“People don’t want to come to the game? Screw that. They’re going to miss the show.” – UCSD men’s basketball head coach Eric Olen
On cloudy afternoons in early March, the silence in LionTree Arena is occasionally broken by swishes and thuds reverberating from stragglers of UC San Diego men’s basketball shootaround. Today, the courts are all but empty, but on nights when the Tritons pull through with another victory in front of thousands of rabid students and fans, redshirt sophomore forward Cade Pendleton will exchange glances with junior guards Camden McCormick and Quin Patterson, as if to telepathically shake one another by the shoulders and yell, “Can you believe this is happening right now?”
Envision the best collegiate basketball team in the country. There are some who opt for the roster fielding the tallest players, or those who beeline to check what Duke looks like. Others may search for the best rebounding squad, or perhaps the group that downs the most 3-point baskets. Maybe defensive metrics are your cup of tea. Houston’s pretty hot right now, Tennessee’s no slouch, and Auburn, Gonzaga, and Purdue are perennial contenders.
UCSD, anyone?
In their very first year of March Madness eligibility, the Tritons (28-4, 18-2 Big West) are surfing across the Big West with striking margins of victory. They have dropped only two contests since mid-November, and their 13-game win streak, as of March 10 — the second longest in the country — is the Tritons’ second time putting together at least 10 consecutive victories this season. That dominance has left lasting anguish in opposing athletic administrations who are now forced to take meditative, roster-churning looks at how to best combat against whatever is hatching down near Seventh College.
The Tritons have commanded the conference with such fervor that one could convincingly argue they have been bamboozled out of late, close-game experiences simply because opposing teams visiting LionTree Arena are so often disposed of well before the final horn; UCSD’s average margin of victory is among the nation’s best.
“I think that makes us more competitive,” senior guard Tyler McGhie says. “You know, we’re on our, what, 11-game win streak? 12? I feel like we’re one of the best teams in the country, and we’re playing each other every single day. I feel like that makes us more competitive, you know? With the success we’re having against other teams, it just shows how good we are. Even the dudes at the end of the bench, they come in the game, and they up the score, which is great. But, yeah, we’re all competitive, I’d say.”
McGhie is on the up. It’s been a few weeks now since the bad news dropped, like a bomb, via FaceTime from a friend. “Check Twitter,” the caller said. There, along with everyone back home in Denton, Texas, he found the breaking news of a horrifying trade between the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers. Then came an assortment of missed calls. “I saw it, obviously I thought it was fake like everyone else in the world,” McGhie mutters. To make matters worse, the friend was a Lakers fan. “[Doncic] probably still is my favorite player, but it’s a little bit tougher to watch,” he laments.
Grieving Luka aside, McGhie, a 6-foot-5-inch sharpshooter, has other priorities. This year, the Texan has struck gold from behind the 3-point arc. By season’s end, his 111 3-point makes sit alongside Tyrell Roberts’ as the most ever downed by a Triton in one season. “I’ve been around great basketball my whole life … some pretty good teams,” the marksman reflects. “I’d definitely rank this team up there as one of the best teams I’ve ever been on — just like chemistry and consistency wise.”
“It’s hard to play out there and not smile,” he adds with a grin.
What makes the latest edition of coach Eric Olen’s Tritons particularly venomous is a scintillating turnover defense margin that forces opponents to play their cleanest game or prepare to lose punishingly. “We don’t play a traditional man-to-man defense,” McGhie extolls. “It’s something that they introduced this summer; they’ve coached us up on it.”
The results, to say the least, have been staggering. On any given night, the Tritons will harass opponents into turning the ball over on nearly a quarter of their total possessions. Through March 9, that rate of thievery ranks second best in the country — for context, San Diego State ranks 53rd in turnover defense percentage, Duke ranks 135th, and UConn ranks 274th. Senior guard Hayden Gray leads the team, and the nation, with 104 steals so far. Once UCSD pilfers the basketball, they tend to hold on to it, ranking fourth in the country at avoiding turnovers on offense — for context, San Diego State ranks 151st, Duke ranks 17th, and UConn ranks 187th. Then, once blood is in the water, down come the clamps; in 23 tries thus far, no opponent is yet to mount a second-half comeback against the Tritons.
Tally up those statistics and find, arguably, the most stringent defense in the country complemented by a snappy, precise offense that can knock out just about every team in the March Madness tournament. In simpler terms, the Tritons play a brand of basketball tailored to confound a fat-cat, blue-blood program that will find the stuff of nightmares in desperate, fruitless attempts to match 48 minutes of brain-chilling intensity surging in from sleepy La Jolla.
