San Jose Puts Irvine’s Celebration on Hold

Four nights ago, after UC Irvine had clinched a first-round bye in next week’s Big West Conference tournament, one assistant coach was talking about bringing champagne here to celebrate the Anteaters’ first conference championship.

Hopefully, it won’t go flat sitting in the bus until this weekend in Stockton when Irvine gets another shot at making school history.

Thursday night, San Jose State--a team with more on the line than the Anteaters--had all the effervescence and the Spartans burst the Anteaters’ bubble with an 81-70 victory in front of 2,002 in the campus Events Center.

The victory kept San Jose State (9-16, 8-9 in conference) alive in the race for the final spot in the six-team conference tournament and puts Irvine’s chance to clinch a share of the Big West title on hold until either Saturday night--if Long Beach State loses at UC Santa Barbara--or Sunday, if the Anteaters beat Pacific.

San Jose, playing what Irvine Coach Rod Baker termed “relentless” defense, led by as many as 14 points in the first half. But the Spartans lost a little steam after the intermission and the Anteaters (15-10, 11-6) scratched back into a tie at 51-51 with eight minutes left in the game.

That’s just about the time San Jose forward Olivier Saint-Jean decided to take control of the game. The native of Paris made his last seven shots of the game, scoring 20 points in the final 7 1/2 minutes to finish with a career-high 30.

After the game, Saint-Jean wasn’t interested in reviewing his swooping dunks and acrobatic layups, however. He wanted to talk about the defensive number the Spartans did on Irvine point guard Raimonds Miglinieks, the nation’s assist leader who finished with nine points and only four assists.

“For them to win, Miglinieks has to have the ball and do his thing,” Saint-Jean said. “But tonight Miglinieks wasn’t Miglinieks. You didn’t see those spectacular passes. I’m saying this because I respect him so much. He will probably be the league’s MVP, but to hold him to just four assists, that’s the difference.”

It didn’t help the Anteaters that Brian Keefe, who was averaging 22 points in the last nine games, was two for 13 from the floor and scored only seven points. Forward Kevin Simmons tried to pick up the slack, scoring 25 points and grabbing nine rebounds, but it seemed nothing the Anteaters did could overcome Saint-Jean, who scored 20 of San Jose’s last 28 points.

Were the Anteaters flat or the Spartans simply turbo-charged?

Baker thinks it was the latter.

“Any problems we had tonight were directly associated with the way they played,” he said. “They came out like this was their last shot, which it was, and really went after us. They didn’t let us go the places we wanted to go on the floor. They didn’t allow us to screen. They didn’t allow us to rebound.

“Saint-Jean is a good player and you would expect him to make all those shots because they were almost all layups. But this game wasn’t about points, it was about stops.”

Irvine shot only 31% from the floor in the first half and 38% for the game. Almost all of the Anteaters’ success came inside, on twisting, leaning drives by Simmons and close-in shots by forward Paul Foster. The two combined to make 13 of 32 shots and Foster finished with 12 points and a game-high 13 rebounds.

But Irvine’s perimeter shooters were a combined seven of 32 from the field and made only five of 20 three-pointers.

The argument could be made that this game and Sunday’s are unimportant for Irvine. Conference titles aside, Irvine will be watching the first round of the Big West tournament Friday and playing in the semifinals on Saturday, two victories away from a coveted NCAA berth.

But don’t tell that to Keefe.

“This game meant everything to us,” he said, staring at the floor, slumped in front of a locker. “It was the most important game of the year as far as I’m concerned. And they obviously wanted it more than we did.”