UC San Diego will play its first NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament game Thursday nights in its first season of eligibility, facing Michigan in a South Region first-round game in Denver.
The Tritons are seeded 12th in the region and 47th in the 68-team field. They qualified for the tournament by winning the Big West Men's Basketball Championship, defeating UC Irvine, 75-61, in Saturday's final in Henderson, Nevada, after winning the conference's regular-season championship.
UCSD (30-4) enters Thursday's game with a 15-game winning streak, the longest in the nation, with 13 of victories by double digits, including five by 20 or more.
The Tritons are outscoring their opponents by an average of 18.1 points per game, the second largest margin among Division I teams, behind only Duke (20.8).
UCSD is first in turnover margin at plus-7.24.
The Tritons are led by guard-forward Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, the Big West Conference's Player of the Year. The 6-foot-6-inch senior from Wellington, New Zealand led the team in scoring, averaging 19.5 points per game, and rebounding, averaging 5.5 per game.
Guard-forward Tyler McGhie was also a first-team all-conference selection for averaging 16.4 points per game.
Hayden Gray was the conference's Defensive Player of the Year and among 10 finalists for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year, which will be presented at the Final Four. The 6-foot-4-inch senior point guard leads the nation with 109 steals and 3.21 steals per game.
Michigan qualified for the tournament as the champion of the Big Ten Men's Basketball Tournament, defeating Wisconsin, 59-53, in Sunday's final in Indianapolis, after tying for second in the 18-team conference with Maryland.
The Wolverines improved to 25-9 in their first season under Dusty May, who coached Florida Atlantic to the 2023 Final Four, after going 8-24 the previous season under Juwan Howard, who was fired two days after the conclusion of the season. The 24 losses were a school record.
Michigan's 16-player roster includes 11 new players — two graduate transfers, four junior transfers, one sophomore transfer and four freshmen.
Center Vladislav Goldin was a first-team All-Big Ten Conference selection in voting by the media and second-team selection by the coaches. The 7-foot-1-inch Goldin is a transfer from Florida Atlantic.
Forward Danny Wolf was a second-team All-Big Ten Conference selection both in the media and coaches' voting. The 7-footer is a transfer from Yale.
The Wolverines are seeded fifth in the region and 17th overall. Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, No. 5 seeds are 90-46 against No. 12 seeds.
Oddsmakers have made UCSD a 1 1/2-point to 2 1/2-point underdog.
Gray said Wednesday the Triitons "want to get out and run."
"We're still going to be a physical team, and I think we kind of like being overlooked," Gray said. "We've been overlooked a lot of the season and it kind of helps us play with a chip on our shoulder."
The 7 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time game will be televised by TBS.
The winner will advance to face the winner of Thursday's game between fourth-seeded Texas A&M and 13th-seeded Yale Saturday.
Under NCAA rules, a program transitioning from Division II to Division I is ineligible to compete in championship events for four seasons. UCSD began its four-year transition from Division II to Division I in the 2020-21 academic year.
"The rationale behind the rule is to allow programs to get up to speed, to build the necessary compliance, facilities, scholarship requirements and other standards to satisfy Division I membership," Meghan Durham Wright, an NCAA associate director of communications, told City News Service.
The rule had been two years but "was doubled when teams began to make the jump and were unable to sustain Division I membership because they made the move too soon and could not keep up financially," Durham Wright wrote in an email.
UCSD was founded in 1960 and began its men's basketball program by splitting two games in the 1965-66 season. It competed on the Division III level through the 1999-2000 academic year and on the Division II level from the 2000-01 academic year through the 2019-20 academic year.
