AMHERST — Everything Matt McCall feared about his team came to fruition Friday night.
On Thursday, the UMass coach expressed concern with how his team was handling the adversity of losing its first game of the season against Harvard. He didn’t sound pleased when he described the previous two days of practice. And all of those signs pointed to the Minutemen’s performance against Howard on Friday.
There was a lack of urgency on defense in the first half that allowed the Bison to race out to a big lead. Howard didn’t relinquish its lead either, holding on to its advantage for all but 23 seconds of play and leaving the Mullins Center with a 68-63 victory in both teams’ Las Vegas Holiday Invitational.
“I knew going into the game, you try to beat it out of them, you try to scream it out of them,” McCall said. “You try to get them fired up, you try to do different things and we never got to the point where it was like enough is enough. It goes back to just being delusional. You think things are going to be easy just because we have more bodies, and that’s not the case.”
Chad Lott hit an uncontested jumper to begin the game, a precursor to what transpired for most of the opening 20 minutes. UMass (2-2) did itself no favors by committing turnovers on its first three possessions as the Howard lead swelled to 10 within a little more than three minutes. The Minutemen had no answer for Charles Williams or RJ Cole, who combined to outscore UMass 30-26 in the first half.
Williams in particular took advantage of UMass’ lackluster defensive effort and put on a shooting clinic. He made 7 of 8 in the opening 20 minutes, including all five of his 3-point attempts, for 19 first-half points. Howard shot 50 percent from the field in the stanza, picking apart the Minutemen for open shots and easy baskets near the rim.
“You only get so many opportunities to come out here and compete, how can you not be mentally and physically ready to play?” McCall said. “That was evident from the tip. They brought it straight to us.”
The effort was particularly poor on the glass where Howard (4-0) owned a massive advantage all night. The Bison outjumped, outworked and outhustled the Minutemen for every loose ball, at times literally diving on the floor in front of UMass players in order to secure the rebound.
Howard ended the game with a 46-33 rebounding advantage, but it was the 13 offensive boards it secured that were the ultimate backbreakers. The Bison scored seven points off the eight offensive rebounds they collected in the second half, with those baskets oftentimes breaking up the momentum UMass was building.
“We’ve got no physicality at the basket, we got outrebounded by 13,” McCall said. “… (It’s not about positioning), when it’s up on the glass, tag your man and go chase it.”
Despite a miserable start to the game, UMass had some life to it right out of the locker room in the second half. The Minutemen closed the first half on a 6-0 run and then continued that push by scoring the first 11 points of the second half to cut a 19-point deficit down to a single basket. Over the next four minutes, UMass had four chances to tie the game or take the lead, but failed to convert on any of them.
The final 15 minutes turned into a game of runs as Howard extended its lead back to 10 before the Minutemen came charging back to cut it down to a single possession. But every time they seemed to come close to tying the game or taking the lead, the defense would fail again and the Bison would score that basket to keep the game out of reach.
“We had an edge,” McCall said. “We held them to 29 points in the second half, that’s pretty good. That’s guarding. But when you put yourself in that big of a hole, you’re constantly fighting and scratching and clawing and trying to get back. Our defense was much better in the second half, but it was no different than the Harvard game, we couldn’t get the stop we needed at the time we needed it.”