Olen studied the Big West ahead of UC San Diego’s D-I debut in 2020, starting with his new league’s best team: UC Irvine, which has won at least a share of the regular-season conference title in seven of the last 11 years. The Anteaters had size in their frontcourt, and it felt like the rest of the league was trying to scale up in response.

“I knew showing up with the worst version of the same thing was not going to be successful,” Olen said. “We wanted to be different. We felt like we were already different.”

On the interior, Olen recruited players who could shoot 3s and pull opposing big men away from the basket. On the wing, he tried to find taller players who could help with rebounding.

He couldn’t count on winning that rebounding battle, so he adjusted his defense to a more aggressive, turnover-hunting approach to steal more possessions. This year’s team ranks second nationally in defensive turnover rate — turning opponents over on 23.7 percent of possessions — and sixth in offensive turnover rate, allowing the Tritons to average six more field goal attempts per game than their opponents.

The Tritons play two different defenses: a switch-heavy no-middle defense and the matchup zone they cribbed from Cal Poly Pomona. The best no-middle defenses — Texas Tech’s 2019 Final Four team, for instance — have elite rim protection. The Tritons do not have that, but they still allow the 10th-fewest points at the rim in the country, per Synergy, because they’re disciplined in sending the ball toward the baseline and always having a help defender waiting.

That approach leaves the 3 available — opponents shoot 43.5 percent of their shots from long range — but the Tritons scramble like crazy to try to take those away, too.

“We just talk about forcing one more thing,” Olen said. “Just keep making them do one more thing, and you give yourself and your teammates an extra chance to make a play, an extra chance to win in the rotation.”

On offense, the Tritons have a lot more freedom, with one hard rule: Whoever has the ball needs to have the space to drive either direction. They shoot 3s at the ninth-highest rate in the country, and anyone with a 55 percent true shooting percentage has a green light.