UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / JOHN WEYLER : It’s No Cliche; Anteater Basketball Team Winning With Balance

Rod Baker does a pretty good job of avoiding coach-speak and rhetoric, but lately the UC Irvine coach is prone to point out the significant contribution of the whole roster, at least in terms of preparation if not game-night performance.

“This was a 15-man, team victory,” he let slip recently.

Was he simply overwhelmed with holiday spirit or just plain giddy with a two-game winning streak? Maybe a little of both, but--cliche or not--there is a measure of truth here . . . forgetting the walk-ons for the moment. The Anteaters (4-3) have a winning record after seven games for the first time in Baker’s tenure at Irvine and a lot of players have excelled during the four victories.

No one played more than 28 minutes during the Anteaters’ 75-68 victory over Pepperdine Dec. 3 and five players had nine or more points. Chris Brown led with 17. Five Anteaters had five or more rebounds.

A week later, six players scored nine or more points and they beat University of San Diego, 73-70.

During an 89-73 romp over Oregon State last week, eight Anteaters scored seven or more and the reserves combined for 34 points. Freshman forward Kevin Simmons had 17 points and 11 rebounds and point guard Raimonds Miglinieks had 10 points and 12 assists.

And forward Michael Tate led the way with 15 points and 13 rebounds during a 69-66 victory over St. Mary’s.

The Anteaters no longer have to rely on Brown to hit 10 three-pointers.

“Last year, we had a few really great performances from a few people,” Baker said. “So far this year, we’ve never really had that. A lot of guys have been steady, though.”

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Numbers game: When reading an Irvine box score, the productivity of a position is more significant than one player’s statistics.

For example, point guards Miglinieks and Zuri Williams are combining to average 14 points, nine assists and only five turnovers. Shooting guards Brown and Brian Keefe are producing 17 points a game. And Mark Odsather and Khalid Channell are combining for 17 points and seven rebounds at small forward.

Inside, starting post players Simmons and Tate and reserves Shaun Battle and LaDay Smith are putting up 25 points and taking down 24 rebounds.

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Weird science: Baker has the confidence to make substitutions at almost any time, but those 10 players are not exactly interchangeable parts.

Odsather and Channell could not be more different, for example. Odsather relies heavily on his outside shooting and in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time instincts to score and rebound underneath. Channell uses his jumping ability and athleticism to rebound and dunk.

Simmons, a freshman, likes to shoot outside and use finesse moves to score on driving bank shots. Then Battle comes in the game and resorts to brute force to get the job done.

Miglinieks creates offensive situations with his ability to dribble through traffic, disrupt a defensive scheme and find the open man. Williams runs the offense in a more conventional style and plays intense defense.

Brown can score 15 points in a couple of minutes when he’s hot. Keefe can shoot outside, too, but is just as likely to score on a baseline drive.

It makes for a chameleon team with a myriad of styles that vary depending on who is on the floor. But Baker doesn’t worry much about combinations or the chemistry of which players work best together.

“Is it confusing for us? I don’t think so,” he said. “Is it confusing for our opponents? I think so, because we change radically depending on who’s in the game.”

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Perspective break: Tate helped lead his Ventura College team to the State community college championship game last March and he played on two Los Angeles City championship teams at Fremont High.

He’s glad the Anteaters have won two in a row, but he’s not too sure why some of his teammates are so excited.

“This has been hard for me,” Tate said. “I mean we started the season 0-2 and since I started playing basketball in elementary school, I’ve never started a season 0-2. It was a big, big shock to me.”

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A Brown out? Brown, who led the nation in three-point shooting last season, powered the Anteaters’ run to the Big West tournament championship game with 24 three-pointers in four games.

As a result of that success, however, Brown hasn’t had a lot of good looks at the basket lately and the Anteaters have faced a zone defense for a few possessions in only one game this season.

“People are simply not allowing him to shoot as much as he did last year,” Baker said. “And so we’re looking at a different Chris Brown.”

Brown, who has made 22 of 70 three-pointers this season, is forcing some shots and trying to do too much to create shots.

“We always tell Chris he has to be more of an all-around player,” Baker said, “and he wants to demonstrate that he’s more than a standstill shooter. But you don’t abandon what you do best to demonstrate other skills.”

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Century city: Odsather slipped into a room where Baker was talking to the media after Friday night’s victory over St. Mary’s and presented him with a framed certificate commemorating his 100th career victory.

Baker, who picked up 73 of those victories while head coach at Tufts University, noticed that the date and opponent were prominently displayed.

“They must have had a whole bunch of these ready so they could slip the right one in when we finally got it,” he said. “You know what this really means? It means that if you can fool people into letting you do this long enough, sooner or later you’re going to win 100.”