Six Years Later, Close Still Counts for Ex-Anteater Hess : Basketball: Former Corona del Mar standout knows anguish latest UCI team felt when it barely missed an NCAA berth.

Mike Hess knows all about the heartbreak that point guard Lloyd Mumford has endured.

Last season, Mumford and the UC Irvine basketball team almost clinched the school’s first berth in the NCAA tournament.

The Anteaters--seeded 10th for the Big West Conference tournament--finished the regular season with a 7-19 record, but three consecutive upsets put the team in the championship game against New Mexico State. A victory in the final and Irvine would have earned the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAAs.

With 2 1/2 minutes remaining, Irvine was tied with the Aggies, 62-62. But New Mexico State made eight free throws down the stretch and pulled away for a 70-64 victory at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

Hess watched the Anteaters’ demise on TV, but it was no deja view. He lived Mumford’s nightmare.

Six years ago, Hess, a graduate of Corona del Mar High, was the point guard who helped the Anteaters on another improbable run to the conference tournament final.

In 1988, Hess and fellow senior Wayne Engelstad led UCI to upsets of Long Beach State and Nevada Las Vegas--then ranked seventh in the nation--to reach the final.

But Irvine ran out of gas. After leading Utah State by seven points at halftime, UCI lost, 86-79. Irvine is the only school in the conference that has never appeared in the NCAA basketball tournament.

“As an athlete, that’s the type of event in your life that you won’t ever forget or get over,” Hess said. “But it isn’t something that keeps me up at night. I followed this year’s team and they got close just like us.

“Maybe it’s a curse, I don’t know.”

Mumford cursed the loss in last season’s final; saddened, like Hess, about the missed opportunity.

“It hurts,” Mumford said in March. “A couple of missed foul shots and 10 or 15 more seconds and we could have been going to the big dance.”

Hess was disappointed the Anteaters couldn’t win the big game last season or six years ago.

“Every year when the NCAAs roll around I think about how I could have been in that event,” Hess said. “Only 64 teams in the country get to go, and we came within 20 minutes of getting there.”

Although Engelstad, who averaged 29 points in three games, was named the most valuable player of the 1988 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament, Hess was just as instrumental to the Anteaters’ late-season success.

“Without Mike Hess, we wouldn’t have gotten the ball up court to get it to Wayne,” said Chapman Coach Mike Bokosky, then an assistant at Irvine.

But putting Hess at the point was a new revelation for UCI late in that season.

Irvine Valley Coach Bill Mulligan, then at UCI, wanted to take advantage of Hess’s shooting touch. Hess, who shot 53% from the field as a junior, started at off-guard as a senior.

“We thought he could be a shooting guard,” Bokosky said. “But we finally wised up and put him back at his position.”

Said Hess: “I had always been a point guard. Coach Jack Errion, from Day 1, put me there at Corona del Mar.”

At Corona del Mar, Hess was a two-time All-Southern Section selection and Sea View League MVP after averaging 11 points his senior season.

“A lot of big schools were after him, but he chose Texas over others including Stanford,” Bokosky said. “The Southwest Conference was the premier conference at the time, with the Phi Slamma Jamma guys like Hakeem Olajuwon at Houston.”

But after playing in only five games with one start in his freshman year at Texas, Hess was ready to transfer to a school closer to home.

After redshirting in his first season at Irvine, he helped the Anteaters reach the National Invitation Tournament in 1986. That season, the Anteaters defeated Nevada Las Vegas twice and beat UCLA in the first round of the NIT.

After a mediocre season in 1986-87, Hess endured the roller-coaster ride as a senior when the Anteaters finished the regular season, 14-13 and 9-9 in conference.

Hess, whom Mulligan called “the all-time overachiever,” moved to the point three games before the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament, and the switch invigorated the team.

“I remember when the coaches were trying to figure out how to break Long Beach State’s press,” Hess said. “Assistant Coach Tim Murphy said, ‘Well, you’ve got a point guard you’re not even using. Just have Hess come back and get the ball and bring it up.’

“Mulligan made the change and we ended up losing by only (eight points) at Long Beach State. We lost by 20 to Long Beach at home the first time we played them.”

The Anteaters apparently stumbled into the tournament with another loss to UC Santa Barbara, but they were prepared for Long Beach State in the first round of the PCAA tournament.

Although Morlon Wiley, who was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks, and the 49ers beat Irvine twice in the regular season, the Anteaters won the game that counted.

“It’s always good to know if someone like Morlon kicks your butt like that, at least they’re good enough to make the NBA,” said Hess, who averaged seven points and 3.2 assists in three seasons at Irvine.

“Whether it was trying to chase (Houston Rockets and former Irvine guard) Scott Brooks around for three years in practice or defending Wiley, now you realize that hey, they really are that good. You don’t feel so bad.”

Although Hess’ final collegiate game left a bad taste in his mouth, he stayed at Irvine as a graduate assistant for two seasons from 1988-90.

He earned a degree in social ecology and a Master’s in business adminstration from Irvine.

Hess last played competitively for one season in Dusseldorf, Germany, averaging 25 points during the 1990-91 season.

“That was the most I’ve ever scored in my life,” Hess said.

The most competitive basketball Hess plays now is in the annual Corona del Mar Alumni basketball tournament. The sixth annual one-day tournament, which also will feature former Loyola Marymount standout Jeff Fryer, begins Saturday at the high school.

More than 150 players will participate in the tournament, featuring teams from graduating classes of the mid-1970s to the Class of 1994.

Proceeds of the tournament will benefit the Corona del Mar basketball program.

Although he has seen former teammates, like Brooks, Engelstad, Tod Murphy, and Johnny Rogers make a living playing basketball professionally, he is perfectly happy leaving his basketball career behind.

When he returned home from traveling in Europe after his one season in Germany, Hess was ready to move on to other things.

He has put his MBA to good use and now works out of his home office in Newport Beach as a sales representative for Proctor & Gamble.

“I wanted to challenge myself in another way,” Hess said. “Here, my background in athletics means nothing. It’s a brand new playing field with completely different rules, but it’s still a lot like sports.

“I just have to win over prospective clients in a different way.”

So what does Hess--1983’s best high school point guard prospect in Orange County--tell people who ask where his career has taken him?

Hess said smiling: “I sell diapers now.”