UMass Basketball: Minutemen ready to get back on track for 2019-20

With a great freshman class, solid returning talent, and a restructured coaching staff, UMass Basketball could be on its way back to A10 relevance.

UMass Basketball has been locked in the darkness of the A10’s basement for an excruciatingly long five years, but it seems like the right pieces may now finally be in place for the team to get back on track. Not only will Matt McCall have an entirely new staff of assistants to work with, but he’ll also have the A10’s second highest-rated Freshman class (after VCU, according to 247Sports) on his roster. Of course, it’s possible that the new mix of personnel will result in a train wreck – that would surely be in keeping with the recent trend of the program – but there is good reason to believe that this season could be different.

Four-star freshman Tre Mitchell is the highest rated recruit UMass has had since Dejon Jarreau (who has since become a key player at Houston), and all seven members of this new class have a year of high-level prep under their belts. It’s also notable that two of Mitchell’s recent teammates from Woodstock Academy, three-star wings TJ Weeks and Preston Santos,  and their Head Coach, Tony Bergeron, have been added to the team as well (Bergeron as an assistant). It certainly isn’t guaranteed that the success they found at their previous level will be repeated in the A10, but the fact that they are stepping on campus with a previously established sense of chemistry and a familiarity with winning is promising.

The returning talent on the roster that the Woodstock crew and co. will be joining isn’t unbelievable, but it’s certainly enough to get excited about. Carl Pierre is perhaps the purest three-point shooter in the A10, and Keon Clergeot, Sy Chatman and Samba Diallo should all be ready to take on increased roles as the “older” players on the roster (Diallo especially).

The absence of former standouts like Luwane Pipkins and Rashaan Holloway will be noticeable, particularly because of their experience, but they were also players that made it difficult for McCall to play the positionless, up-tempo style of basketball that he’s inclined towards. As far as the long-term rebuild of the culture goes, replacing them with seemingly bought-in and unselfish young players could be a case of addition by subtraction. Besides, it’s not as though things were working out tremendously under their on-court leadership anyway (9-27 A10 record over the last two seasons).

The bottom line is this: don’t expect UMass to be a contender for the title this season – they are too young and the top of the league is too loaded – but do expect them to play hard, look as though they actually care (as opposed to recent UMass teams), and maybe even steal some games and surprise in the standings because of that. At the end of the day, success won’t come overnight, but the light at the end of the tunnel is visible.