AMHERST — Almost nothing went the UMass men’s basketball team’s way in the first half of its Atlantic 10 season opener against Duquesne on Wednesday night.

The Minutemen’s two leading scorers ended the half on the bench – as Josh Cohen picked up his third foul with just under six minutes left, and Matt Cross walked back to the locker room for the second time in the first 20 minutes dealing with an upper body injury. UMass also gave up 10 offensive rebounds, didn’t make a 3-pointer, and turned the ball over seven times.

But UMass found its way to an eight-point lead at the break thanks to 20 free-throw attempts. In the second half, the Minutemen left no doubt as to who the better team was.

The hosts led for all but 2 minutes, 53 seconds of the game, and went on a 21-3 run from 10:34 to 2:32 left in regulation to extend their 57-52 lead to 78-55 and put the game away. UMass defeated Duquesne 80-61 at the Mullins Center to improve to 10-3 (1-0 A-10) on the year.

“At halftime I told the team, ‘I’m really happy with how we’re playing right now,’” Martin said. “I thought we were guarding well. The problem was, we weren’t finishing defensive possessions with defensive rebounds. And we cleaned that up in the second half. Conference play, it’s brutal. Now everybody enjoys this moment, and I go home and watch film so I can be miserable with no sleep tomorrow morning.”

When Cross and Cohen were in and out of the lineup, the Minutemen picked up plenty of contributions else where. Rahsool Diggins led UMass with 16 points as one of five players in double figures. Jaylen Curry (career-high 15 points) and Cross (15) combined for 30 points in the win, while Daniel Hankins-Sanford and Keon Thompson added 10 points apiece.

There’s no better sign of a team playing its best basketball as a group than when players pick up each other’s slack and impact the game in a variety of ways. On top of that, the Minutemen give it their all on every possession.

“I just think we out-compete a lot of teams,” Diggins said. “We play harder than a lot of guys. I think our pressure and our intensity wore them down as the game went on. That allowed us to get stops and run out, and pick the pace up.”

UMass’ newcomers played their best game of the season as a collective unit on Wednesday. Jayden Ndjigue (seven points, six rebounds, two assists), Hankins-Sanford (seven rebounds, one block, one steal), and Mathok Majok played key minutes, coming up with several disruptive defensive plays to spark transition buckets on the other end. The Minutemen bench outscored Duquesne, 30-19.

Marqui Worthy also played 15 minutes and had his fingerprints on the game in a variety of ways.

“Here’s the best part about all those freshmen: they let you coach them,” Martin said. “They don’t fight coaching. Today’s day and age, it’s hard to find that with freshmen. They want to be coddled, not coached. They want to be allowed to do what they wanna do. That’s the journey between coach and freshmen in college now… I’m real proud of those guys. They root for each other and they root for our team.”

Earlier in the week, Martin challenged players other than Cross, Cohen, and Thompson to get to the free-throw line and create offense for themselves.

That message was well received.

Seven different UMass players earned trips to the line, and the Minutemen shot 24-for-34 to give them an 11-point advantage in that category. Diggins took a season-high seven, Curry shot a career-high six, Ndjigue shot five, Hankins-Sanford attempted a season-high four, and Worthy a season-high three.

“That’s important to us,” Martin said of getting to the stripe. “Rahsool did more off the dribble today than just standing around and trying to shoot 3s. Duquesne is a really aggressive, ball-hawking defensive team. If you put too many guys near each other, they got hands. Everything we did today was trying to move the ball and space them to try and drive them. And our guys did.”

To no surprise, Duquesne’s guard duo of Dae Dae Grant and Jimmy Clark III were a handful to stop defensively. Grant poured in a game-high 18 points, and Clark III added 16 points. But UMass did hold them to a combined 11-for-31 from the field with a tenacious t eam effort on that end.

Wednesday marked the fifth time this season the Minutemen held a team under 70 points, all five games resulting in wins. They swarmed the Dukes all game, forcing 14 turnovers and an abysmal 36 percent from the field.

“I’m really proud with how we defended today,” Martin said. “It’s conference play, so everybody takes it to a different level. Everyone’s mind is more connected, and nobody gives in mentally to plays. And with such a young team, that’s what I worry about. But these kids have a great resolve.”

And offensively, UMass (which is ranked in the top 30 in points per game) scored 80 for the eighth time this year – once again resulting in eight wins.

UMass travels to Dayton on Sunday for a 1 p.m. game with the Flyers on ESPN2.