UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK : Former Starter Gets Second Chance to Show His Stuff

Elgin Rogers says he loves basketball, but he admits he also loves to relax.

“The couch is my friend,” he said. “My best friend is the television. And the remote and the cable. Can’t live without cable.”

Rogers is a 6-foot-6 forward who was an all-state high school player from Gary, Ind. A gifted athlete, he made the state finals in the 400 meters in high school but gave up track when he arrived at UC Irvine in 1988 on a basketball scholarship.

“Too much stress,” Rogers said. “I like springtime. I like lounging.”

Somehow, the basketball player that Rogers and a lot of other people thought he could never be has emerged during his first three years at Irvine.

“I’ve had my ups and downs,” he said.

Rogers played in 18 games as a freshman, and started three. He scored 17 points in a game against Eastern Washington, and had 12 blocked shots during the season. As a sophomore, he played in 11 games and started five, averaging about six points during the Anteaters’ 5-23 season. Then last year, things fell apart. He played 20 minutes before he and walk-on Todd Knight were kicked off the team in early February by former coach Bill Mulligan.

Rogers’ career seemed over. But then Mulligan retired, Rod Baker was hired, and after consultations with Baker and Athletic Director Tom Ford, Rogers was a basketball player again.

Instead of finishing his degree and lounging away the last year of his eligibility, he is in the mix for a spot in the starting lineup as Irvine prepares for its first exhibition, against the Lafayette Hustlers at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Bren Center.

“(Rogers is) extremely athletic,” Baker said. “I don’t know anything other than hearsay that he never played hard enough to be any good. I think he realizes he’s at the end of the road. Like a lot of guys, he’s getting a new start.”

As for what happened between Mulligan and Rogers last season, Baker is hands-off.

“I truly don’t know what happened last year,” Baker said. “I’ve never talked to Elgin about it and I’ve never talked to Bill about it.”

The gist of it--from one side--seemed to be that Mulligan thought Rogers was practicing the fine art of relaxation during practice.

“It was just a matter of not getting anything done in practice, slowing things down in practice,” Mulligan said at the time. “We just had too many bodies.”

Rogers saw it differently.

“It’s hard to explain. Mostly personal reasons,” Rogers said. “He was feeling a lot of pressure. He feels he has to make a change to make himself feel better. It happened every year. Somebody always ended up gone.

“I had nothing personal with him. I actually like the guy. He’s a funny guy. He just had poor relations with players on the floor. I’m just glad to be back.”

Rogers says his difficulty in college has stemmed mostly from feeling uncomfortable on the court during his first three years.

“It’s mostly tentativeness,” he said. “In my high school situation, I never had a coach give me the fundamentals. In college, I’ve just tried to work on the fundamentals so I can feel more comfortable.”

As Baker says, Rogers is down to his last shot.

“Very, very few people know what I can do,” Rogers said.

Wendy Griffith, a freshman who had been recovering from severe shin splints, helped the women’s cross-country team win the Big West Conference title Saturday after losing Traci Goodrich to injury on the eve of departing for the race.

Goodrich, a sophomore who had won three of four races this season, was putting up streamers for a roommate’s birthday party Thursday evening when her knee buckled and she suffered a sprain.

Rayna Cervantes, a junior who had struggled early in the season, came through by winning the individual title at New Mexico State in a course-record 18 minutes 3.5 seconds over the 5,000-meter course, which is at an elevation of 4,000 feet.

Griffith, competing as Irvine’s seventh runner, finished 11th overall and fourth for Irvine, probably grabbing a position in Irvine’s top seven for the NCAA Region 8 championships in Fresno Nov. 16.

“Almost definitely,” Coach Vince O’Boyle said. “She ran a really smart race. The women went out a lot harder than the men and went into oxygen debt. Wendy kind of sat back like the guys did. She’s a real solid runner, a real good competitor. That’s the type of person she is--real tough--she doesn’t back down from anybody.”

The best news for O’Boyle is that he expects Goodrich to return for the regional meet. The top two teams at the meet automatically qualify for the NCAA championships Nov. 25 in Tucson.

Stats of the Week: The women’s soccer team broke a number of school records this season. Freshman Molly Lynch tied the Irvine season record for goals, and classmate Jenni Tanaka set an Irvine season record for assists as the Anteaters completed the best season in the program’s history: 12-7-1.

Lynch scored 11 goals and already is fourth in career goals after one season. Tanaka’s nine assists broke the previous record by two.

Irvine will play host to the Rolex-Intercollegiate Tennis Coaches Assn. Southern California men’s championships today through Sunday at the UCI tennis stadium, but for once Irvine doesn’t have any of its players seeded.

Among the top teams: top-ranked UCLA, No. 2 USC, No. 7 Pepperdine and No. 18 Irvine.

Admission to all sessions is free, including the singles final at 10 a.m. Sunday, followed by the doubles final at 1:30 p.m.

The water polo team (16-6) has stumbled slightly as the end of the season approaches, and has fallen from No. 3 to No. 4 in the poll after losing three consecutive matches for the first time this season before beating No. 5 Cal State Long Beach, 8-7, Tuesday night.

All three losses have been to highly regarded teams--No. 5 Stanford, No. 2 Pepperdine and No. 3 UCLA--but Irvine previously had beaten Pepperdine and Stanford.

Two of the three losses have been by the slimmest of margins. Pepperdine beat Irvine in overtime, 11-10, and UCLA won by one goal in regulation, 13-12.

The culprit appears to be defense. Until the three losses, Irvine had allowed double figures in goals only once in its first 18 games. The Anteaters allowed 11, 11 and 13 in the losses.

A chance at revenge awaits Sunday, when Irvine plays Pepperdine again at noon at Heritage Park.

Anteater Notes

UC Irvine is the host school for the Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Assn. single-handed championships this weekend. Nick Adamson, an Anteater sailor, qualified for the Laser race by finishing second in the regional championship last weekend. Irvine has competed in two team outings this year, winning the Stoney Burke Intersectional Regatta at Berkeley and their own Pacific Coast Sloop Championships in October. . . . Tuesday’s women’s volleyball match against Utah State in Crawford Hall will be televised by SportsChannel and has been designated as “Cram Crawford” Night. In an attempt to draw 1,000 fans, there will be giveaways and a raffle for a weekend for two at the Newport Marriott.