AMHERST — After two days of watching video, Matt McCall had a simple answer to solving UMass’ offensive woes. He just wants his players to pass the ball more often.
The second-year coach maligned his team’s stagnant second-half offense after Saturday’s 69-60 loss to La Salle, and the advanced stats bore out his fears. The Minutemen are 11 of 46 from behind the arc the past two games – both losses – and racked up just eight assists in both contests. Those two stats are connected in McCall’s first 47 games in charge of the Minutemen.
According to the stats collected by the coaches, UMass is 8-0 under McCall when they make at least 200 passes in a game. This season alone, the Minutemen are averaging 50 more passes and seven more assists in their victories than in their losses.
“We’re really just talking to our guys about making the game easier for each other,” McCall said. “We don’t make the game easier for each other enough and we don’t move enough. … Difficult shots will tend to go in after you make a couple of easy ones. You get easy shots through ball movement and player movement, we’re not generating enough easy shots because we’re not doing our job offensively and we’re not making the game easier for each other.”
One way the Minutemen can make the game easier for each other is to have more faith in the offense and run the play as it was designed. McCall said there were moments Saturday when players made the right pass two or three times and didn’t see the shot go in so they decided to make a different decision the fourth time. That included missing fifth-year center Rashaan Holloway when he was open with two feet in the lane.
Sophomore guard Carl Pierre said the guards need to do a better job at finding ways to get the ball into Holloway’s hands because his success has tended to trickle out to the rest of the team this year.
“The more touches he gets, the more teams have to key in on him and the more it opens up the floor for us as guards,” Pierre said. “That’s an easy and clear solution.”
Establishing Holloway’s presence in the post should help junior guard Luwane Pipkins, who has scraped and clawed for his points in the last two games. McCall said the Minutemen haven’t done a good enough job at giving Pipkins the support he needs to find a groove on offense, forcing him to take a lot of difficult shots, especially early in games. He said Pipkins’ struggle the past two weeks is correlated to how many good looks he gets early in games and giving him the rhythm to make 3-pointers, especially in transition.
That all starts with the unselfish little plays that make the UMass offense tick from proper spacing to making sure the screens are set properly to give Pipkins some separation from his defender. As teams continue to guard Pipkins tighter and deny him from having the ball in his hands too often, McCall said the rest of the players need to adapt and support their leading scorer in finding better scoring chances.
“We have to do a better job helping him get into a rhythm,” McCall said. “Teams are going to deny, teams are going to be physical with him, teams are going to take the ball out of his hands, so are we doing a good enough job screening for him and opening up the floor.”
One of McCall’s biggest challenges is finding ways to free up space for his shooters – mainly Pierre and Pipkins. The two of them have struggled with their 3-point shots the past two games, combining to make just 4 of 24 from behind the arc. The coach said some of the blame falls on how poorly the Minutemen have simulated opposing defenses recently because of the increased emphasis on UMass’ own defensive performance.
However, he said he doesn’t believe the extra focus on defense has hindered the offense in games. He said the Minutemen just need to do a better job at playing scout team defense while also maintaining their level of play within UMass’ own defensive sets.
“We have to challenge each other more in practice like how teams are going to guard Luwane or how teams are going to guard Carl Pierre,” McCall said. “We focus so much on our own defense that we have to get better in practice at playing other teams’ defense and then again being able to go back to our defense. That’s a challenge, especially with a young basketball team.”
SCOUTING THE BILLIKENS — Saint Louis (10-4, 1-0 Atlantic 10) was the preseason favorite to win the conference.
The Billikens play two traditional forwards in Hasahn French and D.J. Foreman, which will pose a challenge for the longer, more athletic Minutemen (7-7, 0-1 A-10). McCall said he might use freshman Sy Chatman more and use his size to help guard against the bigger fronts Saint Louis will present at 9 p.m., Wednesday.
McCall said he also wants to press more if the situation dictates to add some pace and tire out the host Billikens, who only played seven men at least 10 minutes in the A-10 opener against Rhode Island. Saint Louis only has seven players averaging at least 10 minutes per game, too, which gives UMass advantage with its deeper bench.
Former UMass guard Chris Lowe is in his first season as a Saint Louis graduate student manager under his former UMass coach Travis Ford.