Though the Minutemen can blame free-throw shooting for a loss Saturday at Charlotte, rebounding has been a more consistent problem when they've struggled.
UMass forward Terrell Vinson battles for position with Richmond's Trey Davis (5) and Wayne Sparrow in the first half of the Minutemen's win over the Spiders Jan. 27.
AMHERST – As the University of Massachusetts basketball team tries to clean up the memories of Saturday's 66-65 loss at Charlotte, it’s working on cleaning up another area.
The backboard.
In preparation for facing Rhode Island on Wednesday night at the Mullins Center, the Minutemen's focus has turned from defense to rebounding over the past few days.
There are plenty of factors to blame for the loss to the 49ers, most notably a 6-for-16 effort from the free-throw line. That, though, can be considered an anomaly – even after that abysmal showing, UMass’ 69.6 percent mark from the stripe is still respectable.
The rebounding issue is consistently far more worrisome. UMass has been outrebounded in all six of its losses. The Minutemen are allowing opponents a league-high 38 rebounds per game and are 13th in Atlantic 10 defensive-rebounding percentage at 66.2 percent.
Compounding that is how important grabbing clean defensive boards is to starting the team’s transition offense, which has become less of a priority since Jesse Morgan was lost to a torn ACL. Nonetheless, it remains a staple in coach Derek Kellogg’s arsenal.
“There’s no just pulling them in on the defensive end and getting our fast break going,” Kellogg said. “We just didn’t get as many clean rebounds as I would like to ignite our fast break, which we have to do a better job of.”
Correcting that is easier said than done. Charlotte’s big men did an especially good job of being physical without committing fouls, while the Minutemen’s bigs – especially Cady Lalanne – were forced to sit for long periods because of foul trouble.
Kellogg, though, says practicing that physicality is tough so late in the season.
“It’s not something this time of year that I’m a big proponent of saying, ‘Go stand under the rim and push each other and go get the rebound,’” Kellogg said. “To me, that’s one of the things that’s tough to work on other than to say, ‘Go knock the guy out of the way.’”
So Kellogg, along with forward Terrell Vinson, said improvement on the glass has to come from mindset and commitment.
“We preach brotherhood; we’ve got to be a brotherhood on rebounding,” Vinson said. “A lot of times, they send four dudes on the boards and we’ve got three guys down there sometimes. You can’t get clean rebounds like that. Everybody has to box out.”
Vinson said, during his first year on campus, the Minutemen hit the video room to improve, and he is confident they can do that again.
“I remember freshman year when some guys weren’t boxing out, and there wasn’t a group commitment, we went to film and corrected it,” he said. “Toward the end of the year, we got better.”
Kellogg echoed Vinson’s sentiment, saying that while Lalanne (the team’s leading rebounder at 6.5 per game) will be an elite rebounder at some point, he isn’t there yet, and the onus falls on the rest of the team to get it done until he is.
“It is by committee because I don’t think we have anybody on our team who you would consider a world-class rebounder,” Kellogg said. “I think we’ve got guys that can all rebound, so they’ve got to go in there and do it as a group.”
Kellogg knows the Minutemen won’t reach the heights they’re shooting for unless they improve on the glass.
“Most championship-level teams do a decent-to-good-to-great job on the backboards,” he said. “If we want to get to that level, we have to get better rebounding the basketball.”
That quest to improve begins against an opponent the Minutemen should have success against on the glass – Rhode Island is 15th in the A-10 in rebounding margin.
Tip-off is set for 7 p.m.