UC Irvine Is Good Just Long Enough to Beat Aggies

UC Irvine--or Team Spigot, if you will--was impressive when the valve was open Thursday night and depressing when the flow ran dry.

But the faucet was running long enough for the stop-and-go Anteaters to hang on to a 74-66 Big West victory over a flailing New Mexico State team in front of 2,056 in the Bren Center.

And that, to hear Coach Rod Baker tell it, is all that matters. “There’s nothing that says we have to win by 20,” Baker said. “Just because we were up by double digits doesn’t mean they’re going to quit.”

The Anteaters (6-6 overall and 3-2 in conference), always prone to fits and starts, dropped in three-pointers almost at will in the early going and ran up an 11-point lead midway through the first half. With 4 1/2 minutes left in the half, however, their advantage had evaporated to one.

Irvine pushed it back up to 12 at halftime, only to have it trimmed to five 3 1/2 minutes after returning to the court.

The Anteaters dug in on defense, got a couple steals, slipped in another handful of threes and went ahead by 19 with eight minutes 12 seconds to play. Then they had to scramble down the stretch as the lead dwindled to four with 2:28 left.

“I don’t understand it,” senior point guard Raimonds Miglinieks said. “I can’t explain it. We’re way up and then a minute later, they’re back in the game. The same thing happened [Jan. 4] against San Jose [State]. We were leading by 21 points and a few minutes later, it’s three.

“We have to learn the killer instinct.”

Miglinieks took it upon himself to deliver the fatal blows Thursday. The Aggies (4-9, 1-4) might be a fading shadow of their former selves, but they still play a match-up zone defense that forces opponents to shoot from the perimeter.

Miglinieks leads the nation in assists (8.7 per game), but he had made only two of his last 18 three-point shots. Thursday night, he hit six of 10 three-pointers and finished with 20 points, nine assists, five rebounds and four steals.

“This was a players’ game,” Baker said, “not a coaches’ game. It was Raimonds’ game to call and he did a great job. He simply didn’t want to lose and did whatever it took to help us win.”

The New Mexico State zone caused a couple of role reversals for Irvine as it collapsed on the Anteater post players. Forwards Kevin Simmons and Shaun Battle--usually Miglinieks’ favorite targets--found themselves passing the ball back out to the perimeter. They combined for seven assists, most coming on three-pointers as Irvine was 12 of 31 from beyond the three-point arc.

“When you play a [Aggie Coach] Neil McCarthy team, you have to shoot well outside or you don’t win,” Baker said. “I don’t care if it’s this team or one of their great teams of a couple of years ago.”

Maybe, but this Aggie team, which has lost four in a row for the first time in eight seasons, is a far cry from the ones that put lumps in the throats of opponents with their chaos-causing trademark defense.

“It’s the same zone they played last year, but the players were quicker and bigger last year,” Miglinieks said, smiling.

Still, the Anteaters showed flashes of the enthusiasm that had been lacking in losses last week at Santa Barbara and Fullerton.

“We played with more intensity . . . for about 30 minutes, anyway,” Miglinieks said. “But we kept letting them catch up again. We have to play for 40 minutes.”

Simmons, who was playing with a broken nose suffered in practice Tuesday, thought about it for a while and then tried to explain the Anteaters’ habit of playing hard only when they absolutely have to.

“A lot of us grew up only doing something when somebody made you,” said Simmons, a native of Brooklyn. “Maybe we have to be pushed. I don’t know, it just happens with us.”