UCI Was in the Same Boat 10 Years Ago : College basketball: In the 1979-80 season, the Anteaters lost a school-record 11 consecutive games. A loss tonight to Fresno State will break that mark.

On Feb. 24, 1980, the UC Irvine men’s basketball team scored a school-record low eight points in the second half of a 30-26 loss to Cal State Long Beach.

Last Thursday, Irvine scored 14 points in the first half of an 82-55 loss to Cal State Fullerton.

The difference in the two games was that Irvine was trying to score against Fullerton.

Tim Tift, who coached the 1979-80 team, employed a number of slow-down tactics to give the overmatched Anteaters a chance to win against more talented teams.

Tift said he had difficulty recruiting top-flight players, especially from the community college ranks, partly because Irvine had high academic standards and did not include majors such as physical education.

Irvine finished that season 7-20 and lost a school-record 11 consecutive games in January and February.

Bill Mulligan, the current Irvine coach, has varied his offense, but has not used a stall.

Mulligan also said he has difficulty recruiting top-flight players, especially from the community college ranks, partly because Irvine has high academic standards and does not include majors such as physical education. This despite a new, 5,000-seat on-campus arena that allowed Irvine to trade up from a home gymnasium unaffectionately called the Library.

Irvine has a 2-16 record this season, and, with the loss to Fullerton, tied a school record with 11 consecutive losses.

With a loss to Fresno State at 7:30 tonight at the Bren Center, Irvine will break that mark.

“Most of my family is rooting for Fresno State,” said Tift, breaking into a wide smile.

Tift, who resigned as Irvine coach with six games left in the 1979-80 season, is the school’s acting athletic department chairman and a commentator on the Anteaters’ radio broadcasts. He has spent the past week needling Mulligan about the losing streak.

He also has been doing some research on the Anteaters’ 1979-80 season, the worst in school history. In looking through old media guides, Tift discovered that UC Santa Barbara, which beat Irvine in the second game of the Anteaters’ 11-game slide, was forced to forfeit its victories that season for using ineligible players.

“Technically, the streak’s only 10 games,” said Tift, who had a 141-152 record in 11 seasons as Irvine coach. “It’s already broken. Technically we were 9-18 that year. I can see the headline: ‘Irvine was 9-18. Tift tells Mulligan to jump in a lake.’ ”

But records kept by the Big West Conference and Irvine still list the Anteaters’ record as 7-20.

When the 1979-80 season began, Tift had been struggling to get the fledgling Division I program off the ground. The Anteaters, with only seven scholarships, less than half the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. limit, were handicapped from the outset.

Irvine had been a Division I school for only two seasons, winning eight games in 1977-78 and seven the next season.

The Anteaters--who had some success at the Division II level, going 17-11 and qualifying for the NCAA Division II tournament in 1974-75--played in the quiet confines of 1,500-seat Crawford Hall, a.k.a. the Library.

The Anteaters also found themselves playing in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. (now the Big West), with an up-and-coming Fresno State program and strong teams at the University of the Pacific and Utah State.

In 1978, Fullerton had been three points shy of beating Arkansas and reaching the Final Four. Twenty-victory seasons were still common for Long Beach in 1979-80, which was 22-12 and reached the second round of the National Invitation Tournament.

“Top to bottom, the conference was tougher than it is now, saving, of course, Vegas,” Tift said.

Still, Tift was optimistic, telling reporters before the season, “This program is moving forward and when it starts slipping backwards, I’ll know it. That’s when you’ll find me selling footwear at Sears.”

Irvine managed a 6-6 nonconference record going into the conference opener Jan. 10 at Long Beach. But soon, the Anteaters’ fortunes began to crumble.

The 49ers, who had two of the best players on the West Coast in forwards Michael Wiley and Francois Wise, routed the Anteaters, 77-46.

Thus began an 11-game losing streak.

Finally, on Feb. 16, the Anteaters upset Pacific, 63-60, at Crawford Hall. Irvine closed the season with four consecutive losses to finish with a 7-20 record.

Tift had resigned by then, frustrated that he couldn’t keep pace with other conference schools.

“When we got into Division I, in politely rapping the powers that be, they said, ‘OK, we’re in the league, now go get ‘em,’ ” Tift said. “ ‘We know you haven’t been given the wherewithal, but we think you can hang in there.’ ”

Well, Irvine did have a few good players, there just weren’t enough of them.

Robbie Beal, a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard, led the Anteaters in scoring, averaging 14.3 points a game. Victor Conyers, a 6-8 senior forward, shot 60.4% from the field and still ranks ninth in the Big West in career field-goal percentage.

Mulligan, who had spent five seasons at Saddleback College, took over the next year and cleaned house. Of the holdovers from Tift’s final team, only Beal got substantial playing time in 1980-81.

With Kevin Magee, a two-time All-American center snatching headlines and rebounds by the fistful, the Anteaters were 17-10 in Mulligan’s first season and 23-7 his second.

Happily for Irvine followers, a new era had begun. Until this season, it has been far better than the old.

“That team played to their potential,” Tift said, defending his final team. “They played about as well as they could play.

“I would have to turn it over to the true basketball buffs and the players (of the 1979-80 and 1989-90 teams) as to who was tougher.”