UCI’s struggles help Tuter turn the corner

It’s Monday afternoon at Crawford Hall and UC Irvine women’s basketball coach Molly Tuter is savoring her team’s third season, the Big West Conference Tournament that begins today at noon with the No. 8-seeded Anteaters (7-23) facing No. 5-seeded Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (11-18) at the Anaheim Convention Center.

But Tuter, in her third full season as head coach after taking over as an interim coach early in the 2004-05 campaign, is also bothered by a table tennis defeat she suffered days before to a 63-year-old friend.

“She beat me the other night and I can’t stand it,” Tuter, said. “It’s driving me crazy. She was pretty good and I underestimated her and now I’m irritated because I don’t know if I’ll get another opportunity to beat her.”

The latter is a window into Tuter’s uniquely competitive soul, one that served her well as a player, but has sometimes tormented her since she embraced the challenge, at age 29, of leading UCI out of a period of mediocrity that followed the program’s lone NCAA Tournament appearance in 1995.

If Tuter has difficulty letting loose of a ping pong defeat, one might assume the 66 losses in her last three seasons as head coach have opened wounds that are festering still. That pain has been particularly difficult this season, since a nucleus of veteran returners had helped lift expectations for an upper-echelon finish in the nine-school Big West.

“I didn’t see this year coming,” Tuter said. “Especially after we were 4-4.”

But several factors, including a recent injury that sidelined sophomore Kelly Cochran for the last four regular-season games, have contributed to a disappointing record. The Anteaters had to defeat Cal State Northridge, 1-26, 0-16 in conference, 65-61, on March 1 at Northridge to earn the final spot in the Big West Tournament.

“I’ve lost 20 pounds since September,” Tuter said. “I’ve called colleagues, I’ve read books, I’ve watched videotapes and I’ve talked with other coaches in this department looking for answers. I called my mom and she doesn’t know anything about basketball.”

Answers, like victories, however, proved illusive. The Anteaters were competitive with most opponents, but, Tuter said, often lacked the mental toughness to win repeated close games. Ten of UCI’s losses were by eight points or fewer. Tuter also recognized she was to blame for a couple of those losses, having made mistakes down the stretches of games that worked against the Anteaters.

“As a young coach, I blew a few late-game situations,” Tuter said. “And, I love my team, but we need to get mentally tougher. My seniors were giving us all that they could give. But, like I tell my team, I love my mom, but I don’t want her to be my point guard.”

Tuter toyed with the lineup, went through a checklist of coaching techniques, but still found only periodic relief from the mounting losses. She continued to internalize the negativity, until it finally reached a head after a 92-55 loss at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Jan. 12.

“I was irritated at our effort,” Tuter said. “We’d played [conference champion] UC Santa Barbara tough two nights before [a 76-68 loss], but getting drilled at Cal Poly was beyond me. I didn’t like the way we came out for the first half or the second half and I was irritated at the way we performed.”

Tuter carried that anger, as well as some other pent-up emotions, into the postgame locker room.

“I just lost my mind,” Tuter said. “I went nuts. I’ve never been as frustrated as I was at that moment.”

The aftermath created a chilling bus ride home, but it also created a breakthrough, Tuter said.

“As their head coach, I wasn’t sure what else I was supposed to do,” Tuter said. “Fortunately, that day, I found out what good assistants I had. I was ready to walk home, and I think they were ready to let me walk home. But we got on the bus and we talked. We all agreed we had to do something different. What came out of that was me realizing I had to use my assistants more. I thought I knew how to use them, but I don’t believe I really did. They saved my tail after that game.”

What the assistants convinced her was that she had to delegate more, share more responsibility, and lessen the load she’d been carrying.

“The way I looked at my playing career: Nobody made me miss a basket and nobody made one for me,” Tuter said. “I took that mentality with me when I became a head coach. But I had to learn the tough way, that you can’t take responsibility for everything. As a player and as an assistant, the harder I worked, the more successful I became. But I learned, as a head coach, that’s not necessarily the case. I learned I need to go home and get some sleep. I need to just not pay attention to everything. It’s a lesson that coaches older than me have already learned. I needed to grow up and become a head coach.”

Tuter said her frequent introspection even led her to consider leaving coaching.

“At one point, I asked my self ‘How important is this?,’ ” said Tuter, who was a twice Gatorade Player of the Year at Soldotna High in Alaska, before accepting one of 147 scholarship offers to play basketball at Arizona State (she said she had scholarship offers in volleyball and track and field). She became the third-leading scorer in ASU history with 1,374 points. “Was it that coaching just wasn’t for me and I needed to go back to Alaska and become a fishing guide? Or, did I need to just step back, and figure out how to get better. To realize that my team was marginal at best and I’m in charge of it and that’s on me?

“I decided I wanted to accept the challenge of coaching and move on from there.”

Tuter has scaled back, she said, but she will never fully disengage the intensity she believes might rank her among the top five percentile of the ultra-competitive coaching fraternity.

“I don’t believe I can every fully turn off that switch,” Tuter said. “Even when I’m in Palm Desert [her primary mode of relaxation — she hasn’t been to a movie in six years, she said], I’ll get relaxed for a minute, then I’ll think ‘How is Kelly’s knee?’ or ‘How is another player doing?’

“But I’ve come to the conclusion this year that there is a time and place for that intensity. I was probably misusing that time and place. I think it took [losing it at Cal Poly] for me to see that. I think that made me grow up some.”

Tuter, who is optimistic about her team’s tournament chances, believes her program should competitively mature beginning next season.

“For the first time, we’ve recruited some JC kids,” she said. “We’ve gotten a few recruits that have prompted other people to say ‘Oh my!’ I think the freshmen we have this year are more athletic than we’ve been and I think [Cochran] is going to be a heck of a leader for us. We’re selling recruits on being a part of building something special here and I believe we can compete for the conference title next season.”

Tuter said her own personal growth as a coach is another positive to take into next season.

“Maybe I didn’t need to go down a completely different road, but I needed to have more than one road and I needed to be willing to use all those roads,” she said. “I know that because of this year, I’ll be a much better head coach next year.”

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at barry.faulkner@latimes.com.