AMHERST — There was a different aura around UMass during warmups Saturday afternoon.
The Minutemen – normally a fun-loving, loose group of young players with big smiles on their faces pregame – looked far more business-like as they hit the court for their final preparations before their matchup with No. 6 Dayton. They knew from the moment they returned to practice Wednesday that it was going to take an incredibly focused 96 hours to beat the Flyers, and that attitude came into the arena with them.
And for the most part, UMass made life difficult for the first top-10 Atlantic 10 team to come into the Mullins Center in 16 years. The Minutemen answered almost every single run Dayton threw at them, but ultimately one poor stretch in the middle of the second half proved to be the difference in the Flyers’ 71-63 win over the Minutemen.
“We probably had 35 minutes of really good effort and to beat a team like Datyon, you need to have 40,” coach Matt McCall said. “You’ve got to have everybody completely locked in every single possession. … At times we were right there, but they had that one stretch in the second half where they pull out to a 16-point lead.”
That one stretch came courtesy of Jalen Crutcher. McCall originally signed Crutcher when he was coaching Chattanooga, but when McCall left to take over in Amherst, Crutcher ended up at Dayton. The Minutemen (10-15, 4-8 A10) had effectively bottled up Crutcher through the first 30 minutes, limiting him to just two points.
However, Crutcher hit a 3-pointer over the outstretched hand of Kolton Mitchell as the shot clock expired with nine minutes left in the game to put the Flyers up by eight. It kickstarted a personal run of 11 straight points that lifted Dayton (23-2, 12-0) to that 14-point lead in less than two minutes. He then assisted on two of the next three Flyers baskets to push the lead out to its game-high 16 with 4 minutes, 12 seconds left.
That burst was the only time UMass blinked defensively the entire game, using its multitude of defenses to throw Dayton out of sync. Crutcher said the Flyers were confused early by the ever-changing defenses, but that they eventually settled into a groove as they adapted to UMass’ chaos. Yet even with Dayton adapting, UMass still held the league-leading offense to 10 points less than its season average.
“We were through the roof outside of that one stretch that Crutcher went on where he hit those 3s, we were going to hold the second-most offensive efficient team in the country to 60 points,” McCall said. “The changing of the defenses was good, it was what we wanted to do going into the game, and it gave us a chance.”
Even after Dayton surged out to a 16-point lead, UMass showed its moxie by continuing to battle back after McCall used a timeout. The Minutemen scored nine straight points over the next three minutes to cut the deficit to seven and began fouling the Flyers in hopes of extending the contest. It nearly worked as UMass almost forced a couple of turnovers late with its press and squeezed the deficit down to four with 14.5 seconds left before Crutcher hit both of his free throws to complete his 15-point second half and ice the game.
“That’s the approach we need to carry forward from the beginning of the game,” Tre Mitchell said. “It can’t be a sometimes thing. We talk about it in practice all the time, we can’t be a sometimes team and we can’t change our approach from one team and just expect the next team to be like ‘they played good against this team so they’re going to beat us.’ We have to bring that approach every single day and keep fighting no matter what the score is.”
The bigger issue for UMass was a lack of consistent offense without Tre Mitchell on the floor. When McCall took the freshman center off the floor for the first time, it began a nearly nine minute scoreless stretch for the Minutemen during which their three-point advantage turned into a 10-point deficit. Mitchell wasn’t off the floor for long, but the substitution took UMass out of sync with the ball.
When Mitchell was on the floor, however, he dominated a game that also featured Obi Toppin, a strong candidate for national player of the year. Toppin finished with 19 points and seven rebounds, but he looked powerless in slowing down Mitchell, who went for 26 points and 10 rebounds. Even when the Flyers knew the ball was going to Mitchell, they couldn’t stop the freshman from catching the ball and distributing it to his teammates or just powering his way to the rim for a basket.
“I didn’t have anything to lose,” Mitchell said. “He’s a (21-year-old) sophomore and I’m a 19-year-old freshman, I had nothing to lose. A lot of people are going to take notice of this performance, but it was just another opportunity for me.”