On Saturday, Nov. 15, UC San Diego men’s basketball (4-0, 0-0 Big West) downed Idaho (2-2, 0-0 Big Sky) in a nail-biting comeback win at LionTree Arena. Despite Idaho leading for the majority of the game, the Tritons leveraged their speed to score on fast breaks, pulling off a second-half comeback to win 75-67. After a tight 78-73 win against Fresno State on Wednesday, Nov. 12, the Tritons seemed to repeat history.
The first half of the game was difficult for the Tritons. After only seven minutes of play, the Vandals left the Tritons in the dust with a double-digit lead, taking advantage of offensive rebounds. By game’s end, the Tritons managed 35 rebounds — of which only four were offensive rebounds — compared to the Vandals’ 38 total rebounds and 11 offensive rebounds.
“Rebounding is the thing that we always know that we’re going to need to work on,” junior guard Aidan Burke said in a postgame interview with The UCSD Guardian. “Just being physical — crashing the glass. I mean, it was a bigger team today, so obviously, like that’s going to be a little bit harder, but we can’t let that be an excuse, and we’ve still got to crash the boards hard.”
The Tritons learned from their errors in the first 20 minutes and put on quite the performance in the second half. Beautiful dunks, contentious ref calls, wicked steals, and fast breaks — the second half had it all.
“We have confidence in ourselves, and we all know that the first half, like I said, wasn’t us, so we just need[ed] to get back to what we do, and things will work out,” Burke said.
The Tritons nearly doubled their number of points scored and assists made in the first half, turning the game’s tide in their favor. A key component of UCSD’s momentum was fast break success — the Tritons scored 23 of their game points from fast breaks, compared to Idaho’s five.
“We have a group that, at any point, can go on a spurt, right?” head coach Clint Allard said to The Guardian. “And so that’s part of the fast breaks that you’re talking about — being able to get some stops and turn it into offense and get up and down the floor. We’ve got guys that want to get out and run and attack the paint. We really came out way ahead on the paint points, and I think that was an important step for us.”
Graduate student guard Emanuel Prospere II was one of the game standouts, coleading the team in rebounds with junior guard Tom Beattie and scoring 8 points. His ability to move the ball around, take some hits, and stay animated was crucial in helping the Tritons get back on their feet.
“Emanuel was one of the catalysts for our defensive second half, and he has such good hands,” Allard said. “He can really get over there and rebound. He has really great instincts.”
While the majority of the Tritons’ games this season have been close, there is no doubt that they are improving little by little. Allard is hopeful for the weeks ahead.
“It’s really encouraging where we’re at right now, but we can’t be satisfied,” Allard said. “We know that we have a lot of things to improve on, and we’ll continue to get better this week with a great opportunity in Orlando coming up.”
The Tritons will be heading southeast to Terry’s Chocolate ESPN Events Invitational in Kissimmee, Florida, to continue their winning streak against Temple on Monday, Nov. 24.
