AMHERST — It took a trip to Las Vegas for UMass to find its missing edge.
After playing the first five games of the season at home, the Minutemen played their first games away from Amherst last week at the Las Vegas Holiday Invitational. Although they came home with a split of their two games in Sin City, the Minutemen played with a level of passion and intensity that wasn’t present in their five home games to begin the year.
“The disappointing part is if we had played as hard as we did against Southern Illinois and against Nevada, we’d probably be sitting at 6-1 right now,” coach Matt McCall said. “That’s no disrespect to the teams that beat us, … but we just had a different edge to us out there, and it started in practice. I said to the team after the Southern Illinois game, I thought our best practice of the year was in Vegas on Wednesday. It was early and we got there late … then we got up, we had an early practice and it was one of our best practices of the year, we got after it.”
The biggest sign that UMass discovered its edge came from its performance on the glass. The Minutemen were dominated in rebounding 46-33 by Howard, but they responded by holding rebounding advantages of 41-26 over Arkansas-Pine Bluff and 40-30 over Southern Illinois.
Although Nevada held the 37-32 edge in Friday’s game, McCall said there was no doubting his players’ efforts against the Wolf Pack.
“There’s been a tremendous amount of focus on rebounding coming out of the Howard game,” McCall said. “We outrebounded Pine Bluff, we outrebounded Southern Illinois and we were plus one on the backboards against Nevada in the first half. … It’s a mentality and we’ve had that mentality. We had it against Nevada, they outrebounded us by five, but we were right in the mix there with a top-five team in the country.”
Now UMass has to harness that energy and intensity and let it show Wednesday against Quinnipiac at the Mullins Center. McCall said he is hoping the first five games were simply part of the growing pains of his team and that the effort issues early in the season were just a lesson for the Minutemen.
“If we had to learn and go through some of that early with this new team, this young team, and it helps us down the road, as a coach, I’m OK with that,” McCall said.
PUMP UP THE CROWD: McCall had a secret trick to making sure his players were prepared for the 10:30 a.m. local start on Thanksgiving Day against Southern Illinois.
He had the UMass strength coaches blaring music from the time the team walked into its pregame meal at 7 a.m. right until tipoff 3½ hours later. It was a decision that paid off handsomely as UMass ripped off 16 straight points after giving up the opening basket and led by double digits the rest of the way in an 84-62 beatdown of the Salukis.
“They were high-energy, kind of intense,” sophomore guard Carl Pierre said. “There was a lot of excitement being out in Vegas and getting our first game out of the way. Those three hours helped set the tone for the game, just coming out with a lot of energy, a lot of passion and a lot of fight.”
ADD A LITTLE KHALEA: Khalea Turner-Morris played just six minutes in UMass’ first four games of the season, all of which came in mop-up duty against New Hampshire. But he played in all three contests last week for the Minutemen, highlighted by eight points and six rebounds in just 10 minutes against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
McCall said Turner-Morris is healthier after missing some preseason practice with a hip injury, but the coach also wanted some more toughness and physicality while battling for rebounds. He said he felt the sophomore could add a spark in that area, and that was certainly the case last week.
“Our lack of physicality at the basket against Harvard and Howard, I needed to do something different,” McCall said. “He’s been getting better in practice, obviously he missed a tremendous amount of practice injury wise early in the season, but he’s gotten better and he comes and works extremely hard every day, so I felt comfortable chucking him out there.”
MINUTEMEN MOVE UP AGAIN: UMass hockey jumped another spot in the national polls on Monday after defeating then-No. 18 Princeton in overtime on Saturday. The Minutemen (11-1-0) set a new program-high with a No. 3 ranking in the U.S. College Hockey Online and USA Hockey polls, receiving two first-place votes in each poll.
Sophomore Oliver Chau, who scored the game-winning goal against the Tigers, was named the Hockey East Player of the Week. He is the fourth UMass player to win the conference’s weekly award and the fifth honor overall for the Minutemen this season.
ALL-REGION FIELD HOCKEY: UMass placed three players on the National Field Hockey Coaches Association’s All-Northeast regional teams. Junior forward Antonet Louw was named to the first team and sophomore midfielder Georgie McTear and graduate student defender Clodagh Moloney were picked for the second team.