Tulane Rises From Ashes to Burn Irvine : College basketball: Green Wave’s trapping defense stifles Anteaters during 96-77 rout.

UC Irvine thinks of itself as a rebuilding team, a work in progress.

On Monday night, Irvine got some lessons from a team that has really rebuilt--from a foundation that had been razed.

Tulane, in only its third season of revival after the program was discontinued in 1985, threw a trapping, ball-hawking defense at Irvine and handed the Anteaters a 96-77 loss Monday in front of 1,591 in the Bren Center.

It’s been only a few years since Tulane had no players and no basketballs--nothing but Coach Perry Clark--but the Green Wave is 8-0 and has equaled its best start since 1928-29.

With players converging on Irvine’s ballhandlers at every opportunity, Tulane used a three-quarter-court trapping defense to take a 52-41 lead at halftime, with at least 12 of the Green Wave’s first-half points coming directly off steals or Irvine turnovers.

At game’s end, Tulane had made 20 steals, and Irvine had committed 21 turnovers.

The Anteaters saw a team that played hard--not flawlessly, but relentlessly.

“They’re a good team. They play hard, and they wouldn’t quit,” said Keith Stewart, who scored 10 points off the bench Monday in his second game for Irvine but couldn’t spark the Anteaters as he had in his debut Saturday. “That’s something this team can learn. We’re a good team.”

Irvine’s starting point guard, Gerald McDonald, had a season-high eight turnovers. The other starting guard, Craig Marshall, had three, and Stewart had five.

“We just didn’t handle the ball well,” Marshall said. “Not to take away from them, but it wasn’t so much them. Every time we caught the ball, they trapped us. It was like they were kamikazes.”

Irvine Coach Rod Baker saw an Irvine team that was trying, but inconsistent. Too many times, Irvine fumbled the ball away in the face of pressure.

“We aren’t to the point where we can handle it every time,” Baker said. “There were opportunities. You have to handle the ball. They keep coming at you. I thought when we handled the ball, we went right through it. When we didn’t, we spit it up.

“I think we gave them more turnovers than they created.”

Irvine was good enough to cut the lead to six points in the second half, and hang around at seven points down for several minutes. But the breakthrough never came.

“We tried to talk to them about the difference between a good team and a team trying to be good,” said Baker, whose team finished its nonconference schedule with a 3-6 record. “We were down seven, down eight, down nine a bunch of times with the ball. Good teams make the plays.”

Tulane is good enough that Baker predicts the Green Wave will be playing in the postseason--not necessarily the NCAA tournament, but the postseason.

On Monday, Tulane was led by David Whitmore, a senior forward who played at St. Bernard’s High School in Los Angeles and transferred to Tulane from Georgia Tech. He scored 19 points, with a large crowd cheering him on.

Anthony Reed, a powerfully built forward, also had 19 points and added 12 rebounds. Freshman guard Pointer Williams had seven steals, six assists and 14 points off the bench--all career-highs.

Irvine stayed in the game as long as it did largely because of the play of senior center Don May and freshman swingman Elzie Love.

May, who finished with a career-high 14 points, plus six rebounds and four steals, had 12 points at halftime after making five of five shots.

Love scored 12 points. Elgin Rogers led Irvine with 15 points, and five Irvine players reached double figures.

The Anteaters open the Big West Conference season with New Mexico State on Thursday and Nevada Las Vegas on Saturday, both in the Bren Center.

“I would like to be 9-0, but it doesn’t mean anything now, if we’re 3-6 or 6-3,” Baker said. “The next 18 are the ones that matter now.”

Anteater Notes

UC Irvine is shooting 40.3% from the field. The school-record for lowest shooting percentage is 42.2% in 1966-67. . . . Approximately 2,000 tickets are still available for Irvine’s game Saturday against Nevada Las Vegas in the Bren Center.