UC Irvine Feels Fine After Beating Titans

UC Irvine, working some magic with numbers in its Big West Conference opener Monday night, made 10 minutes hold up for 40 at Cal State Fullerton.

The Anteaters seized a 20-point lead before the first wrinkle appeared in Titan Coach Brad Holland’s suit and then made 14 of 14 second-half free-throw attempts--six in a row in the final 1:43--to hold on, 77-71, in front of 973 in Titan Gym.

But forget the details. Twenty points, 10 points, a six-point victory, Irvine Coach Rod Baker wasn’t counting.

“We feel good,” Baker said. “The fact is, this is a conference game on the road. That’s what I told them (in the locker room afterward). Right now, we’re in first place in the conference. Right now, somebody has got to take that away from us.”

To most colleges, being in first place with a 1-0 record might not be such a big deal but, remember, “basketball success” in Orange County is an oxymoron lately. The last time Irvine occupied a 1-0 hold on first place was on Jan. 5, 1984, when the Anteaters won their Big West opener against New Mexico State. This is the earliest Irvine (4-4, 1-0) has won four games since the 1987-88 season.

Chris Brown, the Big West player of week after scoring 29 against Iowa on Wednesday, led the Anteaters with 15 points and Lloyd Mumford added 14. Winston Peterson led Fullerton (2-7, 0-1) with 15.

Down the hall in the Fullerton locker room, Holland was just wondering when his players will realize that the game officially begins with the opening tip.

“I think we’ve shown this year that we’re a slow-starting team, and I don’t understand why,” said Holland, whose team trailed Oklahoma Baptist at halftime before coming back to win. “Once again, we didn’t put 40 minutes together. You’ve got to do that, especially in this conference.”

Before Monday, the closest eight of Fullerton’s nine players had gotten to the Big West Conference was when Holland talked about it during practice. And in the first few minutes against Irvine, it looked as if maybe these new Titans had wandered into the wrong conference.

That, or Irvine’s victory over Iowa last week was the beginning of an Anteater dynasty.

The Anteaters, as perfect as a rainbow, scored the first 10 points against Fullerton and led by 20, 27-7, by the time the first-half clock wound down to 9:11.

It was Fullerton’s worst nightmare. The Titans didn’t score a point for the first four minutes and only managed two in the first six. They committed 12 turnovers, many of them unforced. There was Darren Little, dribbling off his foot out of bounds. There was Greg Vernon, driving the lane, going into the air, and firing a pass out of bounds. There was James French, stepping into the paint, passing up an open six-footer and passing out of bounds.

Irvine, meanwhile, was cramming the ball inside at will. Junior transfer Jermaine Avie dropped in 10 points as easy as pitching pennies into a wishing well.

But just when things were going from rout to ridiculous, Fullerton suddenly pulled things together. And of all things, it was because two freshmen started playing like upperclassmen.

Guard Chris St. Clair pulled down four rebounds, and forward Josh King fired in three consecutive three-pointers around the five-minute mark. King, a raw freshman, nearly matched his career-high of 10 points during the 1:44 span. Vernon added another three and the margin eventually shriveled to six, 34-28.

Irvine wasn’t surprised.

“At no moment did I think those guys were going to lay down,” Baker said. “You don’t practice that hard and work that hard every day just to lay down. If they could settle in and stop the bleeding a little bit, they would be OK, and they did.”

It was a 10-point game at the half, 40-30, which, given the circumstances, couldn’t have been too displeasing to either side.

Notes

UCI Coach Rod Baker said that guards Zuri Williams and Todd Whitehead, who were suspended last week after being cited for shoplifting, will probably sit out Saturday’s game against Cal State Northridge.