UMass Basketball: State of the program after end of 2019-20 season

What Minutemen need to address

As far as areas to address, frontcourt depth is an obvious concern for the time being. We know who Mitchell is, but there will undoubtedly be times that we could use another traditional big for defensive and rebounding purposes. It’s possible that we don’t need anyone else, that we will just go small with all of our lineups and try to pull off a Houston Rockets like-system – putting all of our focus on out-running and out-shooting our opponents.

That could work, but it’s risky because of how vulnerable we’d be when the shots aren’t falling and our opponent is able to control the pace of the game. A good point guard like Kyle Lofton or Jalen Crutcher will have no problem exploiting those size mismatches if they have time to set things up in the half-court.

As far as our woes on the boards, we were last in the conference in total rebounds per game (32.5), and that absolutely killed us at times (see the season finale against Rhode Island). Dyondre Dominguez should help out in that regard, but without another true big in the mix, the backcourt players will all need to crash the glass at 110%  to compensate for that lack. Tre will likely be a better rebounder after another summer in the weight room, but he won’t be able to carry the team on that end if everyone else isn’t playing busting their tails.

Our ability to score the ball by creating shots off the bounce is another thing that needs to be addressed over the Summer. Having Weeks back will help for sure, but we still won’t have too many guys who can make something out of nothing late in the shot clock. From what I’ve seen of Garcia’s tape, he has a natural ability to find driving lanes that will be great for Carl and TJ’s sake, but there’s no way of knowing if that will pan out at the college level right away. I am confident that it will, but nothing is guaranteed with freshmen, especially outside of the Power 5.

I think it will be important for auxiliary scorers like Samba Diallo and Preston Santos to continue to improve their midrange games and abilities to get to the line consistently. If they can reliably create points catching the ball 10-12 feet out, that would work wonders for our spacing and give our PGs that many more options for quick hitters out of the lane. Dibaji Walker is another player that can shoot the lights out when he’s on, and he should be expected to produce more consistently in that area now that he’s able to play from the start of the season.