The UC San Diego basketball team operates like a lock with multiple combinations. Click one direction and things snap into place. Click another and they do, too.
There are so many right answers right now when the Tritons spin and rearrange the tumblers.
Need more 3s from Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones? Hunting more scoring from Chris Howell? Craving more assists from Tyler McGhie to balance the load? It’s like shoveling items into the cart during an episode of “Supermarket Sweep.”
UCSD is not a one- or two-legged stool. If one is kicked away, just screw another one in its place from game to game. The names change. The results do not.
They operate with a collective faith in each other ed by a blur of numbers.
“There may be a college basketball team that’s smarter than us in the country, but that’s a short list,” Tritons coach Eric Olen said. “Our collective IQ, our collective self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses is sort of our superpower.”
Olen thought back to a recent game against Irvine, which had beaten his team by eight at LionTree Arena. The players noticed a change before the coaches.
Irvine switched to a 2-3 zone mid- to late-second half after not playing against it in either game previously. That meant the Anteaters were not face-guarding Tyler McGhie as normal.
McGhie is tied for sixth in Division I basketball with 3.35 3-point field goals per game. The mini-computers on the court processed quickly.
They might not have seen the situation in a long time — McGhie normally has a target painted on his back — but reacted in a blink.
“They were like, ‘We’re going to immediately take advantage of that,’ ” Olen said. “We were patient and when he came open, he hit a big 3.”
The Tritons bring a lot of unique numbers together. They stand No. 8 in the country at 10.7 3-pointers per game. They stand 11th in scoring defense at 62.5 per game.
Not all one thing, offense or defense. Not all one guy. Scouting reports become maddening basketball final exams for the other locker room.
“That’s part of what makes us dangerous,” guard Hayden Gray said of the Tritons, who are 22-4 heading into Thursday night’s game against Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. “Anybody on any given night can have five steals, eight assists, 20 points. So that makes it tough to prepare for us. You can’t single out any certain guy.
“Everyone kind of does the same things at a high level.”
In the last seven games, UCSD has won by an average of nearly 18.9 per game. Every result has come by double digits, including victories against early conference favorites UC Irvine and UC Riverside.
There’s hitting your stride. Then there’s this.
“You never know what you’re going to get,” junior Chris Howell said.
The Tritons are one of 11 Division I programs that feature five or more 1,000-point scorers. Maximo Milovich sits five points away from ing that group.
Gray leads the nation in steals (90) and 3.46 steals per game. And on and on.
“We force defenses into decisions about what they want to prioritize or try to take away,” Olen said. “We’ve shown we can win different ways and get production from different people.
“This team is well-rounded enough that we lean into whatever advantage we have in that matchup. That’s our approach. What are our advantages and amplify those.”
All those lock combinations keep clicking.
“We’re not just playing good basketball, but we’re continuing to improve,” Olen said. “That’s hard to do. We’re always chasing our best basketball. The basic stuff is dialed in. We’re not going to drastically change who we were at this stage.
“Can we sharpen everything on the margins?”
That could come in the shooting department.
Attempts they’re comfortable taking did not fall in the first round of matchups. The Tritons missed 29 of 35 3-point attempts against Irvine on Jan. 11 and 22 of 28 efforts versus Riverside on Jan. 18.
“We made some progress too in that stretch in between playing those two teams,” Olen said. “Irvine disrupted us. We weren’t as comfortable taking some of those shots. Then teams let us shoot more.
“Are they willing to keep doing that? It’s the game of chicken a little bit.”
There’s more.
“We’re better defensively, too,” Olen said.
Lots of combinations on this lock.
“How good is this team?” said Olen, parroting a question. “We don’t know yet. We’re genuinely still getting better.”
And March is just around the corner.
