UC Santa Barbara Handles Anteaters : Basketball: Rare off-night for Miglinieks dooms UC Irvine, which loses, 79-73, at the Thunderdome.

GOLETA — He has been the most consistent offensive force on an up-and-down team, the playmaker, the man who they look to in the clutch, the top three-point shooter, the second-best free-throw shooter.

But Thursday night, Raimonds Miglinieks “had not a very good game,” and UC Irvine lost to UC Santa Barbara, 79-73, in front of 2,123 at the Thunderdome.

Miglinieks did not make a field goal in 12 attempts. He missed seven three pointers. And with 1 minute 16 seconds to play and the Anteaters trailing by three, he missed two free throws.

“Those were very important free throws I missed,” said Miglinieks, a former Red Army conscript from Riga, Latvia. “Maybe it is different game if I make those.”

And maybe not.

Irvine (9-14, 5-11 in the Big West) did not deserve to win this one. Not including reserve forward Khalid Channell, who made 11 of 14 shots and scored a career-high 23 points, the Anteaters shot 28% from the floor.

Santa Barbara (12-11, 7-8) might not have deserved to win either, but somebody had to take the victory. So guard Lelan McDougal, who had a game-high 25 points, embraced it alone, making six of seven free throws in the final 1:47 when the Anteaters were forced to foul and hope.

“I just tried to get in my rhythm and treat those last free throws like it was the beginning of the game,” McDougal said. “When they came at us with the zone, we moved the ball around really well and nobody was being selfish so it created a lot of good looks for me.”

Santa Barbara, which opened conference play with victories over New Mexico State and UNLV, has been struggling ever since and had lost three in a row before Thursday night. The Gauchos had scored 70 or more points only twice in the last 13 games, but Irvine’s inept shooting opened things up.

Call them the Runnin’ Gauchos.

“We had 28 fast-break opportunities tonight,” Santa Barbara Coach Jerry Pimm said. “And even though we didn’t convert them all, we really wanted to open it because we felt like we had more numbers than they did. It was a major point of emphasis.”

Irvine was without the services of starting forward Michael Tate, who had returned home to Los Angeles to take care of a family problem. The Anteaters all wore tape on their wrists or ankles with Tate’s No. 55 written in black ink, but they probably hope he never sees the tape of this effort.

“We really wanted to win this one for Michael,” Channell said. “I’d much rather have zero (points) and a victory.”

The Anteaters made only eight of their first 25 shots and were on their heels the rest of the night. The first half was pretty ugly, an exhibition of bad shooting, poor passing and lackluster defense all around. But the Gauchos were a bit more solid and led, 46-39.

“I think we seemed to come out very tentative, but I don’t think either team would like to see the first half preserved for prosperity,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said. “We both struggled. They just gathered themselves before we did.”

Irvine made one of 14 three-point attempts, its lowest total from beyond the arc in three years. And still the Anteaters hung close until the bitter end and managed to tie the score, 68-68, when Channell was fouled on a driving layup and made the basket and the free throw with 2:45 left.

“We saw the hump a whole bunch of times,” Baker said. “We just never got over it.”

And that could be an appropriate inscription to be engraved on the tombstone of this year’s team.