Riverside surprises Anteaters

RIVERSIDE — Sitting four games beneath UC Irvine in the Big West Conference men’s basketball standings, the UC Riverside Highlanders showed they were battling for more than the eighth and final berth in the postseason conference tournament Wednesday.

“We’re battling for a lot of things,” said Riverside first-year coach Jim Wooldridge, whose Highlanders showed plenty of fight in an 85-76, home triumph over the Anteaters before 366 spectators at the Rec Center.

“We want to be more respected in this conference,” Wooldridge said of the motivation fueling his team (6-17, 3-9 in conference). “We want to move up in the standings. And we want to be able to talk about Riverside basketball with a real sense of pride.”

Meanwhile, UCI Coach Pat Douglass was wondering what happened to the sense of purpose for his team (11-14, 6-6), which came in having won three of its last four, including its first two conference road wins.

“We were hoping we could build on [the recent success] and get back home [with another road win],” said Douglass, whose squad ended its regular-season road schedule with a 3-14 record in games not played on campus this season.

UCI came into the contest in fifth place, hoping to make gains on UC Santa Barbara and Pacific, which were tied for third at 8-4, before UCSB defeated UOP, 60-53, Wednesday.

Now, UCI remains 1½ games behind Pacific for the coveted fourth-place spot, which comes with a bye in the conference tournament.

After playing host to Idaho in the annual BracketBuster game Saturday night, UCI gets Long Beach State, Cal State Northridge, UC Davis, and Cal State Fullerton at home to close out its regular season. Among those, only Long Beach lost to UCI on the road.

UCI began digging its hole early Wednesday. The Anteaters trailed, 4-0, then, after trailing, 9-6, watched the hosts score 12 straight points.

The Riverside lead got as high as 18, before the hosts settled for a 37-21 advantage, collecting 11 of there 15 first-half field goals within six feet to finish shooting 53.6% from the field before intermission.

“We got to the rim a lot,” Wooldridge said. “We need to do that, because we’re not a very good shooting team.”

Douglass, like his players, showed visible signs of frustration in the first half. He went to a zone, called numerous timeouts, and substituted liberally, trying to find a way to snap his team out of its funk.