By Palmer Johnson
Your George Mason Patriots look to move to 16-6 and 5-4 against the 13-7 and 4-4 UMass Minutemen.
The Minutemen are coached by fiery Frank Martin in his second season at UMass, with a record of 28-23 overall and 10-16 in the conference. Martin had previous stints with Kansas State and more notably South Carolina, where he made the 2017 Final Four as a 7 seed.
UMass didn’t play during the week, so they may have a preparation/rest advantage.
UMass By The Numbers
UMass is ranked 93rd on KenPom, with the 67th offense and 142nd defense.
It’s worth noting that the numbers say they have the 41st best home-court advantage in the country. Whether you believe in it or not, they win a lot at home.
Frank Martin has his guys playing at a pretty fast pace of 69.6 possessions per game, 82nd in the country.
On offense, the Minutemen are incredible at rebounding, having a 36.9% offensive board rate, 15th in the country. In conference play, they have a 37.6% rate, first in the A10.
UMass’s main struggle is outside shooting, as they hit just 31.5% of their threes, 272nd in the country. They’re only hitting 28.3% of their threes in conference play, which is last. Not only do the Minutemen not hit their threes, they also don’t really take them, as they’re last in conference play in attempt rate.
UMass has a 56.5% assist rate, putting them at 61st, and a three-point attempt rate of 32.4%, 295th in the country. Usually assist and three-point attempt rate go hand-in-hand since a lot of threes are catch and shoot, so they must do a lot of cutting action or alley-oops.
Surprisingly, the Minutemen don’t turn the ball over too often, having a turnover rate of only 15.2%, 60th in the country. I find this a bit odd since they’re such a young team outside their big duo of Cohen and Cross, who handle the ball a lot.
UMass doesn’t really have any shooters who can get decent volume except Rahsool Diggins, who’s hitting 36.1% of his threes. Nobody else on the team is hitting more than one three per game. I imagine Diggins is probably better than a 36% shooter, but since he’s the only true outside threat, defenses really focus on him out there.
The Minutemen’s offense runs through their two bigs, Josh Cohen and Matt Cross. Cohen is averaging 16.9 points and 7 rebounds, Cross is averaging 15.9 points, 8.2 rebounds, and 3.2 assists. Both of them are good enough from three that you have to cover them, but you’re probably ok with them taking moderately contested threes.
It’s kind of surprising how good they are at shooting from the right side of the paint. I would assume that shooting so poorly in the corner would make it so defenders can help off of their man much farther, but I guess Cohen and Cross are so good that it doesn’t really matter.
As you may have guessed, the Minutemen get the vast majority of their points from twos and free throws, being 40th in percentage points from twos and 122nd from the line.
On defense, UMass does a good job of limiting teams from two. They give up a 48.5% eFG, 82nd, and let up 46.6% from two, 53rd. On top of that, opponents turn over the ball 20.1% of the time, 45th In the nation.
The Minutemen’s main problems are that they don’t rebound very well, 240th in the country, and they foul a lot, letting their opponents shoot 40.1 shots from the line for every 100 shots, 318th in the country. If this is a game where the refs let the boys play, UMass will have a big advantage.
I don’t really see any weaknesses there. They’re GREAT in the paint, and pretty ok everywhere else.
Since UMass fouls so much, opponents get a decent amount of points from the line, 23%, 30th in the country.
UMass Scouting Report (First Half vs. SLU)
I wanted to pick a UMass home game, but their recent ones have all been very fast-paced, which wouldn’t match the game Mason would play.
On offense, Martin’s system has a lot of cutting action, passing it right to a layup. Cross is able to run the offense from the post, he hits those passes. When Cross gets the ball on the perimeter, he gets it stolen a decent but when a guy helps off his man while he’s dribble-driving. They’re able to help more since they don’t have to worry about shooters.
Cohen was drawing a lot of fouls. After the first couple of minutes, SLU was not letting Cohen get the ball close to the rim, forcing him to take contested mid-ranges.
UMass was ok with taking contested threes since they had such an advantage on the offensive boards.
SLU went into a 2-3 zone, UMass struggled, then got bailed out on a foul where the guy wasn’t even beat. Ford went away from it.
Freshman guard Jaylen Curry can do pretty much everything on offense at a high level except shoot the three.
On defense, they play a pretty normal man defense, sometimes they switch on screens. Cohen was getting targeted a lot on this end, I couldn’t tell if it was because he was a bad defender or if they wanted to get him in foul trouble, probably a bit of both.
For pretty much the whole half, SLU was getting what they wanted. It felt like at the end of every possession they were getting a decent shot at the rim or Gibson Jimerson was taking an open three.
Rahsool Diggins isn’t afraid to pick his guy’s pocket if he sees the chance. UMass went into a press with him running around doubling whoever had the ball, even in the half-court, eventually SLU just chucked it out of bounds.
What Does This Mean for Mason?
Amari Kelly is going to have his hands full. He’s going to have to deal with Cohen, but also is going to have to be able to turn around and defend a guy who might be getting the ball right under the basket. Cohen seems to be good enough that someone will have to cover him out on the perimeter, but hopefully Kelly can stay inside.
Matt Cross vs. Keyshawn Hall will be a fun matchup on both ends of the floor. They’re both battling for the top PF title in the conference, and one of them could move past the other in this game.
Prediction: Mason wins 71-66. Unless UMass has an outlier shooting game, I think Mason being able to collapse harder in the paint will be too much for the Minutemen offense to handle.
Mason really needs this win as a loss would make them 4-5 in conference play and below .500 at the midway point. This team is not a below .500 team.
