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UC Irvine Loses 10th in a Row

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UC Irvine had one last chance to avoid a winless January.

But after an Irvine comeback fell short in a 65-59 loss to Pacific before 2,952 Thursday night in the Spanos Center, the Anteaters are 0-9 this month and 0-9 in the conference.

San Jose State--1-15 overall--is the only other team still winless in Big West games and the only team that has yet to play Irvine. That will be remedied Saturday night at San Jose.

The Anteaters are 3-15 and have a 10-game losing streak that is the third-longest in school history.

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“It would have been nice to take the edge off,” said Rod Baker, who is in his first year as Irvine’s coach. “I’d as much have loved to have seen San Jose win (the Spartans lost to Cal State Fullerton on Thursday), so they’d have gotten their win. Maybe they’d have let up.”

Irvine, which shot 40.7% against Pacific’s zone defense, trailed by 10 points after a first half that Baker graded a “D,” partly for insufficient effort.

Pacific (6-10, 2-5) went ahead by as many as 13 points in the second half before Irvine began cutting into the lead behind the play of Jeff Von Lutzow, Khari Johnson and Gerald McDonald.

The Anteaters got as close as 60-57 on Johnson’s reverse layup with 3:37 left and had two possessions with a chance to cut it to one point, failing both times.

But a good Irvine comeback was shot down by Pacific’s free-throw shooting. The Tigers were shooting 59.8% from the line before the game, but they made 75% against Irvine. Randy Lavender, who had gone two for 12 in a loss to Utah State last week, made nine of 10 free throws.

Lavender scored 17 points, and Dell Demps led Pacific with 18 points, 12 rebounds and four assists.

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Von Lutzow scored 17 points for Irvine with three three-pointers, and Elgin Rogers added 15.

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