Massimino, Mumford Cross Paths Again Tonight : Basketball: Coach kicked player off Villanova team in 1991. They’ve both moved west and will face each other when UC Irvine plays at Nevada Las Vegas.

Lloyd Mumford knew the question was coming, and he was lying in wait for it.

He knew he was supposed to talk about this being a game between UC Irvine and Nevada Las Vegas, not between Lloyd Mumford and Rollie Massimino. He knew he was supposed to refrain from saying anything incendiary that could be taped to a locker room wall. He knew he wasn’t supposed to take any swipes at Massimino, who kicked him off the Villanova team in 1991 after a scrape with the law for which Mumford was later exonerated.

So, one of the reporters on the other end of the line in Las Vegas said, “How do you feel about facing Coach Massimino?”

Mumford waited a beat, then summoned all the innocent surprise he could into his voice.

“Coach Mass is at UNLV now?”

Laughter all around.

Massimino was hired at UNLV on April 1. That same day in Irvine, they might as well have bold-faced Dec. 19 and March 4 on the Anteaters’ schedule. Irvine Coach Rod Baker says he nearly drove off the road when he heard the news. Mumford nearly jumped for joy.

“I can’t believe it,” Mumford said the day Massimino’s hiring was announced. “I’d like to beat him probably as bad as anybody could be beaten, on a professional level. . . . I’m happy to have a chance to play against him, look him in the eye. I never thought I’d get a chance to play against him.”

Tonight, he gets it.

Massimino dismissed Mumford from the Wildcat team in August, 1991, after Mumford was arrested on suspicion of trying to break into two suburban Philadelphia homes. Massimino, a coach who preaches a philosophy of family and abiding by the rules, dropped him from the program for “violation of team philosophy.” Not long after, Mumford was cleared of all charges except a misdemeanor disorderly conduct offense, after a judge accepted his claim that he was only looking for a girlfriend’s home.

Mumford, who transferred to Irvine the next fall, was upset that Massimino made his decision before the trial. Massimino stands by it.

“I feel very good about it,” Massimino said. “The decision I made was the right one in my eyes. I think he learned from it. He’ll tell you that.”

Others close to the situation say the incident was just one of several, though they don’t elaborate, except to say that in one instance, Mumford started a fight with teammate Greg Woodard on campus.

“It just was time, without getting into it, for him to move on,” Massimino said. “He knows the situation. It was better for him, not better for us. I wish him well. He’s a young kid. Kids are kids.”

Exactly how much bad blood there might be between Mumford and Massimino is hard to tell. Mumford said Massimino called and left a message for him last year when he was living in Newport Beach.

“I never called back; I have no comment for him,” Mumford said.

Massimino said he saw Mumford this summer in the Bren Center during the A.B.C.D. camp for high school basketball prospects.

“He talked to me for almost 10 minutes,” Massimino said. “He ran up to see me; I was sitting in the stands.”

Both are publicly downplaying their past relationship now. Mumford, who seemed to press too hard in the team’s opener at Boston University under the effects of illness and the pressure of playing in his hometown, is trying to take a calm approach.

“It’s more UCI wanting to beat UNLV,” Mumford said. “As far as Coach Mass is concerned, when I look over, I’ll see him. It’s just more motivation for me. I’m not going to try to do more than I can. Of course, I want to do good.

“I’m just a freewheeling person; I don’t let those type of things pressure me. If you worry about it, you’ll add more pressure on yourself.”

Baker doesn’t try to compare the pressures Mumford will face tonight to those he faced in front of family and friends in Boston.

“It’s a whole different set of emotions,” said Baker, who has cast a cautious eye toward Mumford and the UNLV game for some time. “I hope he would understand that the only thing that really matters is the fact that it’s a conference game,” Baker said.

Somebody better keep an eye on Baker, too. A Philadelphia native, Baker competed against Massimino when Baker was an assistant at Seton Hall, as well as when Baker was an assistant at St. Joseph’s, one of Villanova’s heated Philadelphia rivals.

When the Las Vegas reporters asked Baker about his relationship with Massimino, he couldn’t resist a little fun, either.

“We have no relationship,” Baker said, smiling as he repeated his quote later.

It might be something of a one-way rivalry. Massimino won’t profess to any prickly feelings about Baker.