DENVER – UC San Diego will walk onto the floor at Ball Arena, home of the NBA champion Denver Nuggets, for the first Division I men’s NCAA Tournament game in school history on Thursday night.
Standing across from them at the center circle will be the Michigan Wolverines, playing their 97th game in their 32nd tournament.
UCSD coach Eric Olen played at an NAIA school in Mobile, Ala., and spent most of his coaching career in Division II, riding vans and buses to games in gyms with laminated wooden bleachers in the California Collegiate Athletic Association.
Michigan coach Dusty May took Florida Atlantic to the Final Four two years ago and, after being hired by Michigan, quickly assembled a roster filled with high-profile transfers with extensive NCAA Tournament experience. They fly charter.
The Tritons will send out a starting lineup with no player taller than 6-foot-8 and four Division II transfers.
The Wolverines will walk out … and look down, starting a pair of 7-footers in Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin.
“When we take the court, when we line up for the jump ball,” Olen said, laughing, “I think that’ll be a good photo.”
And that, right there, might be the Tritons’ superpower: They don’t look the part, not walking through the airport, not walking onto the court.
By now, they’re used to it. They know the look.
These guys are 30-4?
“Personally for me, I feel like that’s happened my whole life,” said narrow-shouldered guard Tyler McGhie. “I feel like I don’t have the best-looking basketball body, but I feel like it’s fuel. It’s fuel, for sure. It makes me want to play harder, just prove people wrong.”
Dismiss them at your own peril.
“Yeah, I think we embrace that a little bit,” Olen said. “I know that our guys are constantly wanting to prove themselves, and this is another good opportunity — great opportunity — for them to try to do it again.
“They like that. It’s kind of fun.”
It makes for arguably the most intriguing matchup of the 32 first-round games Thursday and Friday, the ultimate David vs. Goliath clash, rookie vs. vet, the only guys from San Diego without a tan because they’re in the gym so much vs. the Big Ten champions who have been to seven Final Fours, the skinny 6-6 guard from New Zealand with a zillion rec league pivots and shot fakes vs. twin tower rim protectors, the team that hasn’t played a top-50 opponent in the Kenpom metric all season vs. the one that played its last six games all against the top 20.
“We kind of like being overlooked,” UCSD guard Hayden Gray said. “We’ve been overlooked a lot of the season. … I don’t think it’s a sign of disrespect. We look at it as more motivation.”
But here’s the thing: If anyone understands that looks can deceive, that Cinderella doesn’t wear makeup, it is the Wolverines.
Their coach, May, did this to one unsuspecting foe after another in leading Florida Atlantic, which had reached the NCAA Tournament exactly once before in school history, to the Final Four, where the Owls finally met their match in Lamont Butler and San Diego State. He knows. He gets it.
“When we played the power (conference) teams and the higher seeds,” May said. “we felt like when it got late in the game and the game slowed down that, I don’t want to say they played tight, but we played looser and we played with more confidence. So we want to make sure, just because we’re that power (conference) team or whatever you want to call it, that we don’t fall into that trap.
“It’s March Madness. Everyone is going to love Cinderella.”
Wolf, the 7-foot transfer from Yale, gets it, too, and has been proactive in telling his teammates about what happened a year ago in Spokane, Wash., when his size 17 sneaker was on the other foot. The No. 13 Bulldogs shocked No. 4 Auburn in the first round in a game that, on paper and pedigree, they had no business winning.
“We were playing with house money, no one was expecting anything from us,” Wolf said. “I made this a point to my teammates when we were watching film of UC San Diego. I was trying to give them what our perspective was going into the tournament. Obviously, we were the underdog and a very clear underdog, and Auburn just came off an SEC Tournament championship.
“We looked at Auburn and realized that the only thing that’s stopping us from beating them is ourselves. We kind of went in with that mindset, and I’m sure that UC San Diego is coming with that same mindset.”
Teammate Tre Donaldson nodded. He transferred to Michigan from Auburn. He played in that game last year.
“When you get to March,” Wolf said, “everyone is a really, really good basketball player. UC San Diego is one of six teams that’s won 30 games this year, so they’re doing something right. All they’re doing right now is winning.”
UCSD’s 15-game win streak — their last loss came Jan. 18 against UC Irvine — is the nation’s longest. Thirteen have come by double digits.
Two stats have made the Tritons the trendy upset pick in office brackets. One is that No. 12 seeds have upset No. 5s in 33 of the last 39 NCAA Tournaments. The other is that the Tritons rank fourth nationally in steal percentage, and Michigan ranks 240th in its ability to take care of the ball.
Another possible edge is that UCSD has played and won in altitude this season, beating Utah State 75-73 at 4,770 feet. For all Michigan’s players know, elevation is climbing up a water tower.
Everything else, though, screams Wolverines victory.
The Tritons wouldn’t have it any other way. They’re playing with house money.
“That’s a talented team,” Gray said. “They’re a big team, Big Ten champs. But we’re not going to back down from that. We only get this opportunity once.”