AMHERST — UMass football lost in heartbreaking fashion on Saturday to Miami (Ohio) 23-20 in overtime, but on Monday, head coach Don Brown was relentlessly optimistic about the Minutemen’s prospects. 

UMass led the defending MAC champs 20-17 with just 40 seconds remaining and played even with Miami in most statistical categories. Although they lost, Brown said the Minutemen made “significant progress” in his postgame interview, and on Monday, he praised the team’s most complete performance of the season.

“There’s some good things to take away,” Brown said on Monday. “Bottom line is you need to find the good things unless you want to saturate your players with negativity. I’m not doing that.”

Long-term struggles with penalties and special teams held UMass back from what would have been by far its biggest win of the season and clouded bright spots from Taisun Phommachanh (season-high 18 carries and 80 yards), CJ Hester (career-high 63 rushing yards and a touchdown) and Jakobie Keeney-James (career-high 150 receiving yards and a touchdown). 

Thanks to Phommachanh and Hester’s efforts in the fourth quarter, UMass posted a season-high 171 rushing yards and reversed its trend of late-game lopsidedness, tying and taking the lead in the final period after posting a 14-56 margin in the final 20 minutes of their first three FBS games this season.

After the Minutemen posted a goose-egg in the second half of a 34-3 loss to Buffalo in week three, Brown emphasized multiple times at his Monday press conference how important it was for UMass to finish games. Though they split the two games since, the Minutemen have been within a possession in both after losing by multiple possessions in each of the first three weeks of the season.

“I thought our guys played from beginning to end,” Brown said. “From the beginning of the game to the end of the game, we competed and gave ourselves the opportunity to win that game.”

UMass may be in a better position than it was at this point last year. Instead of being hobbled by a knee injury, Phommachanh carried the UMass offense with his legs down the stretch on Saturday, running eight times in the fourth quarter and picking up two huge third down conversions. At this point last season, the defense was ranked 114th in FBS. They currently sit at No. 34.

But improvements in yardage and rankings haven’t equated to improvements in record. UMass is 1-4, the sixth straight season – and third straight under Brown – it’s managed one or fewer wins in its first five games. And the schedule doesn’t get easier from here – UMass has three SEC opponents remaining on its schedule, in addition to Group of 5 programs Northern Illinois and Liberty. Even UConn has a winning record after blowing out Buffalo 47-3 on Saturday, two weeks after Buffalo beat UMass 34-3.

“We’re kind of past the let’s just be in games-type mode, we’re trying to win these games, we’re trying to show that we can win some of these close games,” senior linebacker Jalen Stewart said on Monday. “So it’s just the little details that we’ve got to really hone in on. One or two plays usually decide the majority of the games in college football, so we’ve got to turn those one or two plays on our side.”

On Saturday, playing even with Miami for 60 minutes wasn’t enough. And those little details on those one or two plays decided it.

Miami needed to go 50 yards in 40 seconds with no timeouts in the dying embers of regulation to tie the game. Brett Gabbert did just that, working the sideline with six passes between four and 13 yards and one scramble for five yards to put Miami at the UMass 28 with four seconds left. Redhawks kicker Dom Dzioban hit a 47-yarder through the uprights to send the game to overtime.

“We had played one of the coverages six or seven times during the course of the game and had really good success with it, so I kind of followed that lead,” Brown said. “Obviously, all we had to do was tackle one time in bounds and that would’ve helped us tremendously and that’s one of the reasons for playing that coverage, you get a lot of guys around the ball.”

Stewart said he wouldn’t have done anything differently.

“We try to limit explosives, and sometimes, you’ve got to tip your cap to your opponent,” Stewart said. “Gabbert, he’s a sixth-year quarterback, so you know what to expect. He’s probably been in that situation 100 times, so he used the sideline. You’ve got to tip your cap sometimes and you’ve got to live with the results.”

Despite the deflating game-tying field goal by Miami, UMass still could’ve won in overtime. Faced with a 3rd and 1 at the Miami 16 on the first possession of the extra session, UMass earned an illegal formation penalty to make it a 3rd and 6. And on the next play, a go-ahead touchdown to Jakobie Keeney-James was wiped off the board because of an ineligible man downfield penalty on Josh Atwood.

Because of the back-to-back penalties, UMass relied on struggling kicker Jacob Lurie to make a 44-yard field goal, which sailed wide. Lurie is just 6-of-12 on field goals this season.

UMass has not had a qualifying kicker (one attempt per game) place in the top-90 in the FBS in field goal percentage since 2017, when Logan Laurent went 13-for-15. UMass does not have a full-time special teams coach — Ben Albert coaches both the special teams and the defensive line.

Miami didn’t gain any yardage on its overtime drive, but kicker Dom Dzioban nailed a line-drive kick from 43 yards out to win the game.

UMass is now 0-4 against future MAC opponents this season, with its fifth and final game against a MAC team coming on Saturday. The Minutemen travel to DeKalb, Ill. to face Northern Illinois for a noon kickoff.

“I’m not discouraged at all,” Brown said. “The one thing I tell you is when I signed up for this thing, I didn’t think it was going to be short-term. You may want me, you may not want me, that’s all good. But I’m going to work my tail off to fix this thing, and I’ve got a bunch of young people there that are coming right along with me, and that’s important.”