UCI Wins After Trailing by 25 : Basketball: Anteaters score 64 points in second half to beat Mississippi Valley State, 90-83.

UC Irvine’s basketball team was watching from the stands when Mississippi Valley State suffered the embarrassment of being held to 10 points in the first half against second-ranked Kansas Friday night.

Early in the second half Saturday night, the embarrassment was all Irvine’s. Two minutes after halftime, the Anteaters trailed Mississippi Valley State by 25. Goodness knows if they had played Kansas.

But with an 0-3 start staring them in the face, the Anteaters pulled together and charged back to pull out a 90-83 victory in the consolation game of the Golden Harvest tournament at Kemper Arena.

“I was thinking about last year’s team. We had a lot of close games we’d lose by two or three points,” said Keith Stewart, who made five three-pointers and scored a career-high 27 points, 18 in the second half. “We have a bunch of fighters on this year’s team. I saw everybody being tentative, and I got mad, myself.”

“He was all pumped up,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said.

Irvine was held to six field goals in the first half, and shot 20.7%. Mississippi Valley State made 50% of its shots and took a 44-26 halftime lead.

But in the second half, Baker quit running 11 players in and out of the game and stuck with a core of six.

“We made a very conscious decision before the game to play the guys who were playing well,” Baker said. “We just kept looking for they guys who were going to stay in the game.”

Jeff Von Lutzow was one of them. He had 26 points and 12 rebounds for his third double-double in three games, and point guard Lloyd Mumford broke out of a shooting slump to score 16, including three second-half three-pointers that fueled Irvine’s comeback. Mumford, who until Saturday was off to a shaky start in his first games after transferring from Villanova, added four steals and three assists.

Craig Marshall stuck to Alfonso Ford when the Anteaters were playing man defense, and when he suffered a minor hip injury, Elzie Love took over. And LaDay Smith, a transfer from California who became eligible Saturday, played 26 minutes, solidifying the inside game.

The Anteaters shot 65.5% in the second half, and broke Mississippi Valley State’s rhythm with changing defenses. The Delta Devils, who got 24 points from Bobby Green and 20 from Ford, were held to two baskets during about a five-minute stretch as Irvine closed the gap, outscoring them, 19-4.

Green scored 19 points in the first half, but made only two shots in the second. Ford, who averaged 27.5 points last season and was the second-leading scorer in the nation, made only eight of 24 shots.

“We stopped playing hard,” Mississippi Valley State Coach Lafayette Stribling said. “That threw us in a lackadaisical state.

“I think being held to 10 was an embarrassment. The team held a meeting last night. They knew they were better than that. Now, being up 25 and losing, that’s quite embarrassing, too.”

Irvine built its comeback possession by possession. Score, get a defensive stop, score.

“We just wanted to go out and play,” Mumford said. “We didn’t want to look at the scoreboard to see how close we were getting. We wanted to play as hard as we could for as long as we could.”

The Anteaters got their deficit down to 10 on Smith’s three-point play on a breakaway with about 13 minutes left. When Stewart stole the ball from Ford and broke away for a dunk with about 11 minutes left, Mississippi Valley State’s lead was down to five.

Irvine finally took a one-point lead on Mumford’s hanging one-handed shot from the baseline with 3:49 left, then took a 79-77 lead on Stewart’s three-pointer with 3:23 remaining. Mumford’s reverse layup on a clear-out play gave Irvine a six-point lead with 2:16 left, and the Anteaters held off the last charge by the Delta Devils (1-3).

“It’s a big, big confidence-builder to come back from 18 at the half, trailing by 25,” Von Lutzow said. “We came back by playing solid defense and solid offense.”

They picked a good time to get a victory. Ahead in the next few weeks are games against Nevada Las Vegas, Tulane and Georgetown, all ranked teams.

As Baker stood in a hallway after the game, Kansas Coach Roy Williams walked by.

“Boy, you looked bad when I got here. You’d better carry me around with you,” Williams said.

“What are you doing next week?” Baker said. “I can get you into Vegas.”