Matt McCall’s beard has gotten noticeably scraggly over the past two weeks.
The UMass men’s basketball coach only shaves on game days, and his appointments with his razor have been postponed three times since Dec. 19. The Minutemen were supposed to play Dec. 22 against NJIT, Dec. 30 vs. Saint Louis and Jan. 2 at Fordham, but all three opponents had to postpone or cancel the games due to COVID-19 issues.
“Obviously that’s a lot to deal with,” McCall said. “I give our kids credit in terms of just how positive their attitudes have remained even as games get taken away from us.”
Few of the postponements have come with much warning. The Minutemen were told five minutes before their final practice ahead of the Fordham game that it was “95 percent canceled” and heard the final word with 30 seconds on the pre-practice clock.
Rather than running through the same mundane drills, McCall and his staff have alternated off days with lighter, fun practices to try and help keep the players engaged. When the Saint Louis game was called off, the team suggested they scrimmage instead.
“Let’s get some work in,” McCall said. “When you have that message coming from your players, as a coach, man that makes you feel good.”
The timing also prevented UMass from supplementing the schedule with additional games. The Minutemen wanted to find a replacement for the NJIT contest before the winter break like when Rhode Island faced AIC, but they were still recovering as a team from some injuries and non-COVID illnesses.
Once the team reconvened Dec. 26, there wasn’t enough space between thinking the scheduled games were going to be played, them getting canceled and leaving enough time to prepare for the upcoming scheduled contests to slide in other games.
“It’s like, where are we fitting that game in? We’ve talked about it, we kicked it around,” McCall said. “Obviously you got to run things up the flagpole as well.”
So the plan, as much as one can adhere to one at all at this point, is to focus full steam ahead on playing Richmond at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Virginia. The Spiders (9-6) have already played two Atlantic 10 games, losing to both Saint Louis and Saint Joseph’s.
Richmond’s Tyler Burton leads the A-10 in scoring at 18.6 points per game, and Spiders guard Jacob Gilyard is first in the country averaging 3.5 steals per contest. Richmond also boasts the best assist to turnover ration in the conference (1.7).
“We can’t chase. I think when you start to chase them around they’re so good offensively,” McCall said. “You start denying and doing different things like that, it’s going to be a long night for you. You’ve got to stay between your man and the basket and be extremely physical on cutters.”
UMass (7-5) will travel to Richmond still seeking its first true road win of the season. The Minutemen are 1-5 away from the Mullins Center, the one win a neutral site victory over UNC Greensboro.
But they should have nearly a full roster available to try and pick that victory up against the Spiders. Dibaji Walker had surgery on his knee and remains out for the year, as is Cairo McCrory. Preston Santos is managing a non-COVID illness. Other than that, the rest of the Minutemen are ready to go. That includes Noah Fernandes and T.J. Weeks Jr., who haven’t played since Dec. 11 against North Texas. McCall said the Minutemen will be without two staff members, though.
“I’m sure there’ll be a little rust to start the game but we should have aggression, too, because we haven’t played you know, and every time from now until March 4 when you step in between those lines there’s something on the line,” McCall said. “You’re playing for something, you’re playing for something that hasn’t been done here at UMass in a long, long time. So we should come out just as aggressive as they will.”
That spirit to play again also comes with a recognition of how fragile the situation is at the moment. Though the Minutemen could have played in each of the canceled games, there’s always a chance they could be next. Each game they have to postpone makes it less and less likely they’ll be able to fit the entire A-10 schedule in before the conference tournament starts.
“At some point does this thing come back around and get us? That’s the difficult part is, we don’t know,” McCall said. “We can talk about wearing masks. We can talk about washing our hands, but this thing seems like it just kind of has a mind of its own. It still runs through teams like crazy and spreads like wildfire. So we just got to control the things that we can control. I know that sounds cliche, but that’s really the truth.”