Irvine Coaching Change Resurrected Rogers’ Basketball Career

Before this basketball season had even begun, Elgin Rogers paused in the middle of a conversation and spoke with a hint of mystery.

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

Very few had any idea, outside the immediate circle of UC Irvine basketball. Within that circle, the wide gap between Rogers’ athletic ability and his athletic performance had been a source of bewilderment and frustration for much of the senior’s career.

Rogers had minuscule averages of 1.0 points and 1.2 rebounds last season, his playing time eroding as his relationship with former coach Bill Mulligan deteriorated. Rogers had appeared in six games and played 20 minutes all season when Mulligan kicked him off the team in a fit of exasperation in early February.

In the final month of the Anteaters’ 11-19 season, Rogers was getting all his playing time on the outdoor courts near Edison High School in Huntington Beach, watching his skills erode against lesser competition.

But Rogers got a second chance--and a final one--when Rod Baker was named coach after Mulligan retired. Baker took him in, and Rogers has rewarded him by becoming Irvine’s leading scorer.

In Irvine’s first game this season, a victory over San Diego State, Rogers let a few more people in on the secret of what he can do, scoring 21 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. The 6-foot-6 forward has remained Irvine’s leading scorer, and is averaging 12.8 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.

Mulligan, sitting courtside last week as a radio announcer during the Irvine-Cal State Fullerton game, watched Rogers score a career-high 25 points, making 10 of 14 shots. He made his mea culpa on the air.

“I said it on the radio, I really screwed up by getting rid of him,” Mulligan said.

Rogers isn’t gloating, not as the leading scorer on a 3-13 team that has lost eight games in a row. Instead, he picks out his flaws and his shortcomings. There was his one-for-10 shooting performance against Nevada Las Vegas, his five turnovers against New Mexico State. And here and there, his little disappearing acts, games in which Rogers scored in single digits, when double digits might have made a difference.

As he watches the games tick by, Rogers thinks of what he will tell his teammates to spare them the same regret.

“I didn’t do what I set out to do,” Rogers said. “I should have played harder than I did. I talked to my dad just a little while ago. He critiques my games. He said I wasn’t playing as hard as I could. He saw the New Mexico State game where I threw the ball away too many times.”

The games go by.

“Fourteen more games,” Rogers said last week. “Not enough time.”

Now it’s 11, and no 12th is guaranteed unless Irvine beats out somebody for the final spot in the Big West Conference tournament.

“If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it a little bit differently,” Rogers said. “I’d go a little bit harder. That’s probably my farewell speech to the younger players. I’m not saying this season is over, but at this point, that’s what I would say.”

Rogers thinks he lost some of his sharpness during the time he was away from the team. He would go down to the Huntington Beach courts to play almost every day, but it wasn’t the same.

“Not playing in games, not practicing with guys just as good as you or better takes a lot away,” Rogers said. “It was hard at first, not being part of a team, not having somewhat of a direction.”

He found a direction when Baker got the job. Rogers went to Athletic Director Tom Ford, who had promised to honor his scholarship even if he didn’t play, and Baker made the decision to let Rogers rejoin the team.

In retrospect, Baker is glad he did. It isn’t pretty to imagine where Irvine would be without Rogers.

“I had nothing to go on,” Baker said. “It wasn’t like he had sparkling numbers, but he was someone who wanted to be part of the team.”

Baker, too, seems to see the difference in Rogers.

“Some guys don’t want to be as good as everybody else wants them to be,” Baker said. “You don’t always see yourself as others see you. . . . I think he’s made great strides at being as good as people want him to.”

Rogers’ role was never very well-defined to anyone’s satisfaction before this season, but he has found a home along the baseline, where he uses what Baker calls “good lateral feet” along with speed and leaping ability to score.

“He’s quick from a spot,” Baker said. “He gets himself compacted, and then he explodes. His limbs are long, and he just explodes from that spot like a spring.”

Tim Murphy, an Irvine assistant who has watched Rogers’ college career since Rogers came west from Gary, Ind., doesn’t think Rogers has changed much as a player, but only found his niche in Baker’s system. Rogers’ ability to use his speed and athleticism inside didn’t find an outlet in Mulligan’s running, three-point-oriented game.

“Nothing’s changed from the first day he got here to right now,” Murphy said. “Against UNLV his sophomore year, he had a good game and got a lot of rebounds. I remember his freshman year; he had 17 points against Eastern Washington. I don’t think Elgin has changed at all.”

Last season, what was left of the promise of his Irvine career got pushed aside as a personality conflict developed between he and Mulligan. Rogers ended up standing on the sidelines during practices, he says, not even playing in practice in the weeks leading up to what he calls “D-day,” the day Mulligan dismissed him. Mulligan said he kicked Rogers and walk-on player Todd Knight off because the two were “slowing things down in practice.”

Mostly, Mulligan says, it was exasperation with Rogers, who was unhappy with his role on the bench.

“We questioned his hands, and I didn’t think he worked hard enough,” Mulligan said at the Bren Center before Irvine’s game Thursday. “He’s done really well.” Rogers thinks he was just the victim of Mulligan’s need to make changes during a difficult season.

But mostly, he wishes the team had made the kind of turnaround he has, and he blames himself.

“I don’t really worry about scoring,” he said. “It’s mostly floor leadership, letting too many things slide by that turn the tide of the game. I think I need to make a difference. Like when we go certain lapses of time without a basket, I think I could just get the team together and help us get a bucket. Instead, we go five minutes without scoring a basket.”

He worries that disappointment will overtake the team and camaraderie will turn into bickering.

“We’re trying to curb it and stay together this year,” he said. “This year’s situation is not like last year’s. We didn’t play hard last year. This year we’re playing hard, it’s just the little intangible things that are making a difference.”

Having pulled his own career out of the mire, Rogers would like to see his team do the same. Regret, he knows, can be hard to live with.

“Looking back, I feel I could have done more than what this season shows, if given the opportunity I have been given this year,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve proved it. Of course, the season isn’t over yet.”