Anteaters Continue Their Run : College basketball: UC Irvine defeats Utah State, 78-68, to move into semifinals of the Big West Tournament.

UC Irvine, presented with another postseason opportunity for redemption after a regular season of disappointment and dismay, seized the day again Friday.

The Anteaters, who stumbled, staggered and succumbed en route to a last-place finish in the Big West, earned a spot in the conference tournament semifinals with a 78-68 victory over second-seeded Utah State in the Thomas & Mack Center. Irvine (9-19) will meet Pacific (17-13) at 6 tonight.

Irvine trailed by 11 points with 17 1/2 minutes left in the game, but rallied behind an inspired defense that forced 22 Utah State turnovers and the outside shooting of guard Chris Brown. The junior guard scored Irvine’s first 13 points of the second half--including three NBA-range three-pointers in the first 6 1/2 minutes--and 19 of his 26 points after the intermission.

“In my 20 years in this game I’ve been around some good shooters, but no one, hands down, shoots the ball like Chris day in and day out,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said. “He takes some shots I used to cringe at, but the fact is he makes shots most guys can’t make.”

Baker has built his program around a belly-to-belly man-to-man defense, but the Anteaters employed nothing but zone in the second half. They held 7-footer Nate Wickizer to four points in the game and guard Corwin Woodard, who had 24 in the first half, to only seven in the second.

“I’m not the kind of coach who refuses to give the other team credit,” Utah State Coach Larry Eustachy said. “And I can’t help but feel happy for Rod because they’ve had more than their share of adversity. And there’s no doubt the tougher team won today.”

Senior point guard Lloyd Mumford managed to rally his teammates from a 38-30 halftime deficit with a combination of athleticism, accurate free-throw shooting and sheer will.

“I was sitting in there at halftime thinking about the possibility of this being my last game,” Mumford said, “and I looked at the faces of my teammates and saw that they were depending on me.”

Mumford, who scored 26 points and had seven assists, responded by making a coast-to-coast flying layup and five of six free throws in the final 1:04 as Irvine turned a four-point advantage into a runaway victory with help from Eustachy, who drew his second technical of the game with eight seconds left. His midcourt tantrum in the face of official Tom Harrington would have made Leo Durocher proud.

“It wasn’t the officiating, it was more frustration with the way we played,” Eustachy said. “I’d seen enough and figured it was time to go to the locker room.”

After the game, the Irvine locker room wasn’t much louder than the empty one Eustachy entered. The Anteaters have assumed the businesslike approach of a team that is supposed to be two victories away from a berth in the NCAA tournament.

“When a team has been down like we’ve been down, you would expect a lot of celebrating,” Mumford said, “but mostly guys were just quietly getting dressed. We’re happy, but you can see in the guys’ eyes that we’re thinking about the future.

“We’ve come together as a team and we’re doing things we haven’t done in a long time.”

Such as winning two in a row, a feat the Anteaters accomplished only once this season when they beat Cal State Fullerton in the Big West opener after upsetting Iowa five nights earlier. They harbored high hopes for the season then, but those hopes disintegrated into a succession of overtime defeats, assorted near misses and a few horrible performances, including an 88-79 loss at Pacific when they shot 39% from the floor. The Tigers also beat the Anteaters in Irvine, 73-71.

“I’ve never beaten Pacific since I’ve been here, but that’s all irrelevant now,” Baker said. “We’re not the 10th-seeded team anymore. (Thursday), we became the No. 7 seed and today we became the No. 2 seed.

“I can’t tell you that we’re supposed to be a No. 2 seed, but the fact is, now that it counts, we are.”