Anteaters Come Up Cold Against Utah : Basketball: UCI shoots only 34% from the field and Utah turns the game into a rout by halftime.

It was supposed to be a measure of progress, an early season test that would prove this would not be another season of only six or seven victories.

UC Irvine didn’t really need to beat Utah Tuesday night at the Huntsman Center, but a 92-66 thumping wasn’t what the Anteaters had in mind, either.

“We expected to be a helluva lot more representative,” said Irvine Coach Rod Baker, slumped in a folding chair in a deserted locker room. “We’re not ready to bail out. It just means that we have a lot more work to do.”

What the Anteaters (1-1) need most is to figure out a way to get the ball to go through the basket after they let it loose. A group of Annie Oakley’s they aren’t. They were so cold on this night, some of the 12,581 Ute fans on hand might have been tempted to pass down their down parkas in sympathy.

The snow fell outside and the bricks fell inside.

Baker lamented his team’s lack of aggressiveness on the boards and its inability to keep Utah from scoring outside, but Irvine took eight more shots than Utah and attempted two more free throws. The difference in the game? Irvine shot 34% from the field and 64% from the free-throw line. The Utes shot 53% from the floor and 81% from the line.

“We couldn’t do anything offensively to help ourselves,” Baker said. “And when we got the ball inside we couldn’t handle it. It was almost as if it were alive.”

Irvine fell behind, 10-2, then fought back to tie the score, 10-10. The Anteaters trailed again, 21-14, and then battled to pull to within two, 21-19. But they ran out of catch-up midway through the first half when the Utes went on a 19-0 run. Utah led at the half, 54-29.

Irvine scored the first 10 points of the second half and reduced the deficit to 13 points at 56-43, but Utah (2-0) regrouped and kept at least a 15-point margin the rest of the way.

“It was just a long, long way to go by then,” Baker said. “And these guys aren’t Mississippi Valley State. They were able to say, ‘OK, we played absolutely awful for five minutes and we’re still up by 15.’ They weren’t ready to roll over yet.

“This is a catch-and-shoot team and we wanted to make them do something with the ball before they got their shots.

The Utes shot 46% in the second half after ripping the nets to the tune of 59% in the first half, but the game was pretty much over when Utah went up by 23 points with four minutes remaining before intermission.

Irvine, trying to put the 7-22 and 6-21 records of the past two seasons behind it, came in to face a Utah team that was missing two players--Darroll Wright and Ed Johnson--who were suspended by the university for a campus incident.

“We thought we could win this game,” Irvine guard Lloyd Mumford said. “This is one of the most disappointing losses for me ever.”

Utah has just one starter back from last year’s team that advanced to the second round of the NCAA playoffs, but the Utes are loaded with talented newcomers. Keith Van Horn, a freshman forward from Diamond Bar, made nine of 12 field goal attempts and eight of 12 free throws to lead the Utes with 27 points.

“We came in here feeling like this was a game we could win, should win,” said Irvine forward Jermaine Avie, a transfer from College of Eastern Utah. “Our defense was pretty good and we forced some turnovers (23), but we just couldn’t make the baskets. I can’t explain it.”