AMHERST — There have been several times this season when Matt McCall has walked into the Champions Center early in the morning the day following a difficult loss. Thursday was not one of those days.
Instead, the second-year UMass coach took his daughter, Brooklyn, to school like he normally would. McCall might not have slept a lot Wednesday night, but he wasn’t going to let his parental duties suffer as a result. He tries as hard as he can not to bring his work home with him, but that has become increasingly difficult during this recent rough stretch for the Minutemen.
By the time he showered and changed after Thursday’s practice, McCall was still feeling the sting from the pitiful performance the Minutemen had against Fordham Wednesday.
“Not good, but shoulders are back, chest is out,” McCall said when asked how he was feeling. “There’s people out there whose jobs are way harder than mine. They’re having to save jobs and cure cancer and fight for our country, I’m trying to fight for UMass and get our players to buy into our culture and the things we’re going to be about. But it’s hard, you have to block out the noise, you have to stay off Twitter because everybody has an opinion and rightfully so. We’re not performing the way anybody wants to perform, and I get it.”
McCall’s first step in trying to get his players to buy into the new culture was barring the team from the Champions Center, the glamorous $30-million practice facility UMass opened in 2016. The Minutemen practiced at the Mullins Center on Thursday and at the Curry Hicks Cage on Friday, where they will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
With just five weeks left in the season, McCall said he wants to make sure the program is headed in the correct direction and filled with only people who are willing to believe in and work for his vision. He said he has been more lenient on players in the past and gave them the benefit of the doubt, but that will no longer be the case as the coach tries to steer the team back toward winning.
“There’s just a certain standard that we have to play to and if we’re not playing to that standard, guys need to be called out,” McCall said. “For me as a coach, this is completely, 100 percent, about setting the culture and who’s going to be bought into everything. … We’ve got to figure really over the next five weeks who’s going to be bought in, and if you’re not and this isn’t for you, that’s cool, you’ll have to go somewhere else.”
One player who has at least earned a little praise from McCall is Unique McLean, who was one of the few bright spots in Wednesday’s loss. He scored 10 points, secured six rebounds, dished out six assists and only committed one turnover in 28 minutes against Fordham. That came on the heels of a strong defensive showing against Saint Joseph’s last Saturday that gave UMass a needed spark in the second half.
McCall said he is going to reward McLean with the start Saturday when UMass hosts Davidson at 1 p.m.
“I’ve been very critical of Unique since I’ve been here,” McCall said. “Of him going through the motions, not playing hard all the time, his facial expressions, a lot of different things. The one thing I’ll say about Unique is even when he hasn’t been playing, he’s still be a good teammate on the bench. We needed a lift against Saint Joe’s and he gave us that lift. He’s playing the game, to me, a lot more inspired and he appreciates being out there.”
As McCall stands strong in defining the culture he wants to build at UMass, the Minutemen (8-15, 1-9 Atlantic 10) are still striving to win games and fight their way out of the cellar in the Atlantic 10. The task will be difficult Saturday as Davidson (17-5, 8-1 A-10) is the league leader at the halfway mark, but McCall said a better effort from his players is all the Minutemen need to turn the corner.
“If we would have played really, really hard (Wednesday), we would have won the game,” McCall said. “We didn’t play hard, we had no fight, we had no resilience, no toughness, no anything. That’s not to take anything away from Fordham, give them a lot of credit, they came in with a great game plan. … If you just play harder and get guys that are going to completely buy in and be connected, you’ll win more games. It’s as simple as that.”