Anteaters Look to Rebound

There was more than a little disappointment among UC Irvine men’s basketball players when they found out Sunday that they had been left out of the NCAA tournament.

The question now is: Will those players be prepared emotionally for their first-round NIT game at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Tulsa?

That was a big topic at Monday afternoon’s practice, the first time the team had met as a group since being upset by Pacific Friday in a Big West Conference tournament semifinal. Irvine, which has never been selected to the NCAA field, is making its first NIT appearance since 1986.

“Of course we are disappointed,” said guard Jerry Green. “[But] I think we are still happy to be playing. The NIT is an accomplishment and I think we can make a run at it.”

Still, Green admitted that Irvine, which struggled down the stretch to win the Big West regular-season title, has to find a way to regroup quickly.

“We have to see if we can respond and rebound from that loss to Pacific,” he said.

Said reserve guard Aras Baskauskas: “I think everyone was disappointed at first when we ended up [in the NIT]. We had worked so long to get to the NCAA. But if you had told me at the beginning of the year that we would be in the NIT I would have been ecstatic. Every one of the teams this year look like they are top-notch.”

Coach Pat Douglass said he may have put too much emphasis on winning the regular-season title, perhaps leaving the team somewhat drained for the conference tournament.

“Some of the guys were getting a little worn out,” he said. “Hopefully, we can play with the enthusiasm and determination this week that we had during the regular season. And hopefully, we can enjoy ourselves. This is, after all, a reward for having had a good season.”

Douglass started the two-hour practice with a closed-door team meeting. Irvine didn’t obtain game film of Tulsa until 11 p.m. Sunday, and by Monday afternoon coaches were just getting a handle on how to prepare for the Golden Hurricane, which was upset by Hawaii in the championship game of the Western Athletic Conference tournament.

The Anteaters have had trouble playing against big, experienced front lines. But Tulsa’s tallest post player is 6-foot-7 sophomore center Kevin Johnson, a second-team All-WAC choice. Tulsa, like Irvine, is a guard-driven team, which should make for an up-tempo game.

“This is a tough matchup,” said UCI senior forward Ben Jones, who like Tulsa counterpart David Shelton is a good three-point shooter. “It looks like all the teams in the NIT are very good. We want to go there and play the best basketball we can.”

Irvine Athletic Director Dan Guerrero made a bid to host the first-round game, but NIT officials wanted a bigger venue than the 5,000-seat Bren Center. Tulsa’s three-year-old campus arena seats about 8,300. The Golden Hurricane is 13-2 at home this season.

“It will be a loud and boisterous crowd,” Douglass said. “But Tulsa has the same obstacles to preparing that we do. There’s not a lot of time to do it.

“We have a difficult task. An NIT game on the road is not like playing on a neutral court in the NCAA. It’s a lot more difficult.”

Senior guard Sean Jackson said that, win or lose, the team has turned the Irvine program around.

“The fact that we are here says something,” he said. “The foundation has been laid for future years. We laid it down this year with this group. Maybe next year the guys who are here can continue on with it.”