Ultimately, Sequel Nothing Like the Original for Irvine

The question on people’s minds was whether it would happen again.

The fight didn’t.

The fold almost did.

It was easy to remember the first Cal State Fullerton-UC Irvine game this season for what happened afterward, not during.

But before that Jan. 16 Titan victory ended, before the fight that resulted in the suspensions of two Anteater players--both of them for Saturday’s rematch--Irvine looked as if it was on its way to a rare victory.

The Anteaters had won only two games then, and the Titans were on a roll.

But the 12-point lead Irvine had with 14:22 remaining in the January game disappeared, eaten away by Bruce Bowen, Don Leary, Aaron Sunderland and Kim Kemp.

The Titans took a look at that deficit, went on a 14-2 run and kissed it goodby, tying the score with 9:44 left and finally doing the Anteaters in on Leary’s put-back at the buzzer.

Saturday night in Titan Gym, the stage was set again. And for a while, it looked as if Irvine would fold again.

Irvine led by 15 with 9:58 left.

Nine minutes 58 seconds later, the score was tied, and the game was headed overtime.

But this time, Irvine won, 88-86, on Shaun Battle’s dunk off a Lloyd Mumford pass with three seconds left in the extra period. The victory lifted the Anteaters into an all-important tie for eighth in the Big West. Only the top eight teams make the conference tournament.

“You know, the biggest thing about this team, we have to learn how to win,” Mumford said afterward. “Once we have the lead, and then it starts disappearing during a couple of games, then we’re saying, ‘Here we go again.’ This time I was pulling people aside, (Keith Stewart) was pulling people aside, telling them, ‘We can’t let go, we’ve got to bear down.’ ”

They faded, but this time they didn’t fall.

“I think maybe Fullerton made us not play well (during the Titan comeback),” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said. “We surely didn’t play well. We were stagnant offensively.

“It took a lot out of us to get where we were. . . . I think we were just tired.”

When the game went to overtime, Baker wanted to make sure the Anteaters didn’t think that was their bonus and prize. In a loss to New Mexico State in Las Cruces, Mumford forced overtime, then the Anteaters went into cruise and lost.

“The only thing we talked about was just because we got to overtime, we haven’t all of a sudden accomplished everything we need to accomplish,” Baker said. “The game’s in overtime, we still have to play.”

This time, they did. A game’s worth of outstanding performances from such usually peripheral players as Battle, Todd Whitehead and Elzie Love would have been wasted if Irvine couldn’t walk away with the victory that looked as if it was in the bag with 10 minutes left.

They did the unexpected because they expected the unexpected. Battle, in particular. Mumford drove the lane, drew defense, and shoveled to Battle. He wasn’t exactly waiting, but he was ready.

It was a kind of redemption for Irvine, not just in terms of a victory. Their reputation was tarnished by the fight that centered on Uzoma Obiekea’s kicking of Bruce Bowen. Obiekea wrote Bowen a letter of apology before the game, though Bowen suggested it wasn’t his wording.

Baker wasn’t pleased with that, but he wants the fight talk behind. The rivalry he can live with.

Especially since his team won.