For years, the tide of Triton basketball calmly bobbed in between Divisions II and III. Five years ago, the ocean opened, sending UC San Diego “ on a four-year reclassification period” representing a massive transition to Division-I athletics. Months later, Associate Director of Athletics for Communications Jeff Tourial already had high hopes for the future. “And we do expect to win conference titles and more than that in the coming years,” Tourial said to The UCSD Guardian in 2020. “That’s not something that will necessarily happen here in 2021, assuming we play games, but in the coming years after we’ve made the transition into Division I, I think we’re going to be ultracompetitive.”
Triton basketball began Big West play on Jan. 9, 2021, at home against UC Irvine, then-defending Big West champions. Redshirt freshman guard Bryce Pope scored 21 points, and junior forward Toni Rocak added 20 points off the bench, but the Tritons lost control of a 4-point halftime lead to fall 79-65.
UCSD weathered the pandemic to finish its rookie Division-I campaign with a 7-10 record, landing them tenth in the final Big West standings. A year later, Rocak emerged as the team’s leading scorer, and the Tritons added six more wins to move up two spots, finishing eighth in the conference.
In 2022, the Tritons introduced McCormick, Patterson, and Pendleton, who harkens back to an adjustment period the trio endured during their first summer together on campus.
“We got here two months before school started, no one else was on campus, we were just working out, getting adjusted to the college workouts,” Pendleton recalls. “We were tired from the workouts, we’re taking summer classes, we were far from home, but we were all going through it together.”
The Tritons of two seasons ago slipped and stumbled to a paltry 10-20 record, dropping 13 games to conference opponents. “We had a tough year,” the Muir big man remembers. “Our record was pretty bad, but it was even more frustrating because, if you go back and watch the games, it’s like, we were in a lot of really close games. It just came down to the wire, and it just didn’t fall our way. … Definitely, it hurt, so being able to be this good … like I said, me, Cam, and Quin are the only guys that remember that — our freshman year — so [it’s] just being like, man, we really have come a long way.”
Following Pope’s transfer last spring, a player some fans eyed as the team’s new leading scorer had once discussed a potential future as a physiotherapist after his playing days concluded. Only, this time around, a different question is hurtling toward Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones. In what country would Niwa prefer to play professional basketball?
“NBA, for sure. America.”
“The first team I liked watching when I grew up was OKC,” reckons the Muir senior. “But I’m boys with Steven Adams, so it would be pretty cool if we could play on the Rockets together.”
Basketball, invented by Canadian James Naismith in 1891, has taken something of a cultish, fanatical roost here in the States. Legendary LSU point guard “Pistol” Pete Maravich was beaten black and blue by his father if he didn’t play up to standard. Lavar Ball decided his sons would one day arrive through the NBA doorway, long before they ultimately did.
This, however, was not the case for the New Zealander. “I got into basketball at 14,” Niwa admits. “That was because of my coach Kenny McFadden back home. I actually played socially, like basically pickup with a few friends and it was a lot of fun. We won that league.”
“I wouldn’t change my path for anything,” says the forward, who is on a journey that has shuttled him between idyllic islands of home, Hawai’i, and here, in the spotlight in LionTree Arena. “I think that’s why I kind of love the game so much, just because I kind of just stumbled upon it. I wasn’t forced to play basketball from a young age.” In his second year as a Triton, the conference’s third-leading scorer is the surest choice for Big West player of the year.
Several steps away, Pendleton’s long-legged frame saunters past a rear doorway. Born in Utah and raised in Tennessee, he averaged four blocks per game as a senior at East Hamilton en route to leading the Ibises to their first-ever district championship. After redshirting his freshman year, the lanky forward works as a sizzling spark plug off a Triton bench teeming with skilled athletes. Standing at 6 feet, 10 inches tall and sporting a melodic shooting arc, in Pendleton’s game, one can find a touch of Jamal Mashburn tinged with some Rashard Lewis, harnessed by a Tayshaun Prince-style motor on defense.
“I played a lot of sports growing up,” Pendleton says. As a former high school baseball player from Alabama, coach Olen’s affinity for dual-sport athletes shows on his roster. Napa’s Hayden Gray fancies a golf club, Nordin Kapic skis, Christopher Cox played football, Pendleton swam, and Tait-Jones grew up ducking lumbering behemoths on rugby pitches.
“That’s why you see me, you know, driving a lot, getting downhill, being physical,” observes Tait-Jones, a former winger.
