Anteaters Still Might Be Green, but They Possess a Magic Touch

Somehow UC Irvine keeps winning. The Anteaters have won 14 games by five points or less. That includes the tentative 71-66 victory over Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the first round of the Big West Conference tournament Thursday at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The Anteaters are 25-3 and they can’t be the favorite to win this tournament. Not now, not with the way Utah State has been clobbering opponents. The Aggies crushed Cal State Fullerton, 74-43, earlier in the day.

Irvine played with its nerves jangling. Passes were wobbly, layups got missed, defense was often forgotten. The Anteaters are new to this being-the-favorite thing. Sometimes they act as if they are the team of two seasons ago, which won one only Big West game, instead of the team that is now 16-1 against conference opponents.

It’s tough growing up to be the bully.

Utah State, which didn’t lose a conference game last season and is now 14-3, still acts the bully. The Aggies were chest-bumping and high-fiving before the game against Fullerton and their star, Shawn Daniels, walked off the court with a towel over his head and his fists raised after the game.

The Aggies got to rest their best players. Daniels was on the bench for the final six minutes and had to play only 24 against Fullerton. When you’re playing three games in three days, that’s a help.

Irvine’s star, Jerry Green, needed to play 37 minutes and he scored 31 points. His team needed every second and every point.

In its last five wins, Utah State’s average margin of victory is 26.6 points. Irvine’s average margin of victory is 5.5.

So if the Aggies and Anteaters play for the championship Saturday night, you’d think it will be Utah State cutting down the nets and celebrating its second consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament.

Except the Anteaters have something special in their hearts. They have something magical about their play.

Irvine Athletic Director Dan Guerrero has been lobbying any NCAA tournament committee member who will answer his phone on behalf of the team. The Big West hasn’t had more than one NCAA participant in eight years and Guerrero thinks that if the Anteaters make it to the championship and lose, if their record is 26-4, they deserve an NCAA bid.

The Anteaters won’t get one. Not with an RPI in the 60s. The only team besides Utah State that Irvine has beaten that might make the NCAA tournament is California. And the Bears are a stretch.

But when you listen to Guerrero, you begin to see why margin of victory isn’t what matters with the Anteaters.

“It’s harder,” Guerrero says, “to keep winning when you’re not blowing people out. It means you’re not that much better than your opponent. I think it’s much tougher for teams like Irvine in conferences like the Big West because you can’t let up for a second. You can be in the Pac-10 and have two bad weeks and still make the tournament.

“We couldn’t do that. You look at what we did against Pac-10 teams, beating Cal and Washington and nearly beating UCLA at Pauley, and I’d ask people where we might have finished if we played in the Pac-10. Could we have finished fourth or fifth? I think so, and then we’d be going to the tournament.

“I think it takes a great amount of fortitude to go 15-1 in your conference, win on the road game in, game out, no matter what conference you’re in.”

All fine arguments and none will matter when the tournament field is announced, but what Guerrero says about Irvine is true.

“We didn’t have our ‘A’ game and we still won,” Anteater Coach Pat Douglass said Thursday. “We haven’t had our ‘A’ game since Long Beach [Feb. 22] but we keep winning. If we can get our ‘A’ game back, we’ll do fine.”

Green, the Big West player of the year, said his teammates are nervous. Green said that this is all so new, the attention, the mentions on “SportsCenter,” the TV cameras, the dreams of seeing Irvine on an NCAA bracket sheet.

“Maybe we’ve hit the wall a little,” Green said. “We’re still getting used to being in this position. It’s great, no question, but you have to learn how to handle it all, especially when it’s a little unexpected.”

The Anteaters have the walk of the underdog and the Aggies have the swagger of the champion.

“They’ve done it,” Green said of Utah State. “They know what it takes.”

But knowing isn’t always doing.

Just when you think Irvine has had it, seemingly on the verge of getting one of those blowouts and then having blown the blowout by having a five-minute scoreless stretch and falling behind by four points, then the magic comes back.

Sean Jackson makes back-to-back three-point baskets off assists from Green, and 7-foot freshman Adam Parada blocks a shot and gets a steal, and sub J.R. Christ makes back-to-back layups, and then Green makes a three-point basket and Irvine is ahead, 57-51.

Why didn’t this happen earlier? Who knows? When will it happen again? Who knows? Magic is unpredictable. But it hasn’t left the Anteaters yet. Utah State has the swagger, Irvine has the magic. If the Aggies and Anteaters play in the title game, take the magic.

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