ROCHESTER, N.Y. – There weren’t many things that went right for UMass on Wednesday night.
As the game progressed against St. Bonaventure, more components of the game plan started to fall by the wayside. The Bonnies outhustled the Minutemen for most of the 40 minutes at Blue Cross Arena, largely because the details slipped away from UMass. St. Bonaventure collected three offensive rebounds before UMass collected its first rebound almost eight minutes into the game. The Bonnies’ best shooters were left with wide open shots from the perimeter and most of those attempts went in.
Coach Matt McCall outlined two keys to victory for UMass, and the fact St. Bonaventure won 74-61 was proof that neither went the Minutemen’s way.
“The two biggest keys in the game were could we rebound and defend the 3,” McCall said. “We didn’t do either.”
Although St. Bonaventure (12-5, 4-0 Atlantic 10) made 9 of its 19 attempts from behind the arc, where it really bashed UMass (7-10, 1-3) was on the glass. The 37-30 rebounding edge the Bonnies held was closer than it felt for long stretches of the game. The hosts dominated the Minutemen when it came to securing missed shots, outworking them to the ball every time the shot went up.
And it wasn’t just the big men doing the damage, it was the guards who would sneak in and collect the caroms from the St. Bonaventure frontcourt deflecting rebounds away from UMass players. Freshman Tre Mitchell said the Bonnies were very physical when it came to rebounding – and questioned whether they crossed the line at times – but said it’s on UMass to match that intensity if the referees are not calling fouls early.
“We just have to focus on boxing out and attacking the glass,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell was the lone bright spot for the Minutemen as they successfully were able to utilize the freshman center on the offensive end. He scored a season-best 28 points on 11 of 19 shooting, making more shots than the rest of his teammates combined and almost matching their scoring total as well.
“We kept trying to go to him, we weren’t really making shots from behind the perimeter,” McCall said. “We wanted to try to establish him in the post, we got their whole frontcourt in foul trouble, that part of the game worked. … We wanted to establish him inside early and we did a good job at that. Our guards made some good passes in there to him, especially in the first half.”
The Bonnies didn’t have an answer when UMass was able to feed Mitchell in the post as he spun and weaved his way to easy baskets around the rim or worked his way to the foul line. It was one of the first times in recent memory that an opponent elected not to double team Mitchell every time he touched the ball as if the Bonnies were daring everyone else to beat them.
McCall said the Minutemen need to improve on moving around the floor when teams do double-team Mitchell, but there weren’t many times the ball needed to leave the post once Mitchell possessed it. He used his athleticism and strength to fight around the taller St. Bonaventure frontcourt and said he took as much advantage as he could of St. Bonaventure’s game plan.
“This is one of the first games where people didn’t double me off the rip,” Mitchell said. “If I get the ball one-on-one in the post, there aren’t a lot of times I’m not going to score on somebody. I scored, but I needed to rebound more and get myself involved in more plays.”
Ultimately it was UMass did on the other end of the court that doomed it against St. Bonaventure. When the Minutemen were locked in on defense and communicating with one another, they went on runs to claw their way back into the game. The best example came at the end of the first half when UMass went on a 10-2 run over the final 2½ minutes to trim a 15-point deficit down to seven at the intermission.
But when things didn’t go right, the Bonnies were able to answer with long runs of their own, including a critical 11-2 run in the middle of the second half that put the Minutemen in a double-digit deficit for good.
“There were five or six loose balls there at crucial moments of the second half early that we didn’t come up with,” McCall said. “We slap it out of some guy’s hands and we’re not even looking, they pick it up and they lay it in. Simple things like that, we have to get corrected, our margin for error is so small.”