AMHERST — There are times when a head coach does everything they can to put their team in the best possible position to win throughout a season and for whatever reason things still don’t work out. It can be recruiting prior to the year, preparation, in-game adjustments, tweaking substitution patterns based on matchups and anything in between.

For UMass head coach Frank Martin, that wasn’t the case. Martin admitted he felt he didn’t do his part in his third year patrolling the sidelines in Amherst. He said he “liked” the pieces he had on the team leading up to the season opener, but also noted that they never gelled the way he had hoped – which he also took the blame for.

“I obviously didn’t do a very good job doing my job,” Martin said last week. “I can’t evaluate the players before I evaluate myself. As I self-evaluate, I did a bad job. The decisions I made, and the ways I chose to handle the individuals and the team did not work. I have to be a lot better moving forward.”

Although Martin thought he had what he needed when constructing his roster last offseason, perhaps that’s where he made his first mistake. Yes, UMass was bigger and more athletic than the previous year’s team thanks to the additions of Daniel Rivera, Malek Abdelgowad and Shahid Muhammad, and players like Rahsool Diggins, Jaylen Curry and Daniel Hankins-Sanford all made the leaps Martin expected them to.

But for the third consecutive season, the Minutemen finished toward the bottom of the pack in 3-point percentage, and this year they shot a historically bad percentage from beyond the arc. In Martin’s first season (2022-23), UMass converted on 32.8 percent of their 3s, good for 243rd in the country. A year ago, it dropped to 31.3 percent (303rd), and this season, the Minutemen made just 28 percent of their shots from distance. That put them 362nd out of 364 teams in Division 1 men’s basketball.

UMass also didn’t have a player that could create their own shot at any given moment. Almost every single one of its opponents had someone who could, but the Minutemen had to work extra hard on that end of the floor. One could argue that Diggins or Curry were shot creators, however the majority of their open looks came off of screens – on-ball or off.

In an era of basketball dominated by the outside shot and isolation scoring, future UMass rosters might have to look different than recent years to consistently succeed. That’s not to say Martin needs a guy who shoots 20 times a game or doesn’t look to pass, or that the players from the most recent UMass team aren’t capable of developing those aspects of their game. But it seems like the majority of successful programs from year to year have players who can create their own shot whenever they want and guys around them that can consistently knock down shots.

The Minutemen had neither this winter, and Martin is ready to change that – and make a couple of other tweaks – come next year.

“The one consensus I came to, there are three areas we got to get better at,” Martin said. “We got to pass the ball better, we got to shoot the ball better, and we need a team that’s willing to talk. This team, we were good dudes, but they would never talk. Daniel [Hankins-Sanford] was the only voice that stayed consistent. This team only spoke when it’s time to criticize, and that’s not good. You need guys that are willing to engage and talk to help each other, to elevate each other, to compliment each other. I can probably count on two hands, after 30 whatever number of games, how many times a guy made a shot and he turned around and pointed at the guy that passed him the ball. It never happened, and we encourage that all the time.”

These days it costs money in order to bring in players who can do what coaches want consistently. Compared to its counterparts in the Atlantic 10, UMass’ basketball program was working at a disadvantage financially. According to Martin, certain coaches in the A-10 were given four-year guarantees of $2 million in NIL money per season. Martin shouted out Patrick MacWilliams, founder of The Massachusetts Collective, for his hard work which has helped UMass have a fighting chance against its peers the past two seasons, and further stated that the Minutemen are prepared to “have some resources in place that never existed here before” next season.

The commitment from The Massachusetts Collective’s donors as well as UMass’ athletic administration, which Martin said are the reasons why UMass will be in a better place financially next season, could help the Minutemen get back to national relevancy – according to Martin.

“If we’re going to be realistic about where UMass has been since the turn of the century as a basketball program, we can’t expect to get rewarded the way the teams that have been in the NCAA tournament every year get rewarded,” Martin said. “That’s just fool’s gold by anybody. We have to grow it to get there. I got a kick of people, when I was in the SEC, [saying], ‘Oh, Kentucky gets the best referees and they get the best time slots and they get the best TV [crews].’ Well, they’ve earned that over the last 100 years. That’s the way it works. We have to commit to growing our program so we can get those opportunities, and that’s where we’re at. We’re growing. We’re working. Everyone [at UMass] is doing their part to give us what we need. If I wasn’t happy with that, after 42 years [of coaching] and the job I did [this past season], I’d be in South Florida working on my sun tan.”

NOTES: Martin explained how the move to the MAC has impacted his recruiting, saying “people on the East Coast don’t watch Midwest basketball, and people in the Midwest don’t go to the East Coast to play basketball,” but so far hasn’t experienced any concern. ... When UMass blew a late lead against Saint Louis in early February, Martin said he was really worried his team would fall apart. They responded by beating La Salle by 23 points, but then lost the next four and were outrebounded in each of those games. … Martin complimented the quality of coaches in the MAC, and acknowledged how difficult the league is going to be with teams like Akron, Miami (Ohio), Kent State, Toledo and Ohio – all of which he said would have success if they played in the Atlantic 10. … The favorite part of Martin’s offseasons used to be this time right now, having player meetings about improvements to be made for next season. But now those sessions have turned into “you in or you out” meetings, Martin said.