A tight score line won’t press the UMass men’s basketball team or South Florida.
The teams, which will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. (ESPN+), have played five one-possession games between them early this season, and seven of their combined 12 games have been decided by single digits.
“Adversity makes you understand one another a lot better. You can’t hide who you are when there’s adversity,” UMass coach Frank Martin said. “Players find out about me as a coach, I find out about them as players. Only the season reveals that.”
UMass (4-1) won three single-digit games in a row to claim the Myrtle Beach Invitational championship Nov. 17-20. The Minutemen haven’t played since. They “took a deep breath” the early part of the week and met one on one with the staff. Martin recruited Monday then all of the local players went home for Thanksgiving. The rest gathered at the Martin house before the ream reconvened Friday.
USF (2-5), meanwhile, has won two in a row by double digits – including one over Atlantic 10 foe Saint Joseph’s – after five straight losses to open the season. The Bulls fell against Southeast Missouri State and Stetson at home wrapped around an eight-point loss at then-No. 15 Auburn. They’ve scored 75 points in each of their past two games after not cracking 70 in the first five.
“They’re starting to figure out who they are offensively,” Martin said.
Their identity revolves around point guard Tyler Harris. The Memphis transfer averages 14.7 points per game and hits two 3s per game.
“He can score the ball, he shoots it from 25, 30 feet,” said UMass guard Noah Fernandes, who matched up against Harris his freshman season at Wichita State.
It will be up to Fernandes and UMass’ other point guards to halt Harris and stymie South Florida’s offense. Defense, always a Martin team hallmark, has become a UMass point of pride.
“I want to let other teams know when you come down this end ain’t nothing going to be easy,” Fernandes said.
UMass allows just 64 points per game and hasn’t let any of its opponents crack 70. The Minutemen don’t rank astronomically high in blocks, steals or many other defensive statistics. They just guard the other team man to man as long as they have to.
“Man to man defense is very near and dear to me. it’s something I learned back from my high school coach when I was a kid. It’s been a staple of my teams throughout my career,” Martin said. “These guys from different places that really don’t know anything about me other than I’m some character that they’ve seen on television that yells a lot have taken a lot of pride in team defense and in the principles of our team defense.”
After not playing for eight days, the Minutemen now face four games in the next 10 days continuing at Harvard on Friday before two games at the Mullins Center against regional competition Albany (Dec. 5) and UMass-Lowell (Dec. 8).
“The next 10 days or so is more representative of league basketball. I felt like a football coach this past week,” Martin said. “By the time we get to Saturday I’m overthinking myself because I’ve got too much time between games. Now it’s back to business as usual.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.