AMHERST — While his season-opening press conference on Monday, Oct. 5 was centered around the players on his team, UMass men’s basketball coach Frank Martin was not shy on sharing his thoughts about the landscape of college basketball.
In his opening lines in the afternoon, Martin commented on the shift in the start of the season, noting preseason games are starting earlier each year.
“Us old geezers were used to starting practice on October 15,” Martin said. “Now we play an exhibition game on October 11. So the world that we’re managing is completely different from the one that we were taught on how to prepare teams.”
During his first season in Amherst in 2022, the Minutemen had their first preseason game on Nov. 1, with the first official game less than a week later on Nov. 7. This season the team’s first official game, after three exhibitions, is on Nov 2.
Even though the team has more scrimmages with an earlier season start date, programs are still limited when and how much they can get on the court. The NCAA Bylaws limits teams to begin practices 42 days before their first regular season game. Additionally, teams can only practice up to eight hours a week before the season.
Given most college games bring in almost completely new rosters, though UMass returns seven from last season, coaches require more time to integrate the different pieces to be ready for when the games count. Expectations are also raised on players to be at their best given the amounts of money they earn through N.I.L.
“If we’re gonna play exhibition games, then let us practice rather than this nonsense eight hours a week,” Martin said. “Seriously, we’re paying these guys real money, and I ain’t talking about UMass. I’m talking about around the country, and we’re gonna keep practicing four hours a week? Like who are we kidding? You talk about prehistoric rules, that’s as prehistoric as it gets.”
The rules Martin referenced are under the NCAA Bylaw 17.5.3.
As for the team’s in-season schedule, UMass’s unique position as the only New England team in a conference mostly of teams from Michigan and Ohio creates a separation of priorities.
During the offseason, the Mid-American Conference (MAC) voted to increase the number of conference games each team plays from 18 to 22. Additionally, the league also has a deal for teams to play two games against Sun Belt Conference opponents. With 24 games already locked in, Martin’s flexibility to schedule non-conference games was limited.
“ I’d rather not play 22 league games, but I’m not gonna question a fair vote and people voting to go there,” Martin said. “I didn’t vote for it, but it is what it is. I’d rather us not play two Sun Belt games, but it is what it is.”
Martin expressed interest in trying to schedule games against Atlantic 10 games, wanting to keep a presence in the Northeast while utilizing his coaching connections. UMass and Rhode Island planned to start a home-and-home series this season before the extended league schedule forced the two schools to delay the meeting and instead play last Sunday for an exhibition game.
After another team dropped out of UMass’s schedule, Martin got Loyola Chicago to agree to come to Amherst. While local schools like UMass Lowell and Stonehill are on the schedule, the hope is to play against the top schools in the region. He also emphasized the importance of playing a game in Boston each year.
“ If all our league games are gonna be in the Midwest, then I got to play East Coast teams so we can recruit the East Coast,” Martin said. “That’s the conundrum that we’re in with basketball in the league that we’re in. That doesn’t mean it’s a negative. It’s not casting blame on anybody. But we have to schedule more A-10 schools. I’d love to schedule some Big East schools.”
Martin also reaffirmed the necessity to recruit high school athletes amidst the chaos of the transfer portal and older players who attempted to go pro, only to return to college.
Earlier this month, Villanova head coach Kevin Williard said he’s not recruiting high schoolers in the Class of 2027. The Wildcats have six players who could return for a fifth-season. His statement echoes coaches like Arkansas’ John Calipari and St. John’s Rick Pitino, who has pointed out the broader trend of recruiting experienced players from the portal or internationally.
“ If you have an unlimited budget, why would you recruit a high school kid? That’s the truth. Why? And it has nothing to do with high school kids,” Martin said. “It’s two different human beings. Why do we wanna take on these 10-month relationships with 18-year-olds if we can do it with 22-year-olds? It’s just a different animal.”
Whereas recruiting used to be a multi-year process, the transfer portal has exponentially shortened that timeline. When it came to getting transfers Jordan Clayton and Junjie Wang, Martin secured both players in roughly a two-week span. He leaned on his previous experience recruiting for Clayton in particular.
”(Clayton’s) high school coach called me, and before he finished saying his name, I said, ‘I’m in,’ because I was already at peace with everything I learned in recruiting him the first time around,” Martin said. “And so his high school coach says, ‘All right, let’s see what he does.’ And called me like a week later and said, ‘He’s going in the portal tomorrow at 3 p.m.,” At 3:01, I was on the phone with him, and recruiting basically took two weeks.”
While Clayton was a known commodity to UMass, Wang was the opposite. Martin relied on people in his circle of trust to determine if the two-year starter at San Francisco was a good match.
“ And when those people swore to me what he was about, I was willing to hit the fast-forward button. I knew I had two weeks to figure out if we could make it work or not,” Martin said.
UMass opens the season next month with its first Sun Belt game against Troy down in Alabama.