“That dude knows how to draw a foul, I’ll tell you that,” agrees McGhie.
“I think it’s definitely developed over the years,” Tait-Jones says of his penchant for getting to the line. “Now, like being an old guy, I know, y’know, what the refs are gonna call and, y’know, just different spots on the court.” Through the first week of March, Tait-Jones leads the nation with 262 free throws attempted and sits one spot from the top by way of 201 conversions. If free throws are coupons to the scoreboard, the “old guy” is making them pay up.
Wading into the splendor of the game in one way or another seems to have afforded several Tritons a unique set of standards and motivations. When recruiting players to the program, Olen has been known to say that, “When you come to UCSD, it’s a 40-year plan, not a four-year plan. “[Coach Olen] just wants to win really bad,” Pendleton says. “[He knows it’s] human nature to kind of relax and take a night off every now and then, but in college basketball, that’s just not gonna work.”
I point toward a seated Niwa. “That dude’s a dawg,” says McGhie. “He brings it every day. He works really hard, you know. He’s working on that jumper, and it’s starting to look good. I feel like that’s scaring other teams. Once they see that go, they don’t know how to guard him at all.”
“I worked hard all summer,” Niwa insists. “I was up at 6 a.m. every morning for five years straight. You got to outwork everyone.” The work is paying off. When asked about his transition into the team’s leading scorer, “It’s been pretty seamless, man,” says the former semi-pro. “The guys are great. … Like I’ve said before, I have an easy job, man. A lot of the times, I’m just laying it in because of our spacing. We’ve got such great shooters, a lot of the time [I can get] free layups. It’s just a credit to my teammates, and I got an easy job, bro. I just put it in the hoop.”
Through an aggressive style of play, the ex-rugger addresses a direct need for the Tritons. “I’ve got to be the most physical guy on the court,” he confessed. In fact, Tait-Jones finds aspects of his game exhibited in that of his favorite player: triple double extraordinaire Russell Westbrook. “Just because [of] how hard he plays. And I used to watch him a lot when I first started basketball, so I think I kinda play a little bit like him, y’know, getting downhill, y’know, being a menace out on the court, celebrating and doing all that,” he giggled. “So, I just love how hard he plays and, yeah, I just think I’m not as athletic as him, [but] I think we kinda have a few similarities.”
As March Madness approaches, a bid for greatness will require a calculated attack in which every teammate brings something to the potluck, regardless of playing time. What makes the tournament so special is the sense of finality — stakes that rise with each win and gut-wrenching wait for the next tip-off. “You get to the tournament, it’s one loss and you’re out, no matter how good of a season you’ve had,” Pendleton reminds me.
Many of March’s most memorable upsets have been punctuated by role players who, with pressure rolling at full boil, are annually called upon to calmly step into feature roles they often have little to no experience in and deliver. In the 1983 championship game, NC State sophomore forward Lorenzo Charles, despite only averaging a shade over 8 points per game in season, nudged in the title-winning lay-in that sent coach Jimmy Valvano jubilantly darting and dancing across the court in one of the most iconic moments in American sports. Freshman guard Ricky Moore averaged just under 7 points per game for Jim Calhoun’s 1999 UConn squad before contributing 13 points and victory-sealing defense, as the Huskies knocked off the dastardly Duke Blue Devils and their 32-game win streak in the championship game. The 2016 Villanova Wildcats featured a host of future NBA household names but won their championship on a buzzer-beating trey from a future undrafted player: Kris Jenkins.
This is why, down the serene path from dozy Seventh Market and Good Morning breakfast sandwiches, Triton reserves hone their senses with a practice drill they call “Stay Readys.”
“It’s all the low-minute guys and some of the coaches, and a couple of other guys [who] will just come in,” Pendleton says. “And we’ll just play and make sure that we’re all, like, in shape, we’re all still sharp, we all know what we’re doing so that, you know, if you are called on, because sometimes [s—] happens.”
“I think [‘Stay Readys’ are] huge for them, man,” Tait-Jones says. “Like, the biggest thing Coach preaches is that, whoever’s in the game, bring that same intensity and always be ready to play, so I think them playing those ‘Stay Ready’ games is a huge part of, I mean, they came in and extended our lead on Saturday night, so I think that’s a huge part for them — to not only improve their game but also be ready.”
