UC Irvine 56, USU 51
IRVINE, Calif. — It took an unbeaten to beat an unbeaten, and "it's great for the league," said the losing coach.
The losing coach on Wednesday night in Cal Irvine's Bren Center was Utah State's Stew Morrill, whose team has lost only three times this season and only five times since that Y2K thing kicked in last year.
Pat Douglass' young and defensive Anteaters resembled USU's team of last season — a rising star in the Big West Conference who wouldn't take no for an answer, who out-executed opponents in crunch time, that won the close ones against the best teams.
"They made some plays that we normally make, and that was the ballgame," Morrill said.
The biggest Bren Center crowd ever, at 5,231, wouldn't let the Anteaters let up, and the fans swarmed the court as time ran out on the Aggies' 26-game win streak over the Big West. Irvine point guard Jerry Green, who won the game with 22 points and 10 rebounds, said it took his best moves of the night to get past celebrating schoolmates.
Irvine (16-2, 8-0) defended the Aggies (18-3, 7-1) down to 34.7 percent shooting, 26.1 percent in the first half, in a 56-51 Anteater victory that was the biggest losing margin of the season for USU in a game that featured one of the strangest double fouls in anyone's memory. USU was averaging 50 percent shooting until Wednesday. Irvine has held 11 of its 18 opponents to 40 percent or less.
"This is great, what we've been working for," Green said. "It's real big."
USU's 12-game overall winning streak fell, while Irvine's 11-game win streak advanced to 12, and the series between the schools knotted itself at 23-23. Irvine is the only BWC school against which the Aggies don't have an all-time winning margin now.
It was USU's first loss to a team from California in 19 games, and it broke USU's 12-game winning streak on the road against BWC teams.
There was Aggie dismay, but no tears, no wails. "We will rebound from this and finish pretty good in conference," said 6-foot-6-inch Aggie senior forward Shawn Daniels, who blocked UCI's first three shots of the game and scored six of the points as USU raced to an 11-3 start.
"I congratulated the kids on a heckuva run," Morrill said. "They need to realize what they accomplished. It was very difficult. We don't want to act like it's over, 'cause it ain't over. There's quite a race we've got going."
That's why USU's loss in a game of unbeatens was good for the Big West. "And what we've got to do now is bounce back and get ready for Fullerton," he said.
USU is at Cal Fullerton at 8 p.m. Friday, then the team returns to Logan to face these same two teams in the Smith Spectrum next week.
"It was great to win that many games in a row. Like one of the players was saying, we didn't know what it felt like to lose," Daniels said.
"You feel down you lost, but at the same time, you have to keep your head up," he said, glad Irvine will be in Logan next week, where he expects Aggie supporters to energize his team the way the 'Eaters fed off crowd emotion Wednesday.
The 'Eaters also fed off three early fouls to three of USU's four inside players — Daniels, Dimitri Jorssen and reserve center Jeremy Vague. "We did an excellent job of hanging in with no post players. It took away our ability to go inside," Morrill said. "You're not as effective with backups."
With USU hampered inside, Irvine vigorously defended USU's outside game, holding Tony Brown to 3-for-9, Curtis Bobb to 1-for-8 and Bernard Rock to 3-for-11. "They defend so well so that when you do get the open look, you're rushed," Morrill said, "and they caused open looks to be few and far between."
Green said the 'Eaters did nothing special defensively but had worked on stopping USU's shooters all week.
The Ags couldn't score inside, couldn't score outside and couldn't slow Green. Green scored the important points until some teammates imitated him late in the game.
Green stole the ball, missed a shot, got his own rebound and put it back to tie the game at 42 after the Aggies had gone up 39-32, and he went around Bernard Rock and every other Aggie on the court for a layup that gave Irvine a 46-44 lead. He beat the Ags downcourt after a hasty Jorssen miss for another lay-in that cut USU's lead to 50-49. From there, freshman 7-footer Adam Parada made a hook to tie it at 51 and then made a shocking 12-foot baseline shot for a 53-51 UCI lead.
That led to the double foul on a blocking/charging call. Referee Jim Stupin called Aggie Brennan Ray for the block at the same time Mike Scyphers called Green for running into him. With 27.7 seconds left and Irvine up two, it was a most critical period. The referees finally decided it was a double foul, and Irvine got possession that it used to score two more free throws.
"I was glad we got the possession arrow," said Douglass, who quit arguing when he learned that. "I don't know how many more times we could have stopped them." Douglass was trying to call timeout when Green drove. "I probably distracted (Stupin). That's probably why he called the block," Douglass said.
"Everybody was confused," said Green, maintaining innocence. "I thought he fouled me pretty hard."
"From my angle, it was a charge," Morrill said. "That's life on the road."
E-mail: lham@desnews.com