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Anteaters Lose Simmons, Then Game to Oregon State

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

UC Irvine, riding an all-time high in New York a week ago, came crashing to earth in a hurry Saturday.

And it wasn’t just the 64-57 loss to Oregon State in front of 3,851 in Gill Coliseum that cast a pall over the Anteaters’ locker room. Late in the second half, Kevin Simmons went down under the Beaver basket writhing in pain and had to be carried from the court.

Simmons, the Big West freshman of the year last season, injured a muscle in his right calf. Whether the muscle is torn or just strained will determine the time he will be out of action.

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“Hopefully, it won’t be more than a week or maybe two,” trainer Jeff Landskov said. “Potentially, it could be torn, but I don’t think that’s the case. We’ll have our doctors look at him Monday and then we’ll know more.”

Simmons initially thought he was kicked, and the pain intensified as he rolled on the floor.

“I still think I was kicked, but I don’t know, the pain just kept getting worse,” he said after the game. “I still can’t walk. I can’t step down flat-footed on it at all.”

Irvine, which swaggered into the game with a 2-0 record and a victory over St. John’s in New York on its ledger, didn’t look very impressive in the early going. And the Beavers, who were picked to finish 10th in the Pacific 10 preseason poll, were just as bad. The teams combined to miss nine of their first 11 shots.

The Anteaters shot 39% from the field in the first half and Oregon State, with a slightly better .429 field-goal percentage, pulled out to a 34-27 lead.

Irvine trailed by as many as 14 points with 8 minutes 30 seconds left in the game, but the Anteaters rallied, pulling within 57-56 with 2:51 remaining when Shaun Battle hit an eight-foot turnaround jumper.

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But Beaver guard Jeff Riggs scored on a driving layup, was fouled and made the free throw and Irvine never got closer than three points again, despite Oregon State missing four of eight free throws in the final 57 seconds.

Would Simmons have made a difference?

“I sure would have liked to have been able to find out,” Irvine Coach Rod Baker said. “Any time you have to play without one of your better players, it’s going to be a great factor.”

Oregon State, which used a slow-down motion offense during its first two games--losses to Santa Clara and Portland--was running full tilt with the Anteaters, but you couldn’t tell it by the scoreboard.

“We changed the concept we had adopted prior to today because we don’t have a lot of creative players,” first-year Beaver Coach Eddie Payne said. “We were running the shot clock down and then launching some missiles. We decided to go to the basket more aggressively today.”

Oregon State’s offense still wasn’t especially efficient--the Beavers shot 42% for the game and had 15 turnovers--but the defensive effort and execution had a decided effect on the game.

Point guard Markee Brown, who also had a game-high 17 points, did a splendid job of taking Raimonds Miglinieks out of his game. Irvine’s all-conference point guard finished with 11 points and seven assists. He wasn’t ready to concede that Brown’s defense made a big difference, but Baker certainly did.

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“Markee is a big-time defender and he didn’t let Raimonds just go wherever he wanted to go,” Baker said. “He’s both quick and strong and he kept him under control. You didn’t see [Miglinieks’] normal half-court game.”

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