AMHERST — The UMass men’s basketball team took down Toledo, 84-82, in a Mid-American Conference (MAC) encounter that went down to the wire at the Mullins Center on Tuesday night.
The Minutemen, who are winners of three of their last four, were neck-and-neck with the Rockets for the entire 40-minute affair as the biggest lead on either side was a seven-point UMass edge toward the midway point of the second half.
Double-doubles from Daniel Hankins-Sanford (12 points, 11 rebounds) and Jayden Ndjigue (12 points, 10 rebounds), plus 20 points from Leonardo Bettiol (team-high), was enough in the end for the Minutemen to snatch win No. 12 on the season.
“We got a bunch of guys that care,” Hankins-Sanford said. “It might not be pretty, but we bought into the right type of stuff. Head down in practice and that’s the just the recipe. You got to keep listening, trusting Coach [Frank Martin] and go win a game.”
Leading 79-75 with one minute, 21 seconds left, UMass allowed a putback from Sonny Wilson on Toledo’s next trip down the court, making it a one-possession game at 79-77.
Made free throws on both sides pushed the score to 83-79 with less than 30 seconds to go, but the Rockets converted on a contested layup with three seconds on the clock for a 83-81 score.
The Minutemen were immediately fouled on the ensuing inbound and K’Jei Parker made the first attempt from the charity stripe to push it to 84-81, but missed the second on the front of the rim.
Toledo took back possession right away, sprinted down the hardwood and managed to draw a foul with just more than a second showing on the clock. Rockets’ Kyler Vanderjagt buried the first attempt for an 84-82 score, setting the stage for an intentional miss, but UMass got their hands on the rebound, thus bumping its MAC conference record up to 3-6 with the victory.
“I don’t want to be the Grinch, but we stink defensively,” Minutemen head coach Frank Martin said. “Toledo’s a good offensive team, they’re hard to guard, but we were in total control of that game in the second half offensively. All we had to do was lock in and figure out a way to get maybe three stops every six possessions and we might’ve been able to pop the game open. We couldn’t do that.
“I’m frustrated because we’ve spent a lot of time, and we’ve got good kids, I’m not fighting them, but we’re spending a lot of time trying to fix… if we would defend like an average team, instead of being 2-5 [in the MAC], we’d be 6-2, 7-1, but we don’t defend,” Martin said.
The Rockets recorded the better field-goal shooting percentage (55-49%), 3-point percentage (43-41%) and free-throw percentage (80-68%) of the two teams, but the Minutemen were the clear front-runners when it came to rebounding.
UMass hauled in 35 boards to Toledo’s 20, including 15 at the offensive side of the floor.
“Since the start of conference play, we haven’t really been rebounding at the rate that we know we can and the coaches, a day hasn’t gone by where they haven’t let us know about it,” Ndjigue said. “That’s one of the things we try to embrace here, so Dan and I have been talking about what we can do better and that’s one of the main things on that list. Just wanted to make sure we crashed the offensive glass, give our team second chances to score and ultimately, help our team win the game.”
Tuesday’s tilt featured 29 total turnovers between the two squads. The Minutemen had 10 in the first half alone, but cleaned up the mistakes after the break to finish with 14 altogether.
“We’re having issues with our fours and fives, they turn it over too much,” Martin said. “[Danny Carbuccia] and Leo can’t keep combining for eight turnovers, they just can’t, that’s what they’re combining for here since we started league play. They didn’t early, now they are, that’s a problem.
“We can score, we have to eliminate turnovers,” Martin continued. “We got to get more shot attempts and maybe we can figure out a way to get a way to the foul line.”
Leroy Blyden Jr. topped out as the Rockets’ most prolific scorer, concluding with 22 points.
UMass is on the road for the next two games, starting with Buffalo on Friday night.
Tipoff in the Empire State is set for 7 p.m.