Baker Creates Own Image by Mixing Old With New

He is the new coach in the old coach’s chair for the second time in eight years, so establishing his own identity at UC Irvine isn’t a crisis for Rod Baker, only delicate work.

Like a jump shot, it must be attempted with a natural rhythm, with a touch of finesse--not too soft and, certainly, never too hard. Air balls and bricks aren’t accepted here.

Baker is attempting to replace Bill Mulligan at Irvine and so far, he has found the footing strikingly similar to 1983, when he attempted to replace John White at Tufts University in Massachusetts. “The guy had been there for a very long time,” Baker says, “and he’d been very successful and then, toward the end, things kind of went in a different direction.”

At Tufts, as at Irvine, no one was used to losing, but everyone was used to doing things one way. For 11 years, Mulligan and Irvine basketball were one and the same. When you went to watch the Anteaters play, you knew what you were getting--run and gun, 102-96, shoot off the coach’s mouth, shoot out the lights or crash and burn trying.

Eventually, the crashing and burning began to outweigh the alternative. The Anteaters finished their seasons 12-17, 5-23, 11-19. Change was needed, but you know society’s gut feeling about change: Who needs it? When you’re the time-honored incumbent, goodby can be painful. But when you’re the replacement coming in from the cold, hello can be even worse.

As Baker learned at Tufts, “It’s not easy. I want to be aware of what’s going on with Bill and I would hope he’d be--as I hoped John White was--open to our being successful. You know that’s important. And I would want for them both to feel comfortable--I know with John that it took a while--and I want Bill to feel comfortable being around this group still.

“We’re not trying to exclude anybody. I want to include people.”

That includes himself. If Baker is to be his own man, his own coach, he has to stake out his own ground, which is not the same as desecrating Mulligan’s, but sometimes the two get confused.

Baker, for instance, won’t watch Irvine game films from last season. “I watched a third of a half of one game and a third of the first half of the Cal game,” he says, which means he’s watched two-thirds of two halves, or the equivalent of one-third of one game, or the equivalent of really no time at all.

Eyebrows arched over this revelation. What was the hidden meaning behind the fractions? That Baker could find no value in any of the 30 games Mulligan coached last season? That there was nothing to be gleaned from the old coach that the new coach didn’t know already?

Now, Baker discusses his nonviewing habits with a disclaimer.

“I hope Bill doesn’t take that as a slight, because it wasn’t intended that way,” Baker says. “They played differently. There were different guys playing. You know, it’s not to my advantage to look at a tape of our guys. . . . where the emphasis was Ricky Butler and Jeff Herdman and Dylan Rigdon. What is the value of me looking at the tape?

“They were trying to press full-court zone--and we’re playing full-court man-to man. They were trying to have games in the 100s--that’s not our emphasis . . . I watched the Cal game and I watch Rigdon make jumpers and Herdman make jumpers and Cornelius Banks make jumpers and when we go to practice, none of those guys are in the gym.”

Baker went out of his way to avoid forming preconceived opinions about the players he was inheriting from Mulligan--so far out that he decided not to consult Mulligan for any input or advice.

Again, Baker said, no slight intended.

Slight perceived, nonetheless. Gradually, word got back to Baker that Mulligan was feeling snubbed, so Baker called Mulligan and acquiesced to indulge in one Orange County tradition.

They did lunch.

“A real good lunch,” Baker observes. “I didn’t want him to be angry. I want us to be on good terms, or at least not adversarial. Just as I believe he doesn’t want us to be adversarial, either.”

Baker says he’s “happy with the team Bill left me.” He likes the guards--”As good as anybody’s”--and acknowledges that “the big guys try.” The lineup Baker plans to start in Saturday’s opener against San Diego State has a distinct Mulligan look and feel--Don May at center, Jeff Von Lutzow and Elgin Rogers at forward, Gerald McDonald and Craig Marshall at guard. All five, recruited and signed by Mulligan.

The Baker spin is coming, to be doled out by the bucketful this season before the waves start crashing in 1992-93. Baker announced four recruits during the early signing period--guard Todd Whitehead of Fremont High (Los Angeles), forward Shaun Battle of Cajon High, center Dee Boyer of Saddleback College and forward Joe Hannon of Canada College. Whitehead and Battle are ranked among the top 125 high school players in the nation, Hannon is averaging 20 points after three games this season and Boyer, in Baker’s words, is “as good as any big man in the state.”

What was that old chestnut about not being able to get “real athletes” into UC Irvine?

“Tell me why,” Baker says. “Tell me why. I’ve yet to find out what is truly wrong with this place. And maybe that’s just naivete on my part. Maybe it’s all new and fresh and honeymoonish, so I haven’t really seen what’s wrong with this place.

“It’s all part of your frame of reference. I look out the window right now . . . the sun is shining, it’s a beautiful campus, we have a nice arena, we play in a good conference. When you come here, you get a good education, an education that means something when you get out of here.

“What’s wrong with this place?”

Baker looks at those four letters of intent, drops the names of redshirts Lloyd Mumford and Keith Walker and freshmen Elzie Love and Zuri Williams, and declares “that’s half a team, half a team of players who are as good as the players they had when things were pretty good here.”

Baker has his challenge: To make things pretty good again. He did it at Tufts, which qualified for the Division III playoffs his last four years at the school. He did it with a little time . . . and some space.