Cupboard Isn’t Bare at UCI

The UC Irvine men’s basketball team this season won a lot of games, established a lot of firsts--or first-in-a-long-times--and learned a valuable lesson:

Winning the Big West Conference regular-season title is nice. But winning the conference’s postseason tournament is the only way to land a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Coach Pat Douglass said he thought that by pushing his team to win the regular-season title, the NCAA selection committee would be impressed. He was wrong.

Instead, Irvine, appearing burned out, limped to the finish, winning a couple of close games against Big West bottom feeders and losing badly to Pacific in the second round of the tournament.

And on judgment day, the Anteaters were left out of the NCAA’s 65-team field. All that an all-time best win-loss record, a record 13-game winning streak and the Big West regular-season title were good for was a trip to Tulsa for a tough first-round NIT game. The Anteaters lost, 75-71, and finished 25-5.

With that in mind, Douglass and Irvine players say they have a new approach: building throughout next season for what they hope will be a strong finish.

“It’s all about understanding the process,” Douglass said.

The Anteaters appear poised for another strong season if they can tie up a couple of loose ends.

Douglass has been mentioned as a candidate for jobs at Nevada Las Vegas and in his home state at Tennessee. He has declined to comment on rumors that he might be seeking another job, saying only that his short-term focus is recruiting a guard and a power forward for Irvine. The coach has three years left on a contract that was renegotiated last spring.

Gone for sure are three of the Anteaters’ key seniors, guards Malachi Edmond and Sean Jackson and forward Ben Jones.

But Irvine’s cupboard isn’t bare.

The Anteaters still have guard Jerry Green, the Big West player of the year, plus 7-foot center Adam Parada, who made the conference’s all-freshman team.

Supporting Parada up front will be J.R. Christ, a backup post player who will contend for a starting spot at forward; Stanislav Zuzak, a forward who made the Big West’s all-freshman team; forward Matt Okoro, a redshirt sophomore, and Dave Korfman, a 7-2 center who started five games before being set back by a New Year’s Day weightlifting accident.

Expected to join Green at guard are Albert Miller, a reserve last season; Mike Hood, who played in three games before being sidelined by knee problems, and Jordan Harris, a transfer from Colgate who Douglass hopes will be an impact player.

Irvine also has signed two guards, DeVaughn Peace of Torrance Bishop Montgomery and Ross Schraeder of Denver East High.

SOMETHING NEW

Soka University doesn’t have any athletic teams, but it does have an athletic director. Keith Shackleford has signed on to lead the sports programs at Soka, a private liberal arts college in Aliso Viejo that is set to open in the fall. Shackleford resigned as Santa Monica College’s athletic director to take the job.

Soka expects to begin competition, probably as an NCAA Division III independent, in 2005.

Shackleford, a Huntington Beach High and Golden West College graduate, would like Soka to move toward becoming a member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the Southland’s only NCAA Division III conference.

The school is completing work on a 50-meter swimming pool and will have a gymnasium and athletic fields as part of the campus.