Cougars

COSTA MESA — Coach Russ Davis rattled off the names of five players as if they were on a missing persons report. They were gone from the Vanguard University women's basketball team lineup on Thursday. Four of the players were out with injuries. One left the program during the break. Davis surely misses the five players. The Lions are hurting, and in a Golden State Athletic Conference home game, they were exposed. That is not usually the case whenever Vanguard is the host.

Big game for Lum isn't enough for Orange Coast College, which battles back after a slow start.COSTA MESA -- There's no doubt the Orange Coast College baseball program is on the upswing. Orange Coast won a share of the Orange Empire Conference crown last year for the first time since 1987 and advanced to the four-team state tournament for the first time in 12 seasons. Then the Pirates came out this season and won their first seven games before falling to host Grossmont on Saturday. Coach John Altobelli, in his 14th season at the helm for Orange Coast, believes he has one of the top squads in the state.

UC Irvine's Bren Events Center opened 25 years ago this month. The last five years have created few moments when the venue generates enough excitement from the spectators to clearly constitute a home-court advantage. The men's basketball team's 86-76 win over visiting and Big West-leading Long Beach State on Jan. 22 of 2011 was one such memory, when the students, as well as the generally more sedate older members of the community rose to their feet and emptied their lungs at levels sufficient to move the decibel meter.

IRVINE - In a showdown of the nation's men's volleyball elite, two was certainly better than one Friday night. No. 2-ranked BYU consistently came up with more answers than top-ranked UCI, enabling the Cougars to rally for a 22-25, 24-26, 25-23, 25-23, 15-11 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation victory in front of 2,906 at the Bren Events Center. UCI (15-4, 12-4 in conference), which came in on an 11-match winning streak that began after a four-game setback at BYU on Jan. 18, handled the visitors in the opening two sets and held leads of 14-8 and 19-14 in Game 3. But the Cougars (12-3, 11-2)

Barry Faulkner A little more than a month ago, Utah welcomed the world to the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Thursday night, in neighboring Provo, the BYU men's basketball team and its fans figure to be more hostile hosts to UC Irvine in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament at the Marriott Center. The Cougars (17-11) have, after all, not lost a home game in more than two years, during which time the Mountain West Conference representative has constructed a 35-game home winning streak, the longest in the nation.

IRVINE ? When the top two college men's volleyball teams in the country meet, a highly competitive match is expected. Twenty-one lead changes after No. 1 Brigham Young and No. 2 UC Irvine took the court, the Anteaters outlasted the Cougars, 30-24, 28-30, 27-30, 36-34, 15-13, Friday night. A portion of the season-high 2,817 fans in attendance stormed the court at the Bren Events Center. It was a sight foreign to junior Matt Webber, who led the Anteaters (14-3, 12-2 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation)

COSTA MESA - Sometimes, the one thing you haven't tried, the one thing that is least likely to work, can be the magic bullet. The Orange Coast College women's basketball team came up one shot shy of completing a second-half comeback that was as unlikely as it was astounding Saturday night. But in the end, Coach Mike Thornton and his Pirates were left wondering if a 66-65 loss to College of the Canyons in the semifinals of the Erin Tomlinson Coast Christmas Classic at OCC may at least serve as a reset button on a mediocre season to this point.

The UC Irvine baseball team erupted for six runs in the first inning and 10 runs in the first three innings to earn a 12-4 victory over Washington State in the Anteaters' final game of the YellowBook Classic Sunday at Pepperdine University. Senior second baseman Matt Fisher was 4 for 4 with a home run, a double and three RBIs, while sophomore first baseman Jaime Martinez clubbed a three-run first-inning homer for UCI. Danny McCarthy, Brett Dalton and Gary Dudrey also had two hits apiece for the Anteaters (14-5-1)

COSTA MESA ? Vanguard University women's basketball coach Russ Davis compared his team to a finely tuned sports car Monday night and there was very little shifting in the Lions' 96-67 rout of visiting Azusa Pacific. Vanguard, ranked No. 1 in NAIA Division I, accelerated to a 7-0 lead and continued to pull away to complete its regular season 27-0, 20-0 in the Golden State Athletic Conference. The Lions, who open the GSAC Tournament Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at home against an opponent to be determined, made No. 14-ranked APU (22-8, 14-6)

Bryce Alderton Much like the dirt field they trampled upon, players from the Corona del Mar High girls soccer team showed a degree of grit Saturday against Capistrano Valley, a South Coast League soccer stronghold, to wrap up pool play in the 16-team Mater Dei tournament at Centennial Park. Goals were hard to come by for either team, but Capo Valley broke through for the game's lone score in the second half -- during the 39th minute -- to send the Sea Kings to their second straight 1-0 setback.