Anteaters’ women in payback mode

With the amount of injuries, defections, suspensions and coaching-staff turnover the UC Irvine women’s basketball program has experienced the last three seasons, Coach Molly Tuter might have expected Governor Schwarzenegger to show up any day with an offer of disaster relief.

Instead, Tuter and her players have kept their heads down, kept their rehabilitation appointments, and kept churning toward a time when someone might be made to pay for their collective misfortune.

That time may have arrived this season.

“I think [the aforementioned adversity], plus losing [Angie] Ned [a two-time Big West Defensive Player of the Year who led the team in scoring the last two seasons and is now playing professionally in Holland] might cause people to look past us big-time,” Tuter said. “But that’s fine. It’s great, actually.”

The Anteaters were picked to finish tied for last by the coaches and eighth in the nine-team conference by the media in the preseason polls.

But Tuter merely tacks those prognostications to an already cluttered collection of bulletin-board material that includes a season log of last year’s 6-24 mark, 3-11 in conference.

Since its last winning season in 2002-03 (a 17-12 campaign), UCI is 29-84.

Returning second-team all-conference performer Kelly Cochran lasted just five games last season, before suffering a season-ending knee injury, a fate that befell talented Utah State transfer Christina Zdenek after nine games.

Just 10 games in, 6-foot-4 center Naomi Halman, who had seemingly just begun to find her rhythm, flew home to the Netherlands, never to return.

Cochran, a 6-0 junior post who averaged 12.4 points and 6.2 rebounds before being sidelined last season, is back healthy, as is Zdenek, who was producing 8.1 points and 3.4 rebounds per contest before undergoing knee surgery.

Stephanie Duda, a 5-9 senior who, forced to fill in for Cochran and Holman in the post, merely averaged a double-double last season (12.5 points and 11.1 rebounds), is also back to wreak havoc inside. She figures to widen the legions of those stumped as to why a player who led the conference in rebounding (eighth nationally) and steals (2.4 per game), and led her team in scoring 24 times in 30 games while battling opponents a head taller, could only garner honorable mention in all-conference voting.

“That’s still a chip on my shoulder,” Tuter said of Duda’s All-Big West snub.