Irvine Wins, 83-78, Before Record Crowd

UC Irvine moved a step closer to its first regular-season championship in the Big West Conference Thursday night with an 83-78 victory over Long Beach State at Irvine.

Junior guard Jerry Green scored 25 points and senior forward Ben Jones had 23 for Irvine, 21-3 overall and at 13-1 is the Big West leader by 1 1/2 games over Utah State.

Long Beach (15-12, 8-6) had four players score in double figures, led by Ramel Lloyd with 24 points.

Fire department officials held the standing room only crowd inside the Bren Center to 5,300 spectators, about 300 more than capacity, leaving dozens more in the school-record crowd to watch a closed circuit broadcast of the game that was being shown on a big screen television mounted outside the arena.

Irvine held a 45-36 lead with two minutes left to go in the first half, but Long Beach came back and took a 49-47 lead after two free throws by Lemi Williams with 17 minutes left.

The Anteaters then went on a decisive 17-3 run that ended with a turnaround jumper by Green with nine minutes left.