AMHERST — Jonathan Laurent’s language can be excused, Carl Pierre found his groove Sunday.
No matter if the sophomore was standing in the corner or drifting to his left on a fadeaway, it felt like every shot Pierre took was going to go in. It was the type of zone Pierre has entered a few times this season, most notably in the second-half comeback at Providence on Dec. 7.
In the end, 7 of Pierre’s 10 attempts found the bottom of the net for a season-best 22 points in a 77-70 win over Rhode Island at the Mullins Center.
It was the breakout game UMass needed from its sharpshooter while riding a seven-game losing streak into Sunday’s contest.
“Excuse my language, but he shoots the s–t out of the ball,” Laurent said. “He’s in practice and he’s ripping it up. It was only a matter of time that he was going to break out.”
Pierre has battled inconsistency throughout the season. He scored 21 points in the season opener and then scored 17 combined points over the next three games. He re-discovered the spark during the week of Thanksgiving, but that streak was also followed by a period of missed shots for most of December.
It wouldn’t be far-fetched to call this year a sophomore slump for the Boston native – even though he’s shooting 39.6 percent from 3-point range and averaging 10.5 points per game after UMass’ win over the Rams. There were a lot of expectations placed on Pierre after last season’s performance, and coach Matt McCall said that pressure might have put too much on Pierre’s mind this year.
“Carl as a sophomore, we put a lot on his plate, not just from a basketball standpoint but from a leadership standpoint,” McCall said. “It’s a lot of weight to carry as a sophomore in college. Sometimes he wants to win so much that he gets consumed with other guys because he’s a leader on our team. The last two days in practice, he’s been a lot more vocal and it was almost like there was kind of this weight lifted off his shoulder. … Today, he played the game clear-headed and clear-hearted.”
No matter his last performance, Pierre’s routine has remained steady this year and he has kept faith that the work would pay off. The results might not show up consistently on the court, but the effort has never wavered.
“I’ve been staying confident throughout the entire conference season, staying to my work ethic, staying in the gym,” Pierre said. “I finally broke through and it showed. I’ve been making more of an effort to block out the noise and just come out and play as hard as I can on every play and just play for my teammates.”
SORRY, AI — McCall walked into the Minutemen’s celebratory locker room postgame and asked his players a question: Why did UMass win?
The consensus answer was how hard the Minutemen have practiced since the disappointing loss to St. Bonaventure on Wednesday. After taking Thursday off so the coaches could recruit, UMass returned to the court with a new intensity on Friday and Saturday, McCall said.
“They’ve been all out wars,” McCall said. “A lot more focus on ourselves, a lot less scouting and understanding what’s gotten in our way this year has been our mentality.”
One way McCall tried to change his team’s mentality was to change the rules of basketball during certain drills. Laurent said there were points over the previous two days when McCall would deactivate the boundary lines and every ball was live no matter where it ended up or what it hit.
The redshirt sophomore said the competition those parameters produced led to a more invigorated effort from UMass on both ends of the court.
“We have to go after every single loose ball, it don’t matter if it hits the wall or bounces off (it),” Laurent said. “It doesn’t matter if the ball was in a trash can, if you don’t get the ball, it’s not a stop. That’s just building a mentality at the end of the day that there’s no stopping until the whistle blows. I feel like that helped us a little bit (Sunday).”
PIPKINS PASSES DR. J — A free throw with 2:13 left in the game moved junior guard Luwane Pipkins passed a legend in the UMass record book. The foul shot was Pipkins’ 10th point of the day, moving him past Julius Erving into 15th place in points. He now has 1,373 points in his career, three more than Erving had from 1969-71, and 14 shy of Marcus Camby, who ranks 14th in program history.