AMHERST — UMass coach Matt McCall likes watching the NCAA Tournament to see his friends coach.
He roots for Florida, his alma mater, for Atlantic 10 rivals and for players he recruited that ended up elsewhere.
He watches coaches he respects and studies their demeanor, their substitution patterns and their plays.
But mostly he watches and wishes he was participating. He’s been to the tournament as a student manager, a graduate assistant and an assistant coach at Florida. At Chattanooga he went as a head coach in 2016. The more he watches the more he wants in.
“It’s the greatest sporting event. It can change you life,” he said. “As a player, as a coach, there’s nothing like it. That’s the goal, to get there. If it isn’t what are we doing? That’s where we’re going to get to.”
He wants his team thinking about it.
” It’s not easy to get there,” he said. “I told some of our guys, ‘We have to understand there’s a number of steps we have to take if you guys want to experience what these teams are experiencing.’”
McCall said he’s enjoyed watching Texas Tech’s Chris Beard, who, like himself, is among the younger coaches in the game.
“As a coach, you’re always looking at what teams are doing. A guy like Chris Beard at Texas Tech, he’s obviously doing something right,” McCall said. “He’s got a team that a lot of times is five guards on the floor. They switch everything and play really really hard. That excites me.”
It’s been two weeks since the Minutemen lost to George Mason in the Atlantic 10 Tournament in Washington, D.C., ending their season. The players scattered for spring break after that.
McCall gave them this week to devote to making sure their academics were in order. Weight room sessions and individual instruction begin again next week.
McCall said he learned a lot in his first season at UMass.
“There was a lot of room to grow this year and get stretched as a coach dealing with limited lineups and limited bodies,” he said. “Talent is such a piece, but it’s not the biggest piece. This group proved that. The key to winning is being really really connected and having a whatever-it-takes mentality. At times we played the game really connected out there and at times we weren’t. That’s what we’ve got to learn.
“Everybody has to be submerged in the pool together. We can’t have anybody just dipping there toes it,” he continued. “We have to be a connected team. We have to continually remind them of that. Nobody wants to feel the way we did leaving Washington, D.C. We don’t want to feel that.”
As players around the country are announcing their intentions to transfer, McCall said he didn’t have any specific knowledge of any of his players planning to depart. But he hadn’t spoken to each of them yet.
“We’ve done some individual meetings. We’ll continue to have more over the next two weeks. Everyone will have their roles defined for their futures in this program,” he said. “I think everyone is pretty much invested. I think once we get through every meeting with every player you might see something. Once they hear what their role might be, they might not like that. Maybe they’ll decide this isn’t the right thing for me.”
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage