Anteaters Run Out of Excuses in Loss to Nevada

UC Irvine lost its Big West opener to Cal State Fullerton and it was, “Yeah, but anything can happen in a rivalry like that.” Then, the Anteaters lost at Nevada Las Vegas and it was, “Yeah, but it was close and we led by nine at halftime.” And then they lost by five at New Mexico State and it was, “Yeah, but last year the Aggies beat us by 30 down there.”

Saturday night before 2,604 at the Bren Center, Irvine ran out of “yeah, buts.” The Anteaters looked flat and listless and lost, 95-83, to Nevada, which has managed only four Big West road victories in the past three seasons.

“I think we came off the road feeling a little too good about ourselves,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said. “It depends on how you want to look at it. Those games were close, but the bottom line is they were failures. And two losses don’t teach you anything about how to win.”

Irvine, full of high aspirations and expectations after a 4-3 nonconference mark, is 0-4 in the Big West, 4-7 overall. The Wolf Pack (7-6, 3-2) led by 12 points at halftime after a 16-2 run midway through the first half and hit a season high in scoring, largely because of the play of reserve Damien Edwards. Edwards hit 11 of 12 shots from the floor and grabbed six offensive rebounds.

“We turned a role player into a major force,” Baker said. “You can’t let a guy come off the bench and miss just one shot.”

Edwards, who was averaging six points and had a season high of 11, finished with 27 points and 10 rebounds.

“Edwards played really well and he gave us a big lift in the first half when he came in and turned five offensive rebounds into five baskets,” Nevada Coach Pat Foster said. “Any win on the road is a good win in this conference, but we played really well tonight, which is pleasing since we’ve been in a win-one-lose-one mode lately.”

It’s a mode the Anteaters would embrace at the moment. Saturday night was clearly the low point of a four-game losing streak.

The game figured to be an appealing matchup of the conference’s top two assist men. Nevada’s Eathan O’Bryant held up his end of the deal with 13 assists and 15 points. Irvine’s Raimonds Miglinieks had a generally uninspired performance, finishing with six points and six assists.

Senior forward Mark Odsather did his best to keep the Anteaters in the game, hitting 10 of 17 shots from the field for a career-high 26 points. But this game was won and lost underneath the boards where the Wolf Pack pretty much had their way. Their hustle and muscle was the difference in the first half when Nevada held a 24-15 advantage in rebounds and a 46-34 lead.

“I think we played hard in the second half, but you can’t give a team of that quality a 12-point advantage and expect to come back,” Baker said.

Was he disappointed with his team’s level of intensity in the first half?

“Anybody who bought a ticket tonight should be disappointed in our effort in the first half,” he said.

The Anteaters, who had fashioned impressive first halves against UNLV and the 24th-ranked Aggies, put together a stinker this time around. They seemed to get a momentary lift at the 6-minute 32-second mark, when senior Chris Brown emerged from a two-game suspension and hit a couple of jumpers--the first snapping a 12-0 Nevada run--but the Anteaters never got closer than seven and that came late in the second half when Nevada was more interested in running time off the clock than scoring.

“Momentum is everything in college basketball,” Foster said. “Irvine went on the road for those two really tough games, they should have won at Vegas and they played really well in New Mexico. They had to be a little down after that. I think we caught them under the right circumstances.

“The thing is that this league is such that once you get down, it’s really, really hard to get up.”

That truth is evident to the Anteaters. And once again, they find themselves on their backs in the cellar.