UC Irvine Throws Away Its Chance to Upset New Mexico State

They thought they could this time, too, but they didn’t.

New T-shirts awaited UC Irvine’s players Friday before their first-round Big West Conference tournament game, just like last year. So did the tournament’s top-seeded team.

“We did it before. We will do it again,” read the shirts Irvine Coach Rod Baker gave his 6-20 Anteaters before they faced New Mexico State.

A year ago, the message underneath the jerseys when Irvine pulled a tournament upset of UC Santa Barbara was simple: “We think we can.”

But the Anteaters didn’t manage to repeat their feat, falling, 87-76, to New Mexico State at Long Beach Arena despite being as close as three points in the final four minutes and trailing by only four with 2:03 left.

The possibility of an upset hung in the air Friday afternoon, close enough to touch.

But what Irvine can touch, it can also throw away. The basketball, for example. The killer statistic for Irvine was turnovers. The Anteaters had 32, a tournament record and was one short of the school record of 33 set against the Aggies on Jan. 21, 1991.

“We turned the ball over 30-something times, and with three minutes left, it’s a four-point ball game, and we have the ball, so you tell me,” Baker said. “That’s 32 times when we didn’t get a shot. Let’s say we turn it over half that, 16 times, that’s 16 times we didn’t get a shot, and if we’d made half of them, that’s the difference in the game.”

It was the third time this season Irvine played the Aggies close. New Mexico State won in overtime in Las Cruces in January, then beat Irvine by two last week in the Bren Center.

“I have no reason why we play the way we do against Irvine,” Aggie Coach Neil McCarthy said. “I don’t know, so give Irvine credit.”

Irvine outshot New Mexico State, 53.7% to 44.9%, and outrebounded the Aggies, 44-31.

“We shot probably better against New Mexico State than we did against anybody else, maybe with the exception of Southern California College,” Baker said. “We shot the hell out of the ball against ‘em, but we didn’t get enough shots. . . . When you turn the ball over 32 times--I’d love to have a couple of those possessions back.”

The Aggies (24-6) were led by reserve guard Corey Rogers’ 19 points. Rogers made five of seven three-point shots, and added four assists. Tracey Ware added 17 points, and point guard Sam Crawford had 16 points, six assists and seven of his team’s school-record 22 steals.

The Aggies were without forward Eric Traylor, who did not suit up because a question arose about his academic eligibility.

Against Irvine, the Aggies didn’t begin to look safe until 2:21 remained, when Ware banked in a short jump shot and made a free throw after being fouled by Dee Boyer. That gave the Aggies a 77-71 lead after they spent the previous couple of minutes watching Irvine twice slash the lead to three, once on a one-handed slam of an offensive rebound by freshman Shaun Battle and later on two free throws by LaDay Smith after he pulled down an offensive rebound, threw a pump fake and was fouled.

Irvine had an opportunity to cut the lead to one with about three minutes left, but Smith was called for a player control foul as he pivoted in the lane.

Ware’s three-point play made the lead six, but Smith scored on the other end, and then Irvine caught a break when Aggie guard Marc Thompson lost the ball off his leg for a back-court violation.

But on the other end, Ware blocked Lloyd Mumford’s six-foot shot with about 1 1/2 minutes left. The Aggies scored the next five points from the line, and it was over. So was Irvine’s season. At 6-21, they failed to match last year’s victory total of 7-22.

Irvine’s players thought they could cap their dismal season with an upset.

“I felt like it was going to be a rerun of last year,” senior Jeff Von Lutzow said. “I was real confident coming into the game. I thought even in the last two minutes we were going to win.”

If you wanted snapshots of Irvine’s season--who knows why?--they were there during the loss to the Aggies. There was point guard Lloyd Mumford, interrupting an 18-point game, some outstanding long-range shooting and a handful of assists with 10 turnovers. There was Von Lutzow, scoring 16 points but committing seven turnovers. There was freshman Todd Whitehead, making heads-up plays one minute and fouling on layups for three-point plays.

Irvine’s game plan--Take Care of the Ball--wasn’t followed. Baker gave part of the credit to the Aggies’ aggressive, athletic defense but put part of the blame on his players.

“They really extended us,” Baker said. “They extended the floor for, I’ll say, 30 out of the 40 minutes. They had us pushed away from the basket. It really made it difficult for us to pass and catch. And we made it a little bit easier for them to get 22 steals. A couple of them we kind of served on a platter to them.”

“That’s a good basketball team, though. That’s a 24-6 team that won the Alaska Shootout and won this conference outright. Don’t mistake that because of the fact that lowly Irvine could play with them on three nights, please don’t try to make anything of it other than the fact that we were good three nights this year.”

Anteater Notes

Lloyd Mumford set a school record for assists in a season with 151, breaking the record of 150 set by George Turner during the 1982-83 season. . . . Jeff Von Lutzow finished his career with 1,284 points, sixth in school history. He passed Ricky Butler to place eighth in rebounds, with 614.