So, even on nights when he knows “he might not see non-garbage time minutes,” Pendleton is primed to hop off the bench and go nuts. “You know, if I get on the court, whether someone gets hurt and they just need me to go out there, or if it’s just at the end of the game and they need someone to close out and keep that foot on the pedal, it’s still playing time, I’m still on the court,” he says. In three recent Triton obliterations of Bakersfield, Hawai’i, and Fullerton, across which he saw 30 on-court minutes, Pendleton connected on 7 of 13 3-point shots. Though a limited sample size, that conversion rate registers over 4 percentage points higher than the current NCAA snipers atop the 3-point percentage leaderboard.
It should come as no surprise, then, that if he were to see 30 minutes out on the court, Pendleton anticipates “there’d have to be a lot of threes” in his game. “Even though I was taller, I knew that if I wanted to be on the court more, I had to do other things that the other big guys couldn’t,” he explains. “[Three-point shooting is] a big part of my game. It’s what I excel at, and I think, because I’m tall, it gets underestimated a little bit when we play the other teams … gotta have a couple post buckets too.” On defense, he’d be good for “a couple blocks a game — sneaky steals, for sure.”
In due time, opponents will find woe in grappling with each of the Tritons, whose collective confidence is skyrocketing as the tournament draws near. Former roommates McGhie and Gray are connecting on alley oops, and redshirt junior guard Justin Rochelin’s arena-invigorating slams have brought down the LionTree roof all season long, ensuring fans are always prepared for a spectacular highlight play to break toward the basket. “I think overall we’re just a bunch of smart guys,” Tait-Jones lauds. “High IQ. … I know my teammate’s gonna be there. … Credit to our personnel, like, these guys are so smart on our team, and a lot of the time they’re covering for our mistakes.”
The Tritons are bolstered by a comfort and brotherhood that stems from practices where players build each other up without building resentment. When they get on one another for making a mistake, advice is received and implemented in stride. “Here, man, it’s like we all really like hanging out with each other,” Pendleton gushes. “We’re all just genuinely friends, and the road trips are fun, so that’s definitely something, how close we are. You know, we have Mikey Howell and Chris Howell, they’re literally brothers. The team feels ridiculously like a family,” the big Tennessean says. “Especially for the guys who aren’t from Southern California.”
Spurred by a ravenous swarm of supporters on March 6, the Tritons honored seniors Gray, McGhie, Tait-Jones, and forward Maximo Milovich, then feasted upon Long Beach State for consecutive win number 12 — and, for dessert, the first Big West Championship in school history. A smattering of years after a rocky start to the Division-I days, hungry Tritons are screaming toward the madness of March with a crazed gleam.
“Did basketball benefit from work ethic, or did work ethic come from basketball?” I ask Pendleton.
“Work ethic came from basketball,” he says. “Main thing is adversity, like I talked about my freshman year, hey, we weren’t very good … [but] I promise you, our practices looked very similar to how they are now, it just didn’t work out. Seeing that, like, hey, you know, putting your best effort, best foot forward is kinda the bare minimum. That’s the expectation. Nothing’s gonna happen if you don’t do that, and if you do that, something still might not happen for you. … To give yourself a chance, you kinda gotta go all out.”
“I want to be remembered as a good teammate,” Pendleton declares. “In a year, we’re gonna be the fourth-year guys — we’re gonna be the big dogs. When you’re having a really good year like this, you gotta make sure you’re, you know, living in the moment. It’s a good time. It’s a special group of guys. This doesn’t really happen ever, like, to anyone, so you gotta value it. We know that eventually it’s gonna end, and that’s gonna suck, but [we’re] just focusing on the next opponent, making sure we do our best to delay that ending as much as possible.”
In a little over one month’s time, the Tritons will walk away from the noise into sunny summer months full of new-fangled motivation. In the meantime, though, that ending is still unwritten. The college basketball national championship will soon be up for grabs, and across the country, reasons why UCSD cannot swoop in to whisk that trophy away are rapidly falling by the wayside.
“My on-court days died at the hands of JV guards in Northern California,” I mumble to Pendleton. Yet, all of this magic around me, just paces from Seventh West Tower 1 — where I came to college knowing full well that a basketball powerhouse was most definitely not being cultivated in a hushed RIMAC — has me questioning everything I thought I knew about this beautiful game.
“Nothing good has Ever happened in March,” Kentucky Wildcat fan Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 2001. “Disaster is certain because March is ruled by Mars. The sun is in Pisces, which is the worst time of Any year for making Decisions … And that bring Us, as Gambling people, to the terrible truth that March is also the month of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — and we know what That means for Gamblers, don’t we? … There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March.”
