IRVINE — The UC Irvine men’s basketball team seemed like a prime candidate for a letdown performance against visiting Cal State Fullerton on Thursday night.

After knocking off three straight top-flight opponents to remain the final unbeaten team in the Big West Conference for the third straight season, the Anteaters took the court shorthanded against a desperate Fullerton team that was still seeking its first conference win.

The Titans hung with UCI for much of the first half before the Anteaters found their footing and eased away for a 82-62 victory at the Bren Center.

“We’ve got to come through some of the mental challenges of this type of week against teams that are perceived to be weaker,” UCI coach Russell Turner said. “In this league, anybody can beat us and we know that. There is added pressure, I think, with some of the things people are talking about because we’ve got 16 wins at this stage. We’ve got to figure out how to manage that better, grow into that.”

It was also the 19th straight home win for UCI, tying for the longest home winning streak in team history. The Anteaters also won 19 straight home games from Dec. 2, 2000 to Jan. 17, 2002.

“I don’t want to focus on the number of games we’ve won in a row,” Turner said. “I’d like to be focused on the opportunity we’ve created with the success that we’ve generated at this point because I know that we can continue to get better.”

Bent Leuchten scored 16 of his 21 points in the first half for the Anteaters and grabbed 10 rebounds for his third straight double-double.

Jurian Dixon scored 16 points, Myles Che had 13 before rolling his ankle with just under five minutes left, and Justin Hohn finished with 11 points for UCI (16-2 overall, 6-0 Big West), which came into the game with the fifth-best winning percentage in the nation (88.2).

Kyle Evans paced the UCI reserves with seven points and 10 rebounds.

Zion Richardson had 14 points and 11 rebounds off the bench and Donovan Oday added 10 points for Fullerton (5-14, 0-7), which has dropped nine straight conference games dating to last season.

Irvine was coming off wins against UC Riverside, Cal State Northridge and UC San Diego, beating them by an average of 10.7 points. Riverside was picked to finish fourth in the preseason coaches’ poll, Northridge sixth and San Diego third.

Elijah Chol, a 6-11 sophomore forward, made his first start of the season in place of Devin Tillis, the team’s second leading scorer (13.2) and rebounder (7.8), who sat out with an undisclosed injury.

The Titans opened the game in a zone defense, but the Anteaters softened it up by sinking three of their first four attempts from 3-point range, including two in a row by Leuchten, the 7-foot-1 senior from Germany.

Fullerton called a timeout after Leuchten scored inside for an 11-2 lead with 16:27 still left in the first half and that seemed to settle the Titans, as they scored six of the next seven points.

Richardson entered the game and sank one of his three 3s in the first half to cut the lead to 21-20 with 10:01 left, but the Titans could never wrestle the lead from UCI.