AMHERST — Ready or not, the ball will be tossed in the air shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday night at the Mullins Center.
Seven and a half months of online chatter about the potential of this year’s UMass squad will be put to rest the second the referee throws the ball in the air to begin the Minutemen’s season against UMass-Lowell. It’s a moment everyone has been waiting for since the end of last season when the program underwent a major overhaul both on the staff and the roster.
The final message from coach Matt McCall as he begins his third season helming the Minutemen is the same one he pleaded with all of last year. Forget about the individual accolades and glory and work together toward the common goal of winning basketball games.
“Put the focus on the things that impact winning – playing hard, defending, rebounding, putting your body in plays, executing our defense, being unselfish,” McCall said. “Don’t put any focus on whether or not the ball is going in the hoop because then the focus shifts to yourself and you can play distracted.”
This year’s UMass roster is chock full of freshmen, many of whom will officially make their debuts against an experienced River Hawks team. Only one started last week’s exhibition win over Western New England – center Tre Mitchell – but three others earned significant playing time as part of McCall’s original nine-man rotation in the game.
There won’t be much McCall can do to hide the freshmen from big moments in their first game, but the coach said his younger players have been awaiting Tuesday night for a long time and are prepared to just start the season.
“You’re not easing Tre Mitchell into it,” McCall said. “These guys have been ready to play. We played three games in the Virgin Islands, had a scrimmage, played an exhibition game. There will be some jitters because it’s the first game that counts, but we’ll rely on our veterans like we do every single day from a leadership standpoint, but our freshmen are ready to go.”
The key veteran is junior captain Carl Pierre, who became the team’s leader toward the tail end of last season. Pierre has stepped into more of a vocal role and his attitude has come to set the tone for the Minutemen. He said he’s eager and excited to get the season underway, and shared McCall’s confidence in the freshmen. His biggest message to the young players before their first game was to relax and remember it’s the same sport they grew up playing.
“I just try to tell them it’s another basketball game,” Pierre said. “It might be a level up from where you were, but it’s just another basketball game, so go out there and play like you’ve been (playing your whole life).”
The primary challenge for the Minutemen coming off last week’s exhibition will be to clean up their execution in their planned offensive sets. McCall said after the game that he didn’t think UMass set up properly within their plays and relied on too much individual motion to create points. Although that style might work against the Division III Golden Bears, the coach was clear it wouldn’t against superior foes.
One way McCall is hoping to counteract the learning process on offense is to score quick and easy baskets, something last year’s team struggled to do consistently. UMass’ press is the team’s best option to create turnovers that lead to simple points, but there are a few other things the Minutemen can do to create offense. At the center of it all – quite literally – are Mitchell and graduate student Djery Baptiste. McCall said they are going to be critical to helping the offense create those easy opportunities at points.
“When you’ve got 5-men like Tre and Djery that are good runners, too, we’ve got to find them early,” McCall said. “We’ve got to get them out in front of the defense and when the ball gets advanced up to the wing, duck them in and see if we can get them post touches. That’s an easy basket. If we can one of those two guys in the lane an early touch, early in the clock, that can be considered an easy basket.”
UMass will also need to clean up its press, but no one seemed concerned about how effective it will be Tuesday against UMass-Lowell. McCall said it will take more game reps to iron out the details but that he isn’t going to shy away from using it against the River Hawks. Pierre echoed his coach and added the more the Minutemen play within the system, the more comfortable and quicker they’ll be in their rotations, which will make the defense more effective.
Redshirt junior Keon Clergeot, a defensive stalwart for the Minutemen, said he thinks UMass will be able to use the press as a weapon and that it will win the Minutemen some games this season.
“I feel like it’s going to make a big difference in the games,” Clergeot said. “We’ve been very engaged and focused on it, so I feel like we’re going to be very successful in it.”
Josh Walfish can be reached at jwalfish@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshWalfishDHG. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.