Anteaters Start Slow but Finish Strong

There was a whole lot of shaking going on in the first six minutes of the UC Irvine basketball game at the Bren Center Tuesday night.

Belmont of Nashville, in its fourth season of Division I play, held a 10-point lead and was controlling the tempo of the game.

“We weren’t into it,” Irvine guard Jerry Green said. “I don’t know why. We just weren’t into it.”

It took a one-sided conversation by Coach Pat Douglass and a 24-10 run to close the first half before the Anteaters got back into it. It wasn’t a great performance, but nonetheless Irvine rallied for an 84-74 victory.

Green, who finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds, pointed out that in past years Irvine would have folded in this kind of situation.

“We didn’t want to have another loss,” he said. “This is our home court and on Saturday we go to UC Riverside. We don’t want another loss.”

Ben Jones finished with 19 points and eight rebounds and center Adam Parada, coming off his 14-point breakout performance off the bench in Saturday’s 65-60 loss at UCLA, turned in an array of jump hooks that added up to 17 points. He also had eight rebounds.

“I think maybe we showed some of the aftereffects of that UCLA game,” Douglass said. “We didn’t have the type of intensity we needed early, but we regrouped.”

Irvine started with a zone defense but quickly switched to a man-to-man when Belmont shooters took aim from NBA range. Eventually Douglass used a mix of Green, reserve guards Aras Baskaukas and Albert Miller, forward Stanislav Zuzak and center J.R. Christ to slow down the Bruins.

Miller’s quickness in transition paid off several times. He finished with eight points in 17 minutes of work, including a three-point jumper from the left baseline for a 60-51 lead with 10:34 left to play that stymied a Belmont comeback.

“I thought Al picked up tonight,” Douglass said. “He’s been giving a big lift for us lately.”

Parada, who got his second start of the season, said he could tell right away that the Anteaters weren’t into the game.

So could the sharp-shooting Bruins (6-5), who made eight of their first 11 shots, including three three-pointers. They held a 19-9 lead after a 15-foot jumper by Adam Mark only six minutes into the game.

But Belmont, an independent that joins the Trans America Athletic Conference next season, made only 15 of its final 55 field-goal attempts.

“We got off to a fast start,” said Belmont guard Steve Drabyn, who needed five stitches to close a nasty gash in his forehead because of a first-half collision. “They were giving us those looks and we kept on knocking them down. But later on it was a combination of them making some shots and us not making them.”

The Anteaters (5-2) used an 8-0 run to open the second half and led, 45-37. Belmont never got closer than four points after that.

Junior forward Wes Burtner of Belmont led all scorers with 25 points, giving him 1,005 points in his career.