It may not have been the prettiest of games by the UMass men’s basketball team, which headed into halftime tied with Harvard 24-24 as neither team playing exactly inspired. But the Minutemen woke up in the second half and dominated the glass en route to a 62-54 win – its first true road win of the 2024-25 campaign.

Holding on to a 57-51 lead in the final two minutes, UMass possessed the ball with a chance to put the game away. After Daniel Rivera missed a layup, Jayden Ndjigue grabbed an offensive board to keep the Minutemen’s possession alive. Ndjigue then drove in for a layup, and again came down with the offensive board after missing. The sophomore guard pulled down his third rebound of the possession following a Rivera missed free throw, and that sealed the deal to snap a five-game losing streak.

“We've had a hard stretch of games here,” UMass head coach Frank Martin said. “We got a little staggered offensively because we haven't been able to practice enough. These guys, at the end of the first half, I thought we started moving the ball better. We did a better job of that in the second half. Bottom line, we still didn’t make many 3s, but we actually passed the ball to each other and we attacked and we made some layups.”

UMass ripped off an 18-7 run to jump ahead 53-38 – an Akil Watson layup capping it off – but Harvard quickly responded. The Crimson clawed back to within four (55-51) thanks to a 10-0 run buoyed by strong 3-point shooting. The Minutemen had 21 offensive rebounds, a prototypical Frank Martin showing, and it eventually wore down Harvard in the closing moments.

At this point in the season, with wins proving hard to come by, Martin and UMass will take it any way they can get it.

Daniel Hankins-Sanford again recorded a double-double, tying a team-high 14 points and adding a game-high 11 boards. Rahsool Diggins overcame poor shooting from deep (0-for-6) to record 14 points while Daniel Rivera (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jaylen Curry (10 points, nine rebounds, six assists) helped out in the UMass win.

“We just wanted to stick together,” Diggins said. “We've been having a lot of trouble staying connected. We've got a lot of new guys playing different roles.”

As has been the case with the Minutemen this season, they shot poorly behind the arc – this time going 1-for-16 (six percent). They were able to pull out the victory thanks to a huge advantage on the glass (out-rebounded Harvard 51-28) and in the paint (out-scored Harvard 52-30). Outside of the one 3-pointer, which came from Hankins-Sanford, the rest of UMass’ field goals came from inside the paint.

UMass (2-5) returns home for the first time in three games when it hosts NJIT on Sunday at noon. The Minutemen are hoping to stack a few wins together after a tough start to the season.

“These guys are good dudes, man,” Martin said. “We played some hard teams, basically everything away from home. All of this is good for us. We're going to be a better team because of all these experiences.”