Anteaters Are Really Making Some Noise

Maybe it was when the Bren Center was packed, rocking with noise and UC Irvine beat California.

Or it could have been when Irvine went to Washington, stood alongside the free-throw lane and watched a Husky player attempt three foul shots with no time left. The Anteaters led, 56-54. Two of three made and it’s overtime on the road. Three made and it’s a disheartening loss. But only one foul shot was sunk and the Anteaters had beaten a second Pac-10 team.

It could turn out that UC Irvine’s season was made Saturday at Pacific, where the Anteaters came back from a 17-point second-half deficit in a very difficult place to play and won. So what if Pacific started the second half with a 19-0 run? These are the mighty, mighty Anteaters.

UC Irvine opens a three-game Big West homestand tonight. Idaho comes to town first. Students have started attending games wearing yellow shirts with the letters CIA on them. CIA stands for Completely Insane Anteaters. Whatever that means.

But it doesn’t matter what it means. What it really means is that there is a smidgen of school spirit over the basketball team. And there should be.

The Anteaters are 9-2, their best start in 19 years. They were within a point of UCLA with less than a minute to go and they lost to San Diego by three points. That’s pretty close to perfection.

“We are,” says point guard Jerry Green, “having a lot more fun. A whole lot more fun.”

This happens sometimes. Teams from nowhere suddenly go somewhere. When Pat Douglass came here four years ago from Cal State Bakersfield, a Division II school where Douglass had won three national championships, he said it wasn’t even close.

“Our Bakersfield teams would have beaten Irvine, easy,” Douglass says.

It was that bad at Irvine. So, yes, Irvine was nowhere. And has been. Douglass’ Irvine teams have been 9-18, 6-20 and 14-14. Progress has been coming, we just couldn’t see it. Douglass was bringing in recruits and redshirting them.

Irvine isn’t UCLA. It doesn’t get high school All-Americans or even high school all-stars. Irvine gets kids who are too skinny or too short or too clumsy.

Watching practice Wednesday was Gary Christ, father of Anteater junior J.R. Christ.

“When he was a senior in high school,” Gary said, “J.R. was 5-9. Now he’s 6-9. J.R. has been a late bloomer.”

Christ went to Colorado, where he was redshirted and then rejected in that he was gently told he’d never play. Then he went to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas, and now he’s at Irvine. He isn’t a starter, but he is a contributor. He has a big body and isn’t afraid to use it. He averages 17.2 minutes a game and contributes 4.2 rebounds and 5.5 points a game.

“That’s what we have now,” Green said. “Some depth.”

Green is the star. Twice in the last three weeks, Green, a junior guard with live legs and a lovely shot, has been Big West player of the week. (His backcourt mate, Malachi Edmond, took the honors in between.) Green scored 63 points in his last two games, including a career-high 32 in a 57-37 victory over St. Mary’s.

“I’m playing pretty good,” he said.

Green was Douglass’ first highly-thought-of high school recruit, a first-team all-state selection at Pomona High. He came to Irvine, Green said, “to help build something. But building isn’t always easy.”

Ben Jones, a senior forward, has seen it all. The Sonora High alumnus said it was never discouraging being an Anteater. But it wasn’t always fun. “We’d be close to people, we’d be leading good teams at halftime,” Jones said, “but we didn’t have enough stamina. We’ve all had to get bigger and stronger and we had to be patient.”

Douglass has been patient. There were moments, he said, when he’d wonder what he had done, wonder why in the world he left a powerhouse, even if it was Division II, for this. For playing in an empty Bren Center and losing, always losing.

“But I wanted to do this right,” Douglass said. “No quick fixes. So we brought kids in and redshirted them. We’d get them here for a year and get them in the weight room, make them stronger. Kids like Adam Parada.”

Parada is a 7-foot redshirt freshman from Alta Loma High. He has 64 points and 39 rebounds in his last six games. Every moment on the court, Parada becomes more confident. He held his own inside against UCLA. He is not intimidated. Maybe he could have helped Irvine last year. But now he’ll have three more years of, one suspects, rapid improvement.

“What we all have now,” Green said, “is confidence. That’s not always easy to get but once you have it, it doesn’t go away.”

And if the confidence doesn’t disappear, if the Anteaters keep eating up 17-point deficits, there is a big prize to be had. The Big West Conference tournament, the one where the winner gets an automatic NCAA bid, is at the Anaheim Convention Center this year. Close enough for all those Completely Insane Anteater fans to show up and make noise. “We know that,” Green said. “We know.”

*

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com