Three thoughts following UC San Diego’s 85-67 win at UC Irvine on Saturday and what it means as the Big West Conference season hits the backstretch.
1. Top of the Big West
Saturday’s victory pulled UC San Diego (20-4, 10-2 Big West) into a first-place tie with Irvine (20-4, 10-2) with eight games remaining in the regular season.
Naturally, the Tritons want to capture their first Big West regular-season title and go into the March 12-15 conference tournament in Henderson, Nev., as the top seed.
Almost as important is finishing in the top two. Those teams will receive a double-bye in the conference tournament, meaning they’ll need to win only two games to punch a ticket to the NCAA Tournament. The No. 3 and No. 4 seeds — currently Cal State Northridge and UC Riverside — receive first-round byes into the quarterfinals. The bottom four teams, by comparison, will need to win four games in four days.
“We were able to win at the first-place team on the road,” UCSD coach Eric Olen told the Union-Tribune late Saturday. “That does a lot in of potential seeding in the conference tournament, which is really important given our (conference’s) structure.”
The Tritons have won five straight and should be favored in each of their final eight games, starting with Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. game at Cal State Bakersfield.
2. Defense wins
The Tritons allow an average of 63 points per game this season, the best total in the Big West. They held both UC Riverside (on Thursday) and UC Irvine (on Saturday) below their season scoring averages and well below their average shooting percentages.
They’re winning by an average of 17.5 points per game, well ahead of Cal State Northridge’s 9.8.
Senior guard Hayden Gray, who finished with four steals along with 12 points and eight assists, leads the nation in steals (85) and steals per game (3.54) and turns those thefts into fast-break opportunities a handful of times a game.
Also, the versatility of players like Gray, Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, Tyler McGhie, Chris Howell, Justin Rochelin and Nordin Kapic allows the Tritons to switch on the perimeter against just about any kind of offense.
3. Shoot the 3
In losses to Riverside and Irvine earlier this season, the Tritons shot a combined 12 of 63 from 3-point range.
Shots fell in both of last week’s wins. UCSD went 12 of 29 from 3 in Thursday’s home win over Riverside and 16 of 31 from 3 at Irvine, with Howell making a season-high five against the Anteaters. UCI threw bodies at Tait-Jones, UCSD’s leading scorer, freeing up Howell to get open.
Olen empowers his players to take open shots and rides with them when those shots aren’t going down. That kind of confidence seemingly makes the Tritons impervious to shot-making fluctuation.
On Saturday, seven different Tritons made a 3-ball. Seemingly every big shot came when the team was either starting or extending a big run.
“The biggest difference is we shot it well,” Olen said. “We had a bunch of guys get it going. Our guys just did a good job of sticking to the plan. We made some early, then we had a stretch where we weren’t making ’em and they just kept shooting them with confidence. … There’s some variance to shooting. We’re committed to the right guys shooting the right shots and we don’t worry about the results. We have a plan, we know what we’re doing and we believe in our guys.”
