NCAA upset hopes fade, but UCI fans hold heads high
Amid the smell of popcorn and pizza, the bobbing gold and blue balloons and the blaring 5-foot projection TVs, fans of UC Irvine basketball had the jitters.
Hundreds of students and alumni crowded the Newkirk Alumni Center on campus Friday afternoon to see the 13th-seeded Anteaters make their first NCAA men’s tournament appearance against fourth-seeded Louisville in the East Regional from Seattle.
Friday happened to be the last day of finals week, but that didn’t really matter. Nor did the fact that the Irvine campus is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Instead, guests at the game-watching party clutched pom-poms in the team colors, hugged stuffed anteaters and hung on to hopes of seeing their team upset the Cardinals, who have won three national titles and were making their 41st visit to the tournament also known as the Big Dance.
“I was more nervous for the game than I was for my final this morning,” said Matt Levin, a 20-year-old UCI junior.
About an hour before the game’s 1:10 p.m. start, Levin found a prime seat in an armchair a few feet from one of the four big-screen TVs. He and his buddies talked strategy, much of it centering on Mamadou Ndiaye, a sophomore center and the tallest player in NCAA Division I.
“At 7 feet 6, he is a game-changer,” Levin said. “If we can get hot from the three-point line, it’ll be hard to defend.”
Sean Burke, a 2013 UCI graduate, said he watched Louisville videos on YouTube the previous night.
“I’ve seen all of our games and I wanted to see how they play,” Burke said during a break in the first half Friday. “They usually have a lot of energy, but I’m not seeing a lot of that.”
The game was a nail-biter, with UCI ahead by two or three points much of the first half.
Kim Ayala and Brittany Betancourt held stuffed animals in the shape of anteaters. Ayala, a 1982 grad who heads academic advising for undecided and undeclared majors at UCI, said she named her anteater Proud Peter.
“They’re our lucky charms and they’re working,” she said.
With 42.4 seconds left, the score was tied at 55.
But even lucky anteaters and a 7-foot-6 center couldn’t lift UCI over the Cardinals. With 8.9 seconds left, UCI forward Will Davis fouled Louisville guard Quentin Snider, who sank two free throws. The final score: 57-55.
Levin sat in the armchair for a few minutes to let the loss sink in.
“You can’t hang your head with a loss like that,” he said. “We fought our hearts out. You gotta learn from it.”
Then he stood up. He had already moved on. He was heading to Hooters to watch more NCAA match-ups.