UCI Basketball: Commentary - 2/4/01
A Rising Star

We all saw it beginning to happen several weeks ago.  UCI had just defeated Pacific on the road, rallying back from a 17 point deficit to win.  That week, Diane Pucin of the LA Times wrote an article which I think sets the stage for what followed.

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.

Diane Pucin's article is the first to begin to take notice that this is a turnaround season for UCI.  She goes on noting how Douglass went about building the team.

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."

I am quoting this article here because it has already vanished into the archives of the LA Times.  It also, in my mind, marks that special point in our history where we can see the beginning of a key transition.  First of all, Douglass has used these last three years to build a foundation.  This meant driving out the players who were either unable or unwilling to play his system.  In many cases, these players were his very own recruits.  Perhaps, as a team transitions from being one who is use to losing to one who is use to winning, personalities must change as well.  Up north, at UCSB, coach Williams had the luxury of a batch of talented seniors available during his first year.  UCSB started out something like 0-8 but eventually went on to win the west division of the Big West.  Last year, they started out equally dismal, but still managed to improve just in time for Big West.  However, this season, they seem to be where UCI was two years ago, stocked with freshman, but suffering from inexperience.  This may also prove to be a season they would rather forget.

Breaking Out

Since the Pacific game, UCI returned home and barely beat Idaho by 4 points in a game that we were favored to win by 29.  UCSB came to town and played UCI fairly close until about 10 minutes remaining.  At that point, Irvine started raining threes while UCSB completely misfired.  UCI won the game, 80-56.  Then Boise State came to visit, and UCI should have handled them easily but struggled, eventually winning 76-71.  Irvine then went on the road to play Cal State Fullerton, UCSB, and Cal Poly and won all three of those.  None of these games were ever in doubt.  This set up the Big One, the game of the undefeated, the UCI versus Utah State grudge match.  Utah State had not lost a conference game in over two years, running the table last year.  Everybody figured they would walk all over Irvine in the Bren Center, everybody except me.  The game was played on a Wednesday night, with no special promotions.  UCI drew a record crowd, overflowing the Bren, and pulled out a nail-biting victory, 56-51.  It was a special night, one where I recall the best crowd I have ever seen at the Bren Center since it opened.  Diane Pucin, once again, captures it perfectly in the following article.

Anteaters Have Reached the Big Time

By DIANE PUCIN

Big-time college basketball came to Orange County Wednesday night.

It came to the Bren Center with blue-and-gold-painted faces. It came three hours before game time, 350 students standing in line to attend a UC Irvine basketball game. This is what happens at Duke or Kentucky but not in Irvine, never in Irvine.

Big-time college basketball was wearing goofy wigs and silly grins. It came 5,231 strong, the biggest crowd in Bren Center history. This is a place where one jersey is retired, where there is one postseason banner hanging. But on this night, on this glorious evening of tension and exhilaration, big-time basketball was ringing the court, standing room only.

Big-time college basketball came running in at halftime, breathless and lugging briefcases and computer bags, better late than never, better to get here for 20 minutes of history than to miss it all.

Big-time college basketball came to the Bren Center on size 21 shoes. Dave Korfman, the 7-foot-2 center who passed out in the weight room and knocked himself unconscious a month ago played his first game since the accident. "I knew I could play," Korfman said. "I never thought I'd see this kid back so soon," said his awe-struck coach, Pat Douglass.

Korfman drew two crucial fouls in the first half and took up plenty of space. "It was a big boost that Dave made it back," teammate Malachi Edmond said. "It was an emotional pickup."

A big-time college basketball player was showcased in Orange County Wednesday night.

Is there a better guard on the West Coast, a better college player in Southern California than UCI guard Jerry Green? Green has jitterbug quickness, a deadly shot and the will of a winner. He scored a game-high 22 points. He had a game-high 10 rebounds. He was cramping badly enough that it caused him to miss four free throws. But it didn't matter.

The Anteaters won.

