UCI earns No. 2 seed in Big West Tournament after sweep of Long Beach State

Collin Welp leads UCI into this week’s Big West Tournament. (Photo courtesy UCI Athletic Communications)

UC Irvine’s men’s basketball team has earned the No. 2 seed for the 2021 Big West Men’s Basketball Championships which will be held this week in Las Vegas.

UC Santa Barbara is the top-seed in the tournament.

No fans will be allowed to attend games due to the coronavirus pandemic.

UCI will open play on Thursday at 5 p.m. against the winner of Tuesday’s game between No. 7 Cal State Fullerton and No. 10 Cal Poly.

Also on Tuesday, No. 8 Cal State Northridge will face No. 9 Long Beach State at 3 p.m.

In other games Thursday, top-seeded UC Santa Barbara will face the winner of the Northridge-Long Beach State game at 11 a.m., No. 4 UC Davis will face No. 5 Cal State Bakersfield at 2 p.m. and No. 3 UC Riverside will meet No. 6 Hawaii at 8 p.m.

The semifinals will be held at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday. The second semifinal will be televised on ESPN-U.

The championship game will be Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and televised on ESPN-2.

UCI wrapped up the regular season Saturday evening defeating Long Beach State 73-58 at The Pyramid to sweep the season series with Long Beach.

UCI (16-8, 10-4) was led by Dawson Baker, who scored 14 points. DJ Davis scored 10 points and Collin Welp had nine points and nine rebounds and three assists. Brad Greene also had with nine points for the Anteaters.

“I was pleased with our starters and how we began the game tonight,” said UCI Coach Russell Turner. “I thought we were locked in and competitive, you could see that in the start of the second half as well. We withstood a Long Beach run in the first half by Collin Slater individually. The pressure is going to be on next week and we are going to try to embrace that with our young team. We have the ability to perform, and we are going to have to rise up over the next week.”