UC IRVINE NOTES : Anteaters to Stress Defense in Game Against Czechs

The UC Irvine men’s basketball team plays its final exhibition game at 7:30 tonight against the Trencin Club of Czechoslovakia in the Bren Center.

Trencin is winless in five West Coast exhibition games, losing by an average of 45 points to Cal Poly Pomona, USC, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and Loyola Marymount. Its worst defeat was to UCLA, 112-50.

“We want to win, stay healthy and move forward, not backward,” Coach Rod Baker said.

Gerald McDonald led Irvine with 27 points and 11 assists in the Anteaters’ first exhibition game, a 100-92 overtime victory against the Lafayette Hustlers. But Baker, in his first season at Irvine, says he is emphasizing defense and was disappointed his team gave up 92 points, last season’s school-record defensive average.

“I have a number in my mind I want to keep (Trencin) under,” Baker said.

Baker announced the signings of three players who earlier made oral commitments: forward Shaun Battle of San Bernardino Cajon High School, Saddleback College center Dee Boyer and guard Todd Whitehead of L.A. Fremont High School.

“We’re excited,” Baker said. “These guys make us better right away.”

Battle and Whitehead attended the prestigious Nike invitational basketball camp in Princeton, N.J., last summer, and Baker said they played well.

Whitehead, a 6-foot-3 shooting guard, was one of the 15 first-team selections on the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s Best in the West ratings. He averaged 16 points, seven assists and seven rebounds last season for Fremont, which reached the State Division I championship game, losing to Alameda St. Joseph.

Battle, a 6-6 forward, was named to the Best in the West second team. He averaged 22 points, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots last season for Cajon.

Boyer, 6-10 and 255 pounds, averaged 12 points and 6.5 rebounds last season as a freshman at Saddleback.

Jim Pluemer, an assistant trainer at UCLA, has been named director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer at Irvine.

Pluemer, who starts Jan. 6, was an assistant trainer with the Patriots seven years before moving to UCLA in 1990. He replaces Hazel Ando, who resigned in August.