The Anteaters beat Utah State, 56-51, and there hasn't been a college basketball win this big in Orange County in, oh, decades. At least it seems that way. The Aggies had won 26 straight Big West games. The Aggies were 16-0 in the Big West last season. The Aggies had that swagger about them. When the UCI students rolled into the Bren, pointing fingers, making fun of the portly Aggie forward Shawn Daniels, the Aggies laughed.

Stew Morrill's team is well-coached and well-toughened. The Aggies have become used to using the Big West as a two-month prep course for the NCAA tournament.

You need to beat a Utah State to make a statement. You need a Utah State to pack your gym.

Edmond and Ben Jones are the two original Anteaters, the two guys who have been here since Pat Douglass arrived to coach the woebegone program. "I thought I'd see us turn into winners," Jones, who is from La Habra, said. "I never expected to see standing room only at the Bren."

A future star was introduced to Orange County Wednesday night.

Adam Parada, a 7-foot red-shirt freshman from Alta Loma, sank a shocking, nerveless, perfect net-tickling 14-foot baseline jump shot with 1:20 left in the game to put the Anteaters ahead for good, 53-51.

"Never seen him make that shot in a game," Douglass said.

"He's made those in practice, over and over," Jones said, "but in a game? No."

"I had to take it," Parada said. "If I didn't, we would have had to start the play over and we didn't have enough time. So I had to take it and I had to make it." So he did. He took it and made it.

Douglass was nearly awe-struck with Parada's guts. "That's the kind of shot, here in this atmosphere, that can give him a lot of confidence for the rest of his career," Douglass said.

Parada also had a crucial blocked shot 40 seconds before that, a blocked shot which Irvine recovered. It is the kind of performance champions need, something special from someplace unexpected, from a freshman with good hands and quick feet and who, with an extra 20 pounds or so, is going to be a dominator.

But with all this thunder, with the noise, with the men's volleyball team parading around the court at every time out, making the crowd stand and yell, with the cheerleaders throwing candy bars and yellow balls to the fans and the PA announcer begging them not to throw the treats back onto the floor, with attention being paid, the game finally mattering, the worst thing that could have happened didn't.

The Anteaters didn't lose. They won.

In March the Big West tournament comes to Orange County. The Anaheim Convention Center will host the event where the winner goes to the NCAA tournament. If these 5,231 people come back and bring some friends, the Anteaters might just win the thing.

"It was so awesome," Parada said. "I couldn't even hear myself thinking after I made the shot."

"To have everything come together like this, standing room only," Jones said, "we had to win. We got them to come here and we wanted to give them a reason to come back."

Jones and his teammates did. If you were at the Bren Center on Wednesday night, you will want to come back. It's big-time college basketball after all. Welcome to Orange County.

Now UCI is beginning to get all sorts of attention at the national level, including notations from ESPN.  ESPN has had UCI on its so-called Cinderella Watch.  These are the teams it believes might make it into the NCAA tournament and have a chance to make a run.  UCI has made it into the watch for the third consecutive week.  Here is what they said this week after last night's victory over Long Beach State.

Will Irvine break our heart?

OK, we'll admit it. We're falling in love with the Anteaters.

Maybe its the goofy logo. Maybe we just like saying "Irvine." Or maybe its because Ben Jones reminds ESPN.com of Carver High's Mario "Salami" Petrino. Whatever the reason, UC Irvine is fast-becoming a cult favorite in the office.

But, the Anteaters are deserving of the extra attention. All they did last week was jump 33 spots in the latest RPI rankings. But, so too, is the Big West, which is making a strong case for must-see TV with its run of fabulous finishes. We just wish the game-winning shots didn't come at 2:08 a.m. ET. The coffee is just starting to kick in as we compute the latest Watch on Sunday morning.

Like Cinderella, it seems that Irvine has received its wish and any moment now the clock will strike midnight and the slippers will turn to glass.  The next big test is this Thursday when UCI plays at Utah State and more importantly Saturday, when UCI plays at Boise State.  I think the Boise State game is more important since most people will forgive us losing to Utah State but won't forgive a loss to Boise State.