Stage Set for Upset, but New Mexico State Sets Down UCI

One team already had all but reached the top, with its Big West Conference championship banner furled in the stands and a knot of eager fans ready to strut and laugh and hold the banner high.

The other team--UC Irvine--hasn’t had cause to strut in quite some time. If the Anteaters had held tight and claimed the upset they threatened Saturday night against New Mexico State, it would have been only their seventh victory of the season.

Five minutes into the second half, Irvine led by 10 points. With 9:41 left, Aggie Coach Neil McCarthy’s complaints earned him a double-technical and automatic ejection.

The stage was set, but New Mexico State finally got to raise its banner with a 76-74 victory, winning its first outright Big West title in front of 2,660 Saturday in the Bren Center.

Irvine (6-20, 4-14) trailed by five with 13 seconds left and cut the lead to two with 5.9 seconds left on Jeff Von Lutzow’s three-pointer, but the Anteaters were out of timeouts and out of time.

“It’s extremely disappointing,” said Irvine Coach Rod Baker, whose team will face the top-seeded Aggies in a rematch at 3 p.m. Friday in the first round of the tournament at Long Beach Arena. “To have a team as good as this one down and really on the ropes a little bit, (and then) to let them off the hook is extremely disappointing.”

When McCarthy was ejected by official Jim Loustalot for the language of his complaints--”I deserved it,” McCarthy said--Irvine had a 57-52 lead. The lead was eight after freshman Todd Whitehead made three of four technical free throws.

But not much later, Aggie guard Sam Crawford took over. McCarthy, watching from the television truck outside, saw his team shake of its emotionless play and step up its defense.

“Great players take over,” Baker said.

Crawford passed and shot and forced turnovers, tying the score, 64-64, on a layup with 4:08 left after Lloyd Mumford was stripped of the ball on the other end for one of the Anteaters’ 24 turnovers.

On Irvine’s next possession, Crawford battled Mumford for a loose ball, managing to slap it ahead to start a fast break, and Cliff Reed finished with a dunk for a four-point lead. Irvine tied the score once more, but Crawford used a screen to get open and calmly sink a baseline 12-footer for a four- point lead with 1:33 left. He made the lead six with two free throws with 50 seconds left.

Over the last seven minutes, he had 13 points, finishing with 23 points, nine assists and five steals. Reed added 16 points for New Mexico State (23-6, 15-3).

Irvine was led by a 21-point, 10-assist performance from Mumford, who made five of nine three-pointers, and by Whitehead’s 16 points.

“Both of those guys carried us,” Baker said.

The subtext of the game was that these teams will meet again in five days. New Mexico State has won twice, but needed an overtime for a 72-68 victory in January in Las Cruces and had to come from behind Saturday.

“It’s another big game,” Crawford said. “We feel like we’re going to win, and they feel like they’re going to win. We feel we have the edge, but when it’s a one-game thing, there is no edge.”

Baker looks at the situation and thinks of last year, when the Anteaters played UC Santa Barbara close twice during the regular season, then went into the tournament as the No. 8-seeded team and upset the top-seeded Gauchos.

“I would hope they would come in overconfident,” he said of the Aggies. “I don’t think they will.”

Marc Thompson wonders if the Aggies have given Irvine a taste of opportunity--”Or, they might think they can’t beat us no matter what they do,” he said.

“I feel we can beat them,” said Mumford, who cursed in disappointment as the game ended, then hugged Crawford and congratulated him. “We have to play harder and not play in spurts, where we play good for a while and then bad.”

Anteater Notes

UC Irvine won the No. 8 seeding because of its 3-1 record against San Jose State and Nevada, which also tied for eighth. San Jose State was 2-2 and Nevada was 1-3. . . . Seniors Craig Marshall, Uzoma Obiekea, Keith Stewart and Jeff Von Lutzow were honored before their final home game, and Marshall and Obiekea made honorary starts, joining Von Lutzow, a regular starter. Stewart is ineligible. . . . New Mexico State guard Sam Crawford did not start because he was late for Friday’s practice.