UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : Eight Days Could Salvage a Season

They won’t be eight days that shake the world, but Irvine Coach Rod Baker is looking at them as if they can make or break his already-shaky 5-14 basketball team.

“We have eight days to change our whole season, Saturday to Saturday,” Baker said. “We play Long Beach, Hofstra, San Jose State, Pacific. We can get a whole lot done.”

The Anteaters, who won in overtime Saturday against Cal State Fullerton only to lose Monday to UC Santa Barbara by 18 points, could get into the Big West Conference tournament, which excludes the bottom two teams.

Or they could just about pack up the basketballs and go down as an extremely underachieving team--perhaps even as a team that couldn’t match last year’s 7-22 record.

The schedule doesn’t make it easy--and Baker made part of the schedule. That Hofstra game is one he agreed to play to solve a predicament he created when he juggled the schedule in order to fit in a date with Georgetown.

Irvine will play Cal State Long Beach in the Bren Center on Saturday at 5 p.m.--the early tip-off enables the team to take a red-eye flight to New York for Monday’s Hofstra game. The team will fly back across the county Tuesday before heading north for games Thursday at San Jose State on and Saturday at Pacific.

The Hofstra game looks like a hard trip for a meaningless game--except to a team that has won only five games.

“It’s an opportunity to win a basketball game against a Division I team,” Baker said.

Irvine’s biggest game is Thursday’s meeting with the Spartans, one of only three Big West teams the Anteaters have defeated and a rival for the tournament’s final berth.

One more reason the next four games are crucial is because of what follows. Irvine finishes its season against Cal State Long Beach, Nevada Las Vegas and New Mexico State, the top three teams in the standings.

“If we go 0 for (next) week, those three aren’t going to save our lives,” Baker said. “If we can get half or more, then I think we’re in real good position.”

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View from the bench: Baker’s benching of Jeff Von Lutzow, Keith Stewart and Lloyd Mumford for the first six minutes of the second half Monday was hard to figure, all the more so because Baker said he wasn’t trying to punish the three.

Baker said Tuesday he went with Elzie Love, Todd Whitehead and Zuri Williams at the outset of the second half because he liked the way they had played at the end of the first.

“The biggest thing was those guys were in the game at the end of the half and they had a couple of good possessions offensively and defensively,” Baker said. “They earned an opportunity to start the second half.”

Von Lutzow, Stewart and particularly Mumford didn’t play well in falling behind by 15 at the half, and they earned an opportunity to stay seated while the other three joined starters Shaun Battle and Dee Boyer to give Irvine a lineup of two freshmen, two sophomores and a community college transfer. That lineup was averaging a total of 19.3 points a game, compared to the other group’s 58.6 average.

The odd aspect about the benching was that Baker didn’t seem angry with his starters later.

“I just chalked it up,” Baker said. “I don’t think we didn’t try. We just didn’t have it.”

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Titan factor: Irvine’s 18-point loss to Santa Barbara came two nights after a highly charged overtime victory against Fullerton in the first meeting since a fight between the teams in January.

“The emotion factor took a lot out of us,” Baker said.

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Stat of the week: The Anteaters had more turnovers (23) than field goals (22) in their loss to the Gauchos.

It was the second time this season the Anteaters have lost the ball more times than they have put it in the basket.

The other game was against Tulane, when Irvine had a season-high 28 turnovers and made only 24 field goals during an 86-65 loss Jan. 2.

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Point, counter-point: Santa Barbara point guard Ray Kelly got the best of Mumford in the first Irvine-Santa Barbara game this season, and he made it two for two against Mumford with 16 assists, six steals, six rebounds in Monday’s game.

Mumford’s inability to guard Kelly helped land him on the bench for the first six minutes of the second half.

“I’m speaking for me, but maybe he got himself too worked up to settle the score with Ray Kelly,” Baker said.

Mumford finished with five turnovers, three assists and eight points, the first time since the season-opener that he hasn’t reached double figures. Still, he was strikingly gracious about Kelly’s performance. With his 16th assist of the game, Kelly became Santa Barbara’s career-assist leader, breaking Carlton Davenport’s record of 444.

“That’s a milestone for him and the university,” Mumford said. “I’m happy for him personally, because I know him. He had a real good game.”