UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Basketball Players Hope to Wake Up, Start Winning

The first day of basketball practice had ended, and Coach Bill Mulligan gathered his players Monday for some final words. Today was an easy day, he told them. Tomorrow, they’d go harder.

The players leaned together, ready to disperse.

“Win on three,” one player said, urging a chorus of voices to join his. “One, two, three . . . win!”

Irvine’s fans hope it’s no idle threat.

The Irvine men’s team suffered through a 5-23 season last year, the worst in school history.

The antidote to that wretched season, administered by Mulligan and willingly swallowed by his team, is a practice schedule unlike any that these players have known.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, they are on the floor of the Bren Center at 6:30 a.m.

“Actually, 5:45 is when you have to get up,” said Ricky Butler, a senior who has dropped about 25 pounds from his 6-foot-7 frame since last season, driven by the agony of that year to get into the best shape he has been in since he played at Ocean View High School.

In addition to the one-hour morning sessions, there are practices lasting as long as three hours in the afternoon--seven days a week.

And this comes on the heels of a monthlong conditioning program that also included early morning work.

“The first morning at 6 o’clock, I looked up at the clock and thought, ‘Whoa. Do this for a month?’ ” said Dylan Rigdon, a sophomore guard whose shooting in the final games was one of the few highlights last season. “Last year, we never went in the morning. (This year) I almost died, but I’m in a lot better shape.”

Besides Butler and Rigdon, Mulligan will rely on several other returning players--senior forward Jeff Herdman, and sophomore forwards Jeff Von Lutzow and Craig Marshall, who also plays guard.

Khari Johnson, a forward from El Toro High School, and Rick Swanwick, a 6-10 post player who was Orange County player of the year at Trabuco Hills High, are available after redshirting last season.

But the key player to this team might be Gerald McDonald, a transfer from Compton College who is expected to take over at point guard, the position vacated by Rod Palmer, the only senior on last year’s team.

McDonald averaged 18 points, seven assists and six rebounds last season, and averaged 30 points, 14 assists and 11 rebounds in three state community college playoff games.

“He’s a true point guard,” Butler said. “He can shoot it, drive around you, play defense, and he jumps out of the gym. He’s my guy, he’s my key, he’s the key to our season.”

He’s also the key to the Anteater running game.

Mulligan says the team will be a lot better--”It’s gotta be better after what we went through last year.”

He says he’s excited, but every time his excitement builds to a pitch, he stops.

“I can say anything,” Mulligan said. “Talk is really cheap.”

And victories, this team knows, have their price.

The women’s team, 1-27 last season, has its own struggle for redemption.

The signs are everywhere, not the least of which are in the absence of wristwatches in practice.

“We were counting the days, counting the practices, counting the minutes of practice,” said Kathy Lizarraga, a junior guard. “Last year, everybody would take their watch and put it around their ankle, and say, ‘OK, guys, only two more hours.’ ”

The watches have come off, and the team hopes the victories will come back.

“We had a lot of very frustrated ladies last year,” Coach Dean Andrea said. “The young ladies wanted to win, they practiced to win.”

They didn’t win--except once, a two-point victory against Southern Utah State in the fifth game of the season.

Last year, Lizarraga and Andrea said, it seemed as if every player and coach had a theory about what the team should do.

“It has boiled down to this,” Andrea said. “They don’t want to go through that again, and they’ve said, ‘You’re our leader, we’ll do what you say.’ ”

Twelve players are back from last season’s team, including Yvonne Catala, a forward who led the team in scoring as a freshman last year, averaging 10.7 points per game, and Jenny Lee, a senior guard who was second in scoring, averaging 9.1 points.

Four freshmen have joined the team--former El Toro guard Karie Yoshioka, former University guard Denise Gandara, Kari Rasmussen, a 6-foot-3 center from Hillsboro, Ore., and Chrissy Chang, a guard from St. Francis High in Santa Clara.

Buffy Rabbitt won a cross-country meet Saturday for the third time in four meets this season. Her only loss was a second-place finish to Wisconsin’s Suzy Favor, considered the best American woman middle-distance runner.

“She’s focused,” Coach Vince O’Boyle said of Rabbitt. “She’s running really well. She’s developed the personality to be able to go in front. Before, she always was in the pack or with the leader. She’s developed into the type of distance runner we thought she’d be.”

Traci Goodrich, a redshirt freshman, finished fourth Saturday in the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Invitational.

“Goodrich, there’s a freshman who’s running really, really well,” O’Boyle said. “She beat some very good people again.”

Anteater Notes

Ted Newland is stuck at 499 victories--but not because his water polo team is losing. The Anteaters are off this week and face Pepperdine next Tuesday at Heritage Park. The Anteaters have lost five of their past seven games and six of their past nine. . . . After a school record five-game winning streak, the women’s soccer team has lost three in a row. . . . The men’s soccer team plays its final home game of the season Saturday against Nevada Las Vegas at Crawford Field. Irvine lost to UNLV, 2-0, last week in Las Vegas, and has never beaten the Rebels in 10 meetings.