UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / JOHN WEYLER : Water Polo Crunch Time Brings Out the Best in Hakim’s Game

The Anteaters could be playing for the NCAA water polo championship this weekend at Long Beach’s Belmont Plaza, but it won’t matter if it’s only a consolation game.

You still might catch Greg Hakim smiling.

Up a goal, down a goal, any kind of crunch time makes him almost giddy.

“A game comes down to late in the fourth quarter and I can’t keep from grinning. It’s just so fun,” he said. “When the pressure is on, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what I’ve waited for and worked for all this time.”

When Hakim was a freshman--five long years ago--a wave of flu swept over the team and he got into a game against Long Beach State, scored a couple of goals and got a taste of big-time collegiate water polo.

He spent most of the next four years working his tail off in practice and watching Pablo Yrizar establish school scoring records during games. But Yrizar graduated last spring and Hakim’s perseverance has paid off with an opportunity he hasn’t wasted.

Last month, Hakim, who’s third on the team with 33 points, including two two-point goals, scored the game-winning goal as Irvine upset then third-ranked University of the Pacific. A few days later, he scored a two-point goal to give the Anteaters a 9-8 victory over UCLA. He also scored twice when Irvine upset No. 1-ranked Stanford, 9-8, in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament.

“I don’t think of them as game-winning goals, I just thinking of it as being in the right place at the right time,” he said. “But, oh yeah, it does feel great.”

Waiting and watching didn’t feel so great, but Hakim says he never thought about quitting. He never thought about asking Coach Ted Newland about his future, either. He just kept practicing hard and working to improve.

“A couple of the guys I came in with as freshman have had talks with Coach Newland about stuff like that, but I don’t think I ever really wanted to know what he thought,” Hakim said. “I never wanted to hear that I had no chance. Anyway, it wasn’t going to matter to me.

“There are so many things that I like about water polo. There were a lot of times when I was really frustrated and really mad that I wasn’t playing, but I could never see myself backing down. Just being part of the program was exciting for me and I was going to play here if that meant only practicing.

“And I guess my ego was just big enough to think that I was going to play eventually.”

Out of the pool, Hakim is not exactly an imposing presence. He’s 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds with his hair wet. When he started playing water polo at Terra Linda High School in San Rafael, he was 5-3, 105 pounds. After graduating from high school, he was a little bigger, but the recruiters weren’t exactly tying up the family phone line. After one phone conversation with Newland--Hakim made the call--he decided to walk on at Irvine.

“I went to a couple of tournaments when I was in high school and watched some of the top college teams play,” he said. “I really liked the attitude of the Irvine team and the whole reputation about the program.

“You know, Stanford and Cal get all the heroes, but Irvine has a great tradition of over-achieving.”

It turned out to be a perfect marriage of player and program.

“You know, when I found myself not playing, I would always turn it back toward me and ask myself, ‘What do I have to do to become a player?’ ” he said, “I know that motivated me to become a better player, but I also think it helped me grow as a person.”

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Old vs. new: Irvine, seeded No. 4 in the NCAA water polo tournament, opens against fifth-seeded Pacific at 5 p.m. Friday. UOP is making its first appearance in the tournament. Irvine has participated in 21 of the 24 NCAA tournaments, more than any other school.

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Prime candidate: Count on Athletic Director Dan Guerrero to try to talk Marine Cano, the men’s and women’s soccer coach at Cal State Dominguez Hills, into applying for Irvine’s new director of soccer/women’s head coach position.

Guerrero, the A.D. at Dominguez Hills for 4 1/2 years before coming to Irvine, is both a good friend and a big fan of Cano, who led the CSDH women’s team to the NCAA Division II title in 1991.

Last year, Cano was offered the USC women’s job, which included a $15,000 recruiting budget, but turned it down when salary negotiations broke down.

Salary could also be a stumbling block in Guerrero’s pursuit of Cano, who earns a healthy salary for coaching both the men’s and women’s teams at Dominguez Hills.

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Zuri flurry: Basketball Coach Rod Baker has been impressed with the play of junior Zuri Williams during the exhibition games. Williams, who will play point guard this season to free up Lloyd Mumford to score more, had a disappointing sophomore year after playing in every game as a freshman.

“I guess I’m going to honor some of the lies I told (Williams’ parents) Robert and Mona,” Baker said. “All this time, Zuri never once said anything about playing time, though. He made the step up this summer and he has earned the opportunity.

“From the first day I saw him, playing in a summer league in a backcourt with a kid named (Jason) Kidd, Zuri was handling the ball and getting people where he needed to.”

Anteater Notes

If the San Jose State women’s volleyball team beats Nevada tonight, the Spartans will finish in fifth place in the Big West, a notch ahead of Irvine (15-13, 8-10 in conference). That probably means the Spartans, ranked No. 5 in the Northwest Region, will receive an NCAA berth and the Anteaters, ranked No. 7, will be invited to play in the National Invitational Volleyball Championships, a volleyball version of the basketball NIT. But if Nevada wins, Irvine and San Jose tie for fifth and both might be left out of the NCAA tournament, which means San Jose might get the NIVC nod, leaving Irvine out of postseason action.

Guard Lloyd Mumford, on the basketball team’s new togetherness: “We’re all on the same page. We’re putting individualism aside. We do everything together and stuff like that off the court helps you a lot. That’s what we have this year that we didn’t have last year.”