UC Irvine Loses 10th in a Row, 73-66

It’s always something with these UC Irvine Anteaters.

Whatever could go wrong seemed to go wrong as they lost to UC Santa Barbara, 73-66, before 2,368 at the Bren Center Saturday.

Oh, it wasn’t all bad. The Anteaters, with two freshmen and two sophomores in the lineup, did manage to rally from 14 points down to make a game of it in the second half.

But then there were plays such as the one in which Elgin Rogers moved around a pick and got bonked in the head with a pass from teammate Ricky Butler.

Irvine, 2-15 overall and 0-8 in the Big West Conference, has lost 10 in a row, one short of the school record set in 1980.

The day didn’t start off too well for Irvine.

Butler, a junior center who had started all 16 games this season and has been the Anteaters’ most consistent scorer, was late to a team meeting Saturday morning and was held out of the starting lineup by Coach Bill Mulligan.

Averaging 14.8 points and 7.2 rebounds, Butler had just two points and three rebounds in 18 minutes. Worse, five of the seven shots he took were blocked.

While Butler struggled against inside pressure from Santa Barbara’s Eric McArthur and Gary Gray, the Gauchos’ Carrick DeHart broke out of a shooting slump to become the school’s all-time scoring leader.

DeHart, a senior guard who came into the game mired in a seven-for-39 slump, had a game-high 25 points, making eight of 13 from the field

“Irvine was fighting and scratching for everything they can get,” said DeHart, whose total of 1,446 career points broke the mark of 1,434 set by Doug Rex (1968-71). “I had to be more mentally in tune today.”

Mulligan said: “I talked to DeHart after the game. I told him, ‘You get one basket a game, (but) you kill us.’ ”

McArthur is the Gaucho whom Mulligan feared the most. But McArthur finished with only six points, although he had eight rebounds and five blocked shots.

Gray dominated the inside. He had 17 points, including a key three-point play with 2:23 left after Irvine cut a 14-point Gaucho lead to 58-54.

Paul Johnson added 13 for Santa Barbara (11-4, 5-2). Rod Palmer had 16 points to lead Irvine.

“There’s only one consistent team in the league--us,” Mulligan said.