DENVER — UC San Diego wasn’t even allowed in the NCAA Tournament until this season, has four Division II transfers in the starting lineup, and is led by a young man who only played rugby and soccer until he was 14. If you, dear reader, are overlooking Michigan’s NCAA Tournament first-round opponent, know this: The Wolverines are not. Michigan, the 5 seed, will face the 12 seed Tritons in Denver on Thursday night (10 p.m. ET, TBS). For many reasons, the Big Ten Tournament champs are not looking past them. Michigan’s Danny Wolf has been on the other side of a matchup like this. Last season, he helped 13 seed Yale upset 4 seed Auburn. “So I understand their perspective,” Wolf said on Wednesday. He shared that perspective with his teammates during recent film sessions. Auburn, like Michigan, was coming off a conference tournament title. Yale, presumably like UC San Diego, played with reckless abandon. Michigan point guard Tre Donaldson was on the wrong side of that loss. Michigan head coach Dusty May and star center Vladislav Goldin came from Florida Atlantic, a mid-major program that pulled off a few upsets to reach the Final Four in 2023. Starting guard Rubin Jones played the past four years at North Texas. Hearing from all those people gave Michigan guard Roddy Gayle Jr. “a different outlook” on a team like UC San Diego. May said Florida Atlantic played loose, especially late in close games, during its March Madness run. They were the underdog with nothing to lose. “We want to make sure just because we’re that ‘Power Five’ team or whatever you want to call it that we don’t fall into that trap,” May said. “It’s March Madness; everyone is going to love the Cinderella. This is a very, very popular upset pick for a reason: Because they’re really, really good.” They just might not look that imposing. UC San Diego’s guards are relatively big but their frontcourt players are not. “I feel like I don’t have the best-looking basketball body,” said starting guard Tyler McGhie. Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, the Big West Conference player of the year, said he’d been overlooked his whole life. “I think we’ve all been overlooked,” added Hayden Gray, the league’s defensive player of the year. “I know I didn’t have a Division I offer out of high school. I know Niwa didn’t, and I know Tyler did but then they told him to go D-II. I don’t think it’s a sign of disrespect. We look at it as more motivation.” Tait-Jones is a New Zealand native who picked up basketball as a teenager. At 6-foot-6, he plays all over the floor and leads in the country in free throws made and attempted. UC San Diego is second in the country at forcing turnovers. They play a unique style, and May understands why. With established programs in its conference, the Tritons tried something different. “We had the same game plan when we came to Michigan,” May said. “It’s one of the reasons we have two 7-footers when everyone thought we were crazy. We were just determined not to just look at whoever is in first or whoever is in second or whoever has the most tradition (in the Big Ten) and try to do that and mimic it, because I’m not a Hall of Fame coach and we don’t have the evidence of doing it that way and it working.” The Tritons are 30-4 and have the nation’s longest active win streak at 15. Jones, in his fifth season of college, has the ultimate respect for a team that enters the NCAA Tournament with 30 wins. After rattling off UC San Diego’s strengths, he said he hopes Michigan can use its size and physicality to its advantage. Michigan is just a 2.5-point favorite per oddsmakers. At CBS Sports, three of the nine experts picked UC San Diego. Upsets happen all the time in this event. If there’s one in the final game at Ball Arena on Thursday night, it won’t be because Michigan took the underdog lightly. BETTING: Check out our guide to the best Michigan sportsbooks, where our team of sports betting experts has reviewed the experience, payout speed, parlay options and quality of odds for multiple sportsbooks.