2025-26 Season

[Juice Stand]

Collegeinsider.com does something called the mid-major poll, which oddly does not include the A10, but the MAC has 4 teams represented with Miami (4), Buffalo (8), Akron (9) and Kent St (14). Useless, but it's been over a week since we've played and I'm jonesing for some hoop talk.

https://collegeinsider.com/mens-mid-major-top-25

[McKinney]

Good question. Beating Dayton last year might qualify, but our last big win over a power conference school? Maybe Penn St or Rutgers when McCall was the coach?

But really, it was probably the win over Kansas in Kansas City, or the BYU game in Springfield when DK was coaching.

McCall had a win over Georgia if I’m remembering correctly as well

Martin had a win over West Virginia in 2023-24 too

[Steve81]

An update on the league. It will never be as good as our old place, but improving from last year. If the NET were the conference results, we'd get the last spot in the conference tournament.

[MikeUMA]

Interesting gap at the top there. College Insider does a Mid-Major Top 25 poll, and they have Buffalo (8-0) just in front of Akron (6-2).
https://collegeinsider.com/mens-mid-major-top-25

Buffalo has 3 Quad 3 wins, and Akron only has 1.

Sad that we're looking at 7 MAC teams in front of us.

[MikeUMA]

In other MACtion, Bowling Green dealt Kansas State a humbling home court loss, 82-66.
https://bgsufalcons.com/news/2025/12/1/ ... n-20-years

UMass gets BGSU at home on January 3, and away on Feb 28.

[Juice Stand]

Am I blocked on here or something? I'm pretty sure I've posted the exact same thing as the last 3 posts: the NET rankings, the College Insider mid-major poll, and the Bowling Green win over K State.

Bueller, Bueller, anyone?

[InnervisionsUMASS]

Am I blocked on here or something? I'm pretty sure I've posted the exact same thing as the last 3 posts: the NET rankings, the College Insider mid-major poll, and the Bowling Green win over K State.

Bueller, Bueller, anyone?

Nope, your post was read loud and clear by me during lunch. I'm sure the duplicate sharing of links is just an accident... no everyone goes back and reads recent posts before posting themselves.

[MikeUMA]

Yeah, I just didn't scroll back/up. Unintentional dupe.

[Juice Stand]

Yeah, I get it. It was just odd that three posts in a row were rehashes of what I already mentioned. Is there an echo in here? I also didn't post the world's largest graphic like Steve81 did.

Anywho, back to the larger point from those posts: The top of the MAC looks pretty darned good this year. We have work to do to get into that group.

[bobolink]

In a recent year I read one of those "best team in each state" columns. UMass was 5th in our state, and that's unacceptable (BC, Harvard, Lowell and Northeastern were ahead). After a poor showing in November, UMass is again 5th in our state according to the NET (BC, BU, Harvard, and Northeastern ahead). Massachusetts week is here, and I'm looking to rise to at least 2nd. Need to beat Harvard!

[Juice Stand]

I read this on Twitter and thought it was interesting because I was having the exact same thought last night:

@MattCahill22
When I was a student for the Lappas years, I was sad about how bad the attendance was at the end... But even that was probably double (at least) the average attendance of the Martin years. It's just disheartening.

I was a student during the end of the Lappas years (Freeman and Lasme are MY guys). I specifically remember remarking to people how far the program had fallen in just under 10 years since Cal. Goodness gracious, the level of attendance from those days would be incredible today. There were probably 1,500 in the arena last night. Lots of reasons for that, but it is a morgue in that building.

[eldonabe]

I think I have seen enough to take a semi-educated guess on the overall record now.

By prediction models they are "favored" to get to 19 wins (not including MA Boston). Using my own gambling margin of toss up (Between 45% and 55% chance to win) there are 5 tossups . we are above 50% in 3 and below 50% in 2. On average there are usually 2 games we win that we should not and 2 games that we lose that we should not. That is a push overall in my prediction.

The biggest problem I have trying to put a number on this is their horrendous foul shooting. Unless they can have Banks shoot them all - that is such a lead weight. I just cannot go any higher than 18 total wins.

As far as conference play goes: we are favored to go 13-5 (with 4 tossups).

I am going to go with 12-6 in MAC play and I think that will slot us in between 3rd and 5th depending on how bad the bottom of the league is.

Our conference performance (finish) will come down to 4 games:

- Kent
- at E Michigan
- Toledo
- at Bowling Green

If we split those - we should be 12-6

[69MG]

Frank, on his post-game radio interview, said something to the effect of the OOC games don't mean much as far as wins and losses. They are important in getting the team ready for MAC play. It's a 1 bid league and we need to win the tourney to get into the NCAA tournament.

I see his point, but I have some disagreements with his logic. If we want to draw fans, we need to string some wins together. OOC wins and a decent MAC finish MIGHT get us into the NIT, and I would gladly accept that this year.

We have Lowell, BC, Florida State and an SBC team TBD. I think the BC game is hugely important. I don't see us beating FSU in Florida and the SBC game is a tossup. If we lose to BC and FSU, the best we can finish is 7-5 OOC, assuming we beat the SBC team and that won't cut it. 6-6 is a possibility and you can forget the NIT. We're not going 15-3 in the MAC if we play like this in OOC games.

[Juice Stand]

^ Well said, 69. He might not care about wins in Nov/Dec, but the fans sure as hell do. He's said many times that he asks us for our time, energy, and money. How can we be expected to give those things if we're told that results don't matter in Nov/Dec?

[Floyd]

Get the team ready in practice. He's paid well to win games & promote the program