COLLEGE BASKETBALL 1992-93 : Transfers Give Anteaters a Lift : UC Irvine: Players from Villanova, California and elsewhere should help team picked to finish fifth in Big West.

IRVINE —  This UC Irvine basketball team has players good enough to play at Villanova, Marquette, Purdue and California.

In fact, some of them did.

Irvine has never reached the NCAA tournament since joining Division I.

But its point guard has. Lloyd Mumford was a Villanova reserve when he led an unsuccessful upset bid against North Carolina in the second round of the 1991 NCAA tournament.

One of the ways to rebuild a program that has won only 23 games over the last three seasons is with transfers, and Irvine has them.

Coach Rod Baker’s first team at the school went 7-22, breaking through at the end of last season with an 88-67 upset of top-seeded UC Santa Barbara in the first round of the Big West tournament.

That team won--the seven times it did--mostly with heart and hard work. This season, there will be more ability to call on.

“If we can get this group, with the skills they have, to play as hard as last year’s team and have that consideration for each other, we’ll be better than last year,” said Baker, whose team was picked to jump from ninth to fifth in the Big West.

Mumford, a quick, strikingly creative point guard, should be able to drive the sluggishness out of an offense prone to long scoreless stretches last season.

Keith Stewart, who began his career at Purdue and transferred to Irvine from Marquette when Bill Mulligan was still Irvine’s coach, is a shooting guard with the ability to score from three-point range or drive and hang. After becoming eligible last season, he averaged 11.6 points and started Irvine’s final 10 games.

A community college transfer, Dee Boyer, 6-10 and 255 pounds, will start at center.

There are two transfers from Cal--forwards Keith Walker and LaDay Smith--who are expected to play a lot. Walker was the fifth-leading scorer in the state as a senior at Brea-Olinda High School, averaging 32.9 points.

Then there is Irvine’s leading returning scorer, forward Jeff Von Lutzow, to whom another T-word applies.

“Transformation,” said a smiling Stewart, one of many teammates and coaches who have been frustrated with Von Lutzow’s mix of outstanding play and mental vacations. “He plays harder and he’s part of every play. But off the court too. He’s a totally different person, as opposed to being sort of anti-social in the past.”

Von Lutzow, a slender 6-foot-9 senior with three-point range who has started since he was a freshman, led Irvine in scoring and rebounding last season, averaging 12.5 points and 5.7 rebounds. He exasperated Baker and Mulligan before that, but he says he has changed.

“I went in to Coach Baker and told him I’m his, I’ll do anything he wants me to do,” Von Lutzow said. “Everybody has told me I have all this potential just sitting inside my body waiting to explode. I thought I played well, this and that. But I never really realized until I became a senior that I do have potential and I’ve never showed it. Everything I have will be left on the floor after every game.”

Baker isn’t going for broke with transfers. Zuri Williams, the first player Baker recruited, is developing into a strong point guard. Elzie Love, a very athletic forward who was Mulligan’s last recruit, could start. And this year, Baker added two freshmen who were Southern California high school standouts--guard Todd Whitehead from Fremont High and forward Shaun Battle from San Bernardino Cajon.

Such players as Craig Marshall, a three-year starter, and Khari Johnson, a part-time starter last season, give the team good depth and could break into the lineup.

But the transfers will probably determine how Irvine fares.

“(Mumford) and and Walker and LaDay Smith ought to want to prove that they in fact are good players,” Baker said. “They’re coming from a situation where, positively or negatively, things just didn’t work out.”

Stewart says the transfers appreciate the opportunity they’ve been given. After all, transferring is rarely good for a player’s reputation.

“A lot of people don’t accept transfers like Coach Baker has,” Stewart said. “He makes players out of transfers. They might be players before they come here, but he turns them into people and makes them feel like they’re part of the family.”