UC Irvine Still Can’t Turn Things Around : Anteaters: thy shot 28% for game, make four field goals in second half while falling, 58-52, to San Jose State. Losing streak reaches 11.

UC Irvine could have risen to the occasion. Instead, the Anteaters sank to it.

Irvine walked into San Jose State’s Event Center with a sense of dread Saturday. The Spartans had won only once all season, but Irvine was fighting a 10-game losing streak. Today, San Jose State’s record is 2-15, after defeating Irvine, 58-52, and leaving the Anteaters alone, dead last, in the Big West Conference.

It was a rare night on which Irvine had the more talented team. The Anteaters just didn’t show it. To wit:

--San Jose State held Irvine without a field goal for the first six minutes of the game and the first five minutes of the second half.

--Irvine shot a season-low 28.3% for the game, making only four field goals-- four-- in the second half, and only 13 of 46 in the game. This, against a team whose opponents averaged 49.4%.

--The Anteaters were outrebounded, 42-28, by a team that ranks last in the conference in that category.

--Irvine missed five of six free throws down the stretch as it tried to catch up, and Elgin Rogers, with a chance to cut the lead to two with 1:12 remaining, stepped to the line and missed two.

--San Jose State shot 41.7% from the field and committed 21 turnovers--and won.

“It’s not a matter of who’s supposedly a good team, who’s better or who has better players,” said Irvine Coach Rod Baker, who has three weeks’ growth of beard after vowing not to shave until Irvine wins. “It’s a matter of who wants to win. I’m not saying we didn’t want to win tonight, I’m telling you they wanted to win more.”

Irvine’s losing streak of 11 games ties the second-longest in school history, trailing only the 15-game streak during the 5-23 season of 1989-90.

San Jose State’s victory completed a devastating sweep of Irvine. Earlier Saturday, the Spartan women broke a 29-game conference losing streak by beating Irvine’s women, also sending them to last place in the Big West.

The men’s loss also made them the team most likely to miss the Big West tournament. Because Nevada Las Vegas has been banned because of NCAA probation, only one other team will be left out of the eight-team field.

On Saturday, playing against a team whose only previous victory was by one point over Santa Clara Dec. 21, Irvine took an eight-point lead during the first half after forcing three consecutive turnovers with full-court pressure.

But San Jose State erased Irvine’s 34-29 halftime lead in the first two minutes of the second half as Jason Allen hit a short jumper and back-to-back three-pointers to put the Spartans ahead by two. Allen led all scorers with 16 points.

“Allen was really hot,” said San Jose State Coach Stan Morrison, whose team walked off the court at game’s end to strains of the celebration song.

It was not a masterfully played game. The Anteaters, instead of playing hungry, came out as if they had lost their appetite.

In the early going, Craig Marshall made a steal, only to miss the breakaway layup. Gerald McDonald was there for the rebound, but missed the follow shot. It was on the second follow shot that he was fouled, and went to the line to make one of two free throws.

Don May threw away passes--maybe more than the three turnovers he was charged with.

And San Jose State wasn’t immune. Daryl Scott dribbled the ball off his foot; Andrew Gardiner missed a wide-open dunk.

It wasn’t pretty but it was a victory, and either one of the teams would have taken it.

Irvine just didn’t do it.

“A lot of teams in the process of finding themselves play to the level of the competition,” said Baker, whose team lost to New Mexico State by four and to USC by nine. “They don’t know, or don’t understand, that to get the job done, you’ve got to do it every night against everybody. The Dukes, the North Carolinas do that.”

“We’ve given up a lot of opportunities to turn it around against a lot of teams,” said Rogers, referring to some of Irvine’s losses--its past three were by a total of 11 points before Saturday’s game. “We just have little spurts where we don’t score.”

And long ones where they don’t win.

Anteater Notes

Thomas Clayton, a freshman walk-on guard who played on Tustin High School’s 1991 Southern Section Division II championship team, made his fifth start of the season for San Jose State. . . . UC Irvine’s leading scorer, Elgin Rogers, started despite twisting an ankle in practice Friday. . . . Next: Fresno State in the Bren Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.