AMHERST — Matt McCall wasn’t happy with how Monday’s preparation went for Tuesday’s exhibition against Western New England.
The effort was there during Monday’s practice, but once the coaches went into the half court and practice become more instructional, the Minutemen weren’t as focused as McCall would have liked. Before the secret scrimmage against Hofstra two weeks ago, McCall said he stressed to his team about being on edge constantly.
That was not the case Monday and the third-year coach said he thought it bled into Tuesday’s performance despite the 83-47 triumph.
“I wanted to see how it would go early in the game,” McCall said. “We’re playing against a team that’s playing five guards and they’re backcutting and what they run, we’ll see it a lot this year, we’ll see it against Davidson, we’ll see it against Richmond, how they move and cut. … It’s difficult to guard so I wanted to see how it would go.”
Against Hofstra, McCall said his team started slowly, and it happened against the Golden Bears on Tuesday. Western New England hung around for the first 10 minutes, staying tied with the Minutemen until a 14-2 run put UMass ahead for good. Even though his team pulled away quickly over the final 30 minutes, McCall said it was hard for him to pluck positives from the game.
He said the press defense the Minutemen employed for most of the contest was “awful” and the offense lacked movement. He said the performance won’t cut it against the rest of the schedule for this season, but the experience was a blessing in disguise for his young team with six days to prepare for the season opener next Tuesday against UMass-Lowell.
“It’s one of the best things that could have happened because it’s a good teaching point for a young team,” McCall said. “Understanding that we have to play the game with a chip on our shoulder to give us a chance. There’s so many areas where we have to learn from and grow from. … Coming out of our scrimmage, there’s a tendency to get complacent. Man, we might be better than we thought. No, we’re not and we’ve got to go back to work.”
SUPER SOPHOMORES — Sy Chatman and Samba Diallo stole the show for UMass in their limited playing time. Chatman was limited to 11 minutes due to foul trouble, but still managed to score 13 points and grab nine rebounds when he was on the floor. Diallo took over the early portion of the second half, scoring eight straight points for his only baskets of the game and securing five of his seven rebounds in 10 second-half minutes.
“Those guys have had great summers,” McCall said. “They’ve grown, they’ve developed, they’ve gotten better in a lot of different ways. … You can see Samba’s gifted down there inside and Sy’s got so much natural ability. He plays 11 minutes, has 13 points and nine rebounds and we’ve missed him five or six times. But they’re development this summer has been huge and we’re going to need them to push us and help us and lead us to the next level.”
WEEKS STARTS HOT — Junior guard Carl Pierre only took three shots Tuesday, but his production was replaced by freshman guard T.J. Weeks.
As the first guy off the bench, Weeks made 4 of 6 from behind the arc and 4 of 5 at the line for a team-high 18 points. He didn’t force many shots, either, finding himself in good shooting positions for his teammates as Western New England put a lot of attention on Pierre.
“I just felt like I was open so I shot the open shot,” Weeks said. “My teammates found me in the right spots, so I shot the shots and made them.”
McCall said he expects many teams will put a heavy focus on Pierre early in the season with so few players on the roster that other teams can scout. He said it’ll be incumbent on the rest of the roster to help pick up the slack, but that they can’t get hyper-focused on whether or not the ball is going in on a nightly basis.
The coach said he’s stressed to Weeks that he needs to be a difference-maker regardless of whether or not he’s scoring in a given game.
“I’ve talked to TJ a lot about this, not living or dying with whether or not the ball is going in the basket (and) impacting the game in so many other ways,” McCall said. “He’s got to continue to grow as a defender, but from a competitive standpoint, he gets it. He’s not a freshman, he can’t play like a freshman, I don’t look at him like a freshman, he’s ready to go and this team’s going to need him night in and night out to go out and perform and play 20-plus minutes per game.”
GOING BIG — McCall trotted out his bigger lineup to start the exhibition, a look he said he would like to use a lot this season. The lineup has Keon Clergeot at point guard, Pierre as the shooting guard with Diallo at small forward, Chatman at power forward and either Tre Mitchell or Djery Baptiste at center.
On Tuesday, it was Mitchell starting at center, but the unit as a whole gives the Minutemen more flexibility on defense with so many different varieties of the press or man-to-man defense UMass can employ.
“We’re super versatile,” Pierre said. “We can be really switchy on defense if we wanted to be, we can pressure the ball because those guys are so versatile. We can get after people really.”
STAYING CONNECTED — The loudest cheers of the night were reserved for the final minute when walk-on Davonte Higginbottom hit a layup for the Minutemen’s final points of the evening.
Higginbottom earned his first action after being the head manager last year. When he made his layup with 40 seconds left, the entire bench jumped into a frenzy in celebration, a sign of the progress UMass made in being selfless.
“You can see this team has a chance to be pretty connected, you can see they genuinely care about each other and are rooting for each other,” McCall said. “When my man Davonte gets a layup late in the game, the whole bench is up, but I felt like that was the whole time.”
EARLE TIME — Hopkins Academy graduate John Earle grabbed a defensive rebound while playing the final 6:09 for Western New England.