UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Pitcher Says Anteaters Need Heart Transplant

Chris Huber watched UC Irvine’s baseball team lose 11 Big West Conference games in a row, and he played his part, too, as the losing pitcher in three of them.

But he makes no bones about the problem, as he sees it.

“It comes down to character, and we’re seriously lacking in that department,” said Huber, a senior right-hander. “It’s been tough to come to terms with, with the talent we have. I don’t think it’s baseball. Everyone can play. It’s character. Some people might be offended, but I think it’s the truth. You can battle or you can hide in your shell. We’ve taken the shell route.”

Irvine broke its conference losing streak Friday with a victory over UC Santa Barbara at Anteater Field, and Huber made it a winning streak of two on Saturday with a victory, his sixth in 13 decisions. Still, Irvine has a record of 21-29, 3-12 in the Big West. It is not what this team envisioned for itself.

Don’t think Huber holds himself blameless--by no means.

“I consider myself a competitor, and I’ve had lapses,” he said. “Basically, I’ve gotten what I deserved.”

Huber has excelled in one particular area--strikeouts. In spite of an average fastball somewhere in the 80-m.p.h. range, he has struck out 98 this season, the second-highest season total in Irvine history, surpassed only by Gary Wheelock’s 140 in 1974, and two better than Ken Whitworth’s 96 last season.

“I’m a thinking pitcher. I have to get by on my brains,” Huber said. “I rely on getting ahead. If you get ahead of the hitter, you have an advantage that allowes you to throw out of the strike zone, and it doesn’t matter so much how hard you throw.”

His record of 6-7 in 16 starts does not sparkle, but Huber thinks it accurately reflects his season.

“I was thinking about this the other night,” he said. “I’ve had nine good solid outings, and seven average to below average.”

But what he prides himself on is his response to the inevitable off-days, the days when his control wanders away, stranding him on the mound.

“I had a bad appearance against Long Beach,” he said, recalling the start before his most recent one, when he was charged with eight earned runs in less than five innings. “I hit two guys, walked a couple.”

The next outing, he beat Santa Barbara, giving up three runs on nine hits over eight innings in Irvine’s 6-3 victory.

What he did was respond.

“Say a pitcher gets behind a hitter,” he said. “If he goes right after him, he has character. But if he slouches and goes back and walks around, you know he’s in trouble.”

Huber has kept going back out there this season. He has five complete games and his 122 1/3 innings are the sixth most by a pitcher in a season in school history.

He won’t come very close to any career records. At this point, he is 12th in innings pitched and seventh in strikeouts. Huber is already thinking ahead to a year working in the Cayman Islands, and then to the beginning of law school, perhaps somewhere like Georgetown or the University of Virginia, or even Duke, where he spent his first two years of college before transferring to Irvine.

With seven games remaining, Huber figures two of the starts are his.

“I don’t want to be remembered as a loser. I want to finish my year 8-7,” he said.

He would like to see the Anteaters win a few more, too, just for the record.

He’d like to show a little character, and if you think Huber got that talk from Coach Mike Gerakos, think again.

“It’s not his rhetoric, it’s mine,” Huber said. “He uses a lot of, ‘Let’s compete. Let’s go out there and battle.’ Which I guess can be read as essentially the same thing I’m saying.’ ”

UC Irvine assistant Jean Ashen and UCLA assistant Kathy Olivier were interviewed for the Irvine women’s basketball head coaching job last week, both coaches said.

Ashen and Olivier played at Cal State Fullerton before transferring to Nevada Las Vegas to finish their playing careers.

One other coach, Cal State Long Beach assistant Colleen Matsuhara, was interviewed for the job last week. Matsuhara is also a candidate for the Long Beach job, which opened when Joan Bonvicini left to become head coach at Arizona.

Irvine is seeking a replacement for Dean Andrea, who was fired after the season, and had once sought to name a coach by today. The target date has been revised, in part because associate athletic director Barbara Camp, who is heading the search, had to travel out of town on business. Irvine now hopes to name a coach within two weeks.

Greg Vetrone, who has been working with UC Irvine Coach Rod Baker since Baker was named basketball coach April 10, has been named to Baker’s staff as one of two full-time assistants, the school announced Tuesday.

Vetrone, 29, has been an assistant coach and recruiting director at Fairleigh Dickinson since 1989, and was an assistant at C.W. Post in Greenvale, N.Y., for four years before that.

Baker, who replaced Bill Mulligan, has yet to name his other full-time assistant, a part-time assistant or a graduate assistant.

The Anteater men’s tennis team lost its four-year grip on the Big West title at Ojai last weekend, but staked its claim to the future when two freshmen won their flight championships.

Brett Hansen-Dent, who formerly played at Newport Harbor High School, won the No. 2 singles title. Brett Stern from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., won the No. 5 title.

Another freshman, Charles Wheeler from Johannesburg, combined with sophomore Neel Grover to win the No. 2 doubles title.

The team ends its regular-season schedule Friday against second-ranked UCLA in Westwood.

Mike Roberts, a junior who plays No. 1 for Irvine, and Hansen-Dent are likely to continue to the NCAA individual championships in Athens, Ga., May 17-26, and the team still has an outside shot at being invited.

The women’s tennis team, seeded fourth, finished third in the Big West championships, losing to eventual champion Santa Barbara in the quarterfinals but defeating third-seeded Hawaii, 5-4, to claim third. Their victory was secured by the three-set victory by Ali Yoshimoto and Stacey Cadigan at No. 1 doubles.

Daley Thompson, two-time Olympic decathlon champion from Great Britain, will compete Saturday and Sunday in a meet labeled the Elite Decathlon at Irvine’s track stadium.

John Sayre, a Fountain Valley resident who was the 1985 TAC champion, will also compete, as will Gary Kinder, who won the 1988 Olympic Trials in 1988 before sustaining an injury in Seoul.