Mulligan Still Has His Game

Give Bill Mulligan a whistle and a basketball team to coach and, generally, you can predict the rest.

Some things never change.

“We’re averaging 99 points a game,” Mulligan says.

And the other guys?

“About the same.”

“We’ve been over 100 points 13 times,” Mulligan says.

“We’re averaging 35 three-pointers a game.

“Not making.

“Attempting.”

Some things, however, have changed, almost to a point beyond recognition. The level, to name a big one. Mulligan now coaches at Irvine Valley College, which is just down the road from his old haunts at UC Irvine (map-wise) and separated by galaxies (standard-of-living-wise).

Mulligan has no practice gym.

“We have to practice at 8:15 at night,” he says, “because all the high school gyms are taken until then. We’ve practiced at Capo Valley, at Laguna Hills, at Mater Dei--and when it rains, the roof leaks, so we can’t go full-court. We’ve practiced at Chapman. We’ve practiced at a Mormon church, because one night at Capo, they had this wrestling thing going, so we went to the Mormon church a couple blocks away.

“Some of the elders didn’t like it much.”

Mulligan has no home arena.

“Our first 16 games were on the road,” he says. “We only had seven home games all year. Four at Laguna Hills, three at Capo Valley. We had to change two games because both high schools were playing the same night. Our Rancho Santiago game, we couldn’t start until 8:30 because the Capo Valley JV game ran long.”

Mulligan has no recruiting budget.

“We went with all local kids. All local kids, except for one Boston kid who just walked into practice one day. Just walked in and said he wanted to play. Now he starts for us.

“I’d like to keep doing it, but I don’t know how long we can. We played Riverside the other night, we lost, 120-109, and they had these two New York kids. One of them had 40 points. The other had 35.

“So, really, New York had 75 points.”

Mulligan has no sports information director, the position being excised from the budget four weeks ago.

” I’m the SID,” he says, pulling out the 1992-93 Irvine Valley College media guide. It is nothing more than a game program, printed in two-color, 18 pages thick.

“It’s not very much,” Mulligan apologizes. “I saw the one Clemson puts out. Full-color, 300 pages. For Clemson --the last-place team in the ACC.”

So, you have to wonder: Is Mulligan--in his mid-60s, working for part-time pay, working in front of “crowds” of 300, losing more often than he wins--having any fun?

“Am I having fun?” he says, repeating the question. He grins and turns to a friend seated next to him. “Am I?”

“I have fun when we win,” Mulligan says. “We got nice kids. They show up for practice at 8:15 every night and we’ve never had anyone miss a practice. And we’ve had, maybe, two guys ever show up late. They’re really remarkable kids.”

He laughs.

“If they could just play better.”

The first men’s basketball team in the history of Irvine Valley College is 13-14, 4-7 in conference, tied for fifth place, down to nine able-bodied players . . . and its crusty coach, supposedly fed up with the game after a decade of Division I disappointment, is hooked again, hooked much more seriously than he’d ever want to admit.

“What else am I gonna do?” he asks.

Not many have witnessed it, but amid the quiet seclusion of community college basketball, Mulligan is coaching the sport--for the first time, he contends--precisely the way he wants it.

Faster than the speeding Anteaters.

More reckless than the gunnin’ Saddleback Gauchos.

Motion-sickness sufferers, please keep to the Bren Center.

“After I retired,” Mulligan says, “I told myself, ‘If I ever coach again, I’m gonna do it the way I want.’ The last couple of years at UCI, my assistants were always on me--’You’re doing too many crazy things, you’ve got to slow it down.’

“Now, I’m just doing what makes me happy. In Division I, too many coaches play not to lose. Here, I’m playing to win. We don’t always succeed. But I know we’ve done some radical . . . “

Mulligan delights in the anecdotes.

He tells of how opponents have been forced to overplay Irvine Valley’s three-point launchers, bringing defenders out so far that Mulligan’s point guard can do nothing but pass inside or drive. “He’s been getting a lot of layins,” Mulligan says. “Of course, he’s missed some of them.”

He speaks about his top shooter, Chris Kostoff--or, as he is known around the Orange Empire Conference, Chris Castoff. “Oh, he shoots it,” Mulligan proclaims. “And he’s encouraged to.”

He talks about trampling the best-laid plans of son and assistant coach Brian, who came to Irvine Valley only to ensure that somebody named Mulligan would attempt to coach some defense.

“Brian complains that he doesn’t get enough time, and he’s right,” Mulligan says. “But we’re outmanned in almost every game we play. If we’re going to have a chance, we’ve got to set the tempo.”

Mulligan talks eagerly aboutnext year, when hot-shot redshirt Tom Airey becomes eligible (“He’s a machine, he can really knock it down.”) and Irvine Valley opens its new on-campus gym (“It should be ready by the time we start conference.”) and he has had time to recruit the kind of team he wants, instead of the leftovers from last summer.

“What I need,” Mulligan says, “is a big guy who runs. Not a big slow guy. A 6-10 kid who can run. A guy like (Kevin) Magee.”

Some things never change.