In head coach Bill Carr’s first season with the UCSD men’s basketball team, he guided the Tritons to new Division II marks, with 11 wins and the team’s first winning home record since it moved into the division. What is he playing for his second season in San Diego? Winning the California Collegiate Athletic Association, the premier conference in Division II.
Carr admitted that upon first being hired by UCSD, he didn’t have any real expectations, not knowing enough to develop any.
“When I got in, I thought we had a chance to win some games,” Carr said.
Looking back on the season and how the team members did, Carr said that he was “satisfied by the effort that they gave,” adding that “for 90 percent of the season, this team overachieved.”
With the arrival of a new coach came the arrival of a new offensive system — one that emphasized less dribbling and more ball movement and was more tightly structured than that of recent Triton basketball teams. Carr came to a team that was made up of a lot of new faces from a wide system of arrays, but was receptive of the style being put into place.
“Everyone tried to change their games to work together,” Carr said. “In the future, we will recruit to the style of play.”
On the subject of recruiting, and on whether he felt that UCSD was at a distinct competitive or recruiting disadvantage as the only non-scholarship Division II university, Carr pushed aside any excuses.
“It’s not as big of a disadvantage as some people make it seem,” he said. “There are [so] many positive reasons to come play for this team that we don’t have to worry [about] what we don’t have.”
During the season, no player averaged double digits in scoring, with freshman Clint Allard notching a team-leading 9.4 points per game. Nor did any player dominate in playing time, with freshman Andrew Hatch averaging the most per game at 29.3 minutes.
For Carr, this is how he’s always taught basketball, explaining that he always seeks a balance in both minutes and scoring.
“In a perfect world, everyone on the team would be able to score 20 points a game,” Carr said. “If they don’t have to do that and still, in their minds, are able to help, we’ll be better for it.”
The improvement that the team showed was what Carr remembers most.
“All season, this team kept getting better,” he said. “The team started to believe. They believed in what they were doing, they believed in each other and they believed they could win.”
So, how far can this team go? Since joining Division II, the Tritons have not had a .500 season, and yet, Carr says emphatically that the goal is not to simply reach that plateau, but to win the conference.
“Otherwise, why play?” he said. Carr feels that his team serves as “great representatives for the students, the university and the community,” adding that they “play hard, unselfishly and together” and acknowledging how added support for the team would help in the upcoming years.
“The crowd energizes the team, and gives a real home-court advantage,” Carr said. “Five thousand fans in RIMAC would definitely create more energy and buzz.”
Carr exudes an unwavering confidence in how well this team can do and how far it can go sooner rather than later.
“In building on the Bakersfield win” — a 66-60 upset over Cal State Bakersfield — “and other games like the Bakersfield win, we’ll just continue improving, [and] can win immediately,” Carr said.
Carr does not want last year’s Bakersfield victory to remain the biggest win in UCSD’s Division II history. With every player from the team who played 10 minutes or more per game eligible to return, added talent coming from new recruits and team chemistry rising as the players spend more time together, there is basis for Carr to be optimistic as he makes a strong declaration about the Tritons: “There’s more to come.”
