For UCSD, Winning Is Simply Basic : College basketball: By sticking to fundamentals, Tritons (20-3) don’t let success go to their heads.

The way Coach Tom Marshall saw it, the biggest threat to the well-being of the UC San Diego basketball team this season was “The Disease of More.”

In 1989-90, the Tritons had the program’s highest winning percentage (.740), winning 20 games and reaching the NCAA Division III playoffs for the first time in school history. So UCSD’s fortunes could get only better, right?

“Everyone wants more wins, more points, more rebounds, more time on the court,” said Marshall, in his eighth year as head coach. “And the public wants more. They see what you did last year and get disappointed when you don’t win by 15 or 20 points. It’s the Disease of More.”

It’s an illness for which Marshall found a prescription: Block out those heightened expectations and inflated egos by getting back to basics.

Their focus clear, the Tritons this season are 20-3 and ranked fifth in the nation. And, barring a collapse in their last three regular-season games, they are almost guaranteed a spot in the Division III playoffs beginning Feb. 28.

Back-to-back trips to the playoffs represent a quite a turnaround for a program that was 9-17 in 1988-89. But success could have spoiled the Tritons, too.

“Last year, anything was going to be a step up for us,” said Tim Rapp, this season’s leading scorer (24.5 average). “It was a feather in everyone’s cap. But this year was different. People assumed that since we were good last year, we were going to be great this year.”

And why not? UCSD’s starting five returned, and Marshall could call upon a bench as deep as the Grand Canyon. Sports Illustrated ranked the Tritons third in its preseason poll, and, even by small-college standards, the hype was beginning to feel like a vice.

After talking to a number of professional and college peers, including former Laker Coach Pat Riley, Marshall engineered a plan designed to keep his players’ minds on the game.

“We decided to go back to fundamentals,” Marshall said. “It wasn’t like this was a group of kids we hadn’t coached before or who hadn’t played together before. In doing so, it created some ire among the players, but they eventually got the idea that by doing the fundamentals: basic passing, defensive movements, drills, it gave them an opportunity to see their own strengths and weaknesses.”

Last year, the Tritons were 2-4 in games decided by one- or two-point margins, with the 77-75 loss to Nebraska Wesleyan in the NCAA tournament embedded in their memories as particularly grating.

This year, they are winning those close ones--four of the first five games, all victories, were won by fewer than four points. In fact, they’re winning most all of them.

After a 88-70 victory Tuesday over Whittier, the Tritons had won 12 in a row, surpassing their eight-game streak established in 1972-73.

Gordon McNeill, a 6-foot-8 forward, along with Rapp, a 6-4 guard, are the only seniors who have played four years at UCSD.

McNeill said the team is finally beginning to appreciate the hours spent on what seemed rudimentary basketball.

“Any player will tell you they don’t like fundamentals,” he said, “but it did help us. We don’t have those little mistakes that can make a difference in a two- or four-point game. It’s just hitting us now, because we’ve won some close ones.

McNeill said it is a matter of finding ways to win.

“Good teams win those one-point games,” he said. “Sometimes it is a bit of luck, but you make your own luck and we’re winning because we’re positioning ourselves right and we have the confidence.”

The Tritons won their first seven games before being jolted by back-to-back defeats to The Master’s College and Christian Heritage. The loss to Christian Heritage really hurt, since it came at Triton Gym against a local small school.

“We weren’t really devastated with (The Master’s) loss,” said Rick Batt, a 6-7 junior forward who is a three-year starter. “But the next one did hurt us. That stunned us. They wanted it more then we did.”

Said Marshall: “We lost a little focus in those games. We had to go back and reassert ourselves.”

From the onset, this team was convinced that it couldn’t rest on its laurels from last year and was committed to working hard and getting back to the playoffs.

“I didn’t want them going in and thinking they could exist on their level of talent,” Marshall said. “I didn’t want them to think they wouldn’t have to work just as hard.”

Perhaps they were trying a little too hard, forcing things to happen in an attempt to recreate the magic of a year ago.

“Our assistant coach told us he didn’t want us to come out firing on all six cylinders,” Rapp said. “He told us we couldn’t expect to pick up right where we left off. We needed to relax more and let things happen, give it time and do the things that we know how to do.”

But McNeill said ego may have had something to do the early losses.

“You hear and read that you are that good and you start to think, ‘Yeah, we are,’ ” he said. “That might have had something to do with those three losses. You never like to lose, but they came at a good time. We got them out of the way. They didn’t hurt us that much.”

UCSD’s third loss, to Washington State, a 25-point defeat and their worst of the season on Dec. 28, was also their last.

Marshall said although the personnel is the same--other starters from last year’s team are senior guard Tom Shawcroft and junior guard Darvin Jackson--two factors make this team much different from last year’s: depth and defense.

“Our bench is incredibly deeper,” he said. “We can go to nine or 10 guys easily and don’t lose a lot of the flow. And defensively, we’re so much better. We’re known as a scoring team, but we’re winning games because we’re playing defense.”

The Tritons have held opponents to 70 or fewer points eight times this season.

Batt said the best might be yet to come. “I remember certain halves where we’ve played really well,” he said, “we just need to do it for 40 minutes. That’s one thing we still haven’t done, but we’re getting closer.”

What are the possibilities of bringing back a national championship banner in basketball to go with the many--from tennis, swimming, cross country and soccer--that UCSD already has? “Personally, I think we can go all the way,” McNeill said. “We expect to do well and we expect to get to the championship.”

And because they’ve been to the playoffs, UCSD won’t have to waste time being overwhelmed by the experience.

“It’s a cliche,” Marshall said, “but honest to gosh, there’s no substitute for experience.”

When images of March Madness come to mind, you think of UNLV, Arizona, Syracuse, and Georgetown, not UCSD, Hamilton (N.Y.), Wisconsin-Platteville and Hope (Mich.)

But the players have little trouble firing it up for a shot at a national title that would be an impossibility if they went to a Division I school.

“I take it just as seriously as if it were Division I and Dick Vitale were there,” McNeill said. “The people get so into it. To the student body, it’s just as important to them and it is to us.”

“This is what we’ve prepared for,” Rapp said. “This is where it all counts. Everything up to this point doesn’t matter. I’m not going to say the season will be a disappointment if we don’t win the national championship, there are so many factors involved, you just don’t go in and take it. But I think we can definitely get to the final four.”