AMHERST — After a month of rough starts and a week of tough results, UMass coach Matt McCall is hoping to see better play out of the gate Wednesday when the Minutemen play La Salle at 7 p.m. at Tom Gola Arena in Philadelphia.
“Anytime you play on the road you’ve got to find ways to get off to good starts. We’ve changed the lineups. We’ve changed what we’re doing in warm-up,” McCall said. “We have to take care of the ball. We have to make sure we take good shots and we have to make sure we’re finishing around the basket.”
Senior guard C.J. Anderson said he expects increased motivation from the Explorers, who lost a 21-point lead against the Minutemen two weeks ago.
“This game Wednesday is very important. We just beat this team. They want revenge. We understand that. We have to come in and play hard. We have to be ready from the jump,” he said. “Energy level is No. 1. If you have energy it’s contagious. If we come out with energy I know we’ll be tough to beat.”
La Salle is 1-2 since losing to UMass in overtime. It lost at Duquesne in triple overtime, bounced back to beat Fordham and then lost at Richmond. The Explorers have lost five of their last six to fall to 8-12 overall and 2-5 in the Atlantic 10.
B.J. Johnson, who missed the game in Amherst, returned for the Fordham and Richmond games and is expected to play Wednesday. The 6-foot-7 senior guard leads the Atlantic 10 in scoring at 20.9 points per game and is fourth in rebounding at 8.5 per game.
“He gives them another prolific scorer. We’ll prepare the same way. We prepared like he was playing last time,” McCall said. “They’re going to try to post our smaller guards. We did an awful job on post defense against Saint Louis. They’re going to try to do that as well. We have to do much better there. La Salle is going to try to do the same thing. They have bigger guards they’re going to try to post.”
McCall said the second half and overtime of UMass’ 86-79 win over La Salle should be the blueprint defensively.
“Late in the game against La Salle, we were really good fronting the post. We had some unbelievable defensive possessions late in that game, but we have to do that for 40 minutes,” he said.
In that game UMass freshman Unique McLean played 31 minutes, grabbed seven rebounds and did a solid job of slowing down La Salle’s Pookie Powell in the second half.
“When he’s focused on that end of the floor and not at all concerned with the offensive end of the floor, he’s been really good for us. He came out of Christmas with the right mentality and got himself in the starting lineup,” McCall said. “I thought he took a step back the other day, but our whole team did. There have been times where we’ve put him on the other team’s best player and he’s done a good job. He needs to continue to put his focus there.”
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage