game, have made 142 of 302 3-point shots. Howard has made 25 of 44 and Pullum 49 of 102, ranking among the Division II leaders.

That also helps explain how the Highlanders have outscored their opponents by an average of 21 points, 96.4-75.4, and scored more than 100 points 6 times.

Masi also credits his team’s success to the leadership of seniors such as Pullum, Vieira, Shorters and guard Chris Jackson, a former Santa Ana Mater Dei High standout who averages 8.6 points and 5.1 rebounds.

“All of these guys are tremendous leaders,” Masi said. “It’s definitely made a difference. Hopefully it will help us as the year goes along.”

Masi hopes the team can realize its goals of winning the conference title and gaining a second-straight berth in the Division II playoffs.

“We try to take the 1-game-at-a-time theory but we feel that if they continue to play like they can, we can achieve those goals,” Masi said.