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UC San Diego men’s basketball aims to build off March Madness run in new season

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UC San Diego men’s basketball aims to build off March Madness run in new season


LA JOLLA, Calif. (KGTV) — Inside LionTree Arena in La Jolla, new UC San Diego men’s basketball head coach Clint Allard leads his team through practice ahead of their first game of the season. It’s a new chapter for Allard at a program he’s known for nearly two decades.

“I have so much pride in UC San Diego,” Allard said. “I’ve seen so much growth, and for me to be the guy calling the shots now, it just means the world to me”.

There are new drills, offensive and defensive sets, but it all comes from the same brand of Triton basketball that helped them make history last season when they reached the NCAA tournament in their first year of eligibility.

“To go into the NCAA Tournament, playing in March Madness in front of 20,000 people, it was just something that was so memorable and something I’ll never forget,” Allard said.

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Allard played for UCSD from 2004-08, when the Tritons were still competing at the Division II level. Seventeen years after his last season as a player, he served as the associate head coach for the Tritons’ first tournament team.

Junior guard Aidan Burke recalls how special the moment was for him to make the big dance with the team last year.

“That’s something I dreamed of as a kid, “Burke said. “Coming out of high school, playing in March Madness, obviously that’s a dream. Being able to accomplish it, that’s awesome”.

After one of the best seasons in program history, former Tritons Head Coach Eric Olen accepted a job for the same role at the University of New Mexico. Along with Olen’s departure, multiple players left the program — some graduating and some transferring schools. Those departures leave UCSD with only five returning players from last year’s tournament team.

Burke is the lone returner who played a significant role. He’s looking to use that experience to bring this team together.

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“Yeah, we know we got a great group, a lot of talent,” Burke said. “Playing defense, shooting the 3. We just need to put it all together.”

It takes any team time to find their true identity during a new season, but with so many new faces on the sidelines and on the court, it presents a bigger challenge for Allard.

“It’s been a lot of teaching,” Allard said. “We’ve been at this since July, which feels like a long time, and we still have a long way to go to be the best version of ourselves”.

Despite the roster turnover, he’s ready to see his team compete at the highest level and bring continued success to a program he loves.

“We just gotta stick to the process and continue to get better through the season to hopefully be playing for a tournament birth in March”. Allard said.

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The Tritons play their only exhibition game on Friday, October 24th, against CSU San Marcos at home. The first regular-season game is on November 3rd.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.





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San Diego, CA

SDPD investigating suspicious death

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SDPD investigating suspicious death


UNIVERSITY CITY (KGTV) — San Diego police are investigating the death of an 81-year-old woman who was found unresponsive in her apartment in the 6300 block of Genesee Avenue.

Officers and San Diego Fire-Rescue personnel responded to a 9-1-1 call at about 11:56 p.m. on March 6.

First responders found the woman in her bedroom, unresponsive and “positioned awkwardly on a bed.” Despite immediate life-saving efforts, she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Detectives from the San Diego Police Department’s Homicide Unit were called to the scene due to “unusual circumstances,” police said. The cause and manner of death remain undetermined.

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Investigators are working with the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office to determine what happened.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.

This story has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.





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One killed in fiery three-vehicle crash on 805 freeway in San Diego

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One killed in fiery three-vehicle crash on 805 freeway in San Diego


A person was killed Sunday in a fiery three-vehicle crash on the Jacob Dekema (805) Freeway in San Diego, authorities said.

The crash occurred at 4:22 a.m. Sunday on the northbound freeway south of Miramar Road, the California Highway Patrol reported.

At least one vehicle struck the center divider and caught fire, the CHP said.

The numbers one through five lanes of the northbound freeway were closed at 6:01 a.m. for an unknown duration.

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No further information was immediately available.



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Veterans weigh in on U.S. involvement in Iran

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Veterans weigh in on U.S. involvement in Iran


“It seems pointless. They change the reason for aggression against Iran daily,” Army Veteran, Forest Gray said.

Gray was among dozens of protestors who gathered at Memorial Community Park in Logan Heights Saturday calling for an end to the war in Iran.

Seeing the conflict play out is personal for him. Gray served eight years in the front lines in the Middle East.

“I fought in Iraq and you know, everyone wears the uniform, and gets deployed, we kind of expect and accept that we have to put our lives on the line, but ideally it should be a sense for a greater good. I don’t see what greater good there is here,” Gray said.

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Gray is not alone.

Jonathan Chavez who served in the U.S. Marine Corps at Miramar Base in San Diego also disagrees with the U.S. involvement in Iran.

“No one wants these wars, no one has asked for these wars. Public opinion in this country is also very clear, the vast majority of Americans do not support these conflicts,” Chavez said.

Some Iranian Americans took a different stance last week, as hundreds took the streets of Clairemont.

“It was a feeling of euphoria knowing that my people are free, knowing that a dictator that has ruled Iran with iron fists for well over 37 years, has been killed, has been pushed out of the power and we can have a democratic Iran,” Bobby Shah told NBC 7.

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Despite the sentiment, Saturday’s protest was hosted by an organization opposed to war in the Middle East.

They used signs and chants to make their stance clear: Stop the War in Iran.

Watching from a distance we found Marine Corps Veteran Chris Mondestin.

Even though he was not part of the protest, he also opposes the war saying the conflict should stay between Iran and Israel and the U.S. should stay out of it.

“It’s real scary. It’s real scary because I know there’s a lot of people that are truly against this war, but they don’t have much of a voice. That’s why I was kind of happy to see this, because we do have a voice. We just got to speak loud,” Mondestin said.

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He also worries about the effects the war could have on the country’s safety, economy, and relationship with countries in the Middle East.

According to Iranian Diaspora Dashboard from UCLA’s Center of Near Eastern Studies, about 600,000 Iranians live in the U.S. and about half of them are in California.



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