2025-26 Season

[TheInsider]

I think we all know why we are so much worse over the last 10 years in both Football and Basketball...

[bunkerhill87]

serious question. Does New England support or really care about college sports? I was up for the Ball St game as well as BU hockey on Friday . Met some Umass friends who brought some others not affiliated w/ the University. A couple of them stated this. college sports is an after thought. i imagine the kids apathy comes from their parents. Everybody says winning is the key to filling the seats but Hockey has had a great run these past several years and dont necessarily get big crowds every time. I wasnt expecting crowds in January but its seems that this dynamic has plagued Umass Sports since Calapari left. I do think the Mullins is too big for basketball but if the premise was multi event venue then we are kind of stuck. We are old school when it comes to marketing the team and the experience. Ive been to many many syracuse games and huge crowds are pregaming on the other side of the court. Activities for kids etc. Im just at a loss why our teams are not supported in general

[Juice Stand]

After yesterday's home loss vs Bowling Green, both Warren Nolan and Bart Torvik now have UMass predicted to finish at 18-12 overall and 9-9 in conference, putting them at either the 7 or 8 seed in the conference tourney. Any more "unexpected" or "bad" losses (and I say that because it seems like we shouldn't expect wins at this point) and we'll be in real danger of missing the conference tournament.

The Ohio loss has put us as a fringe MAC conference tournament team, far below the "standard of excellence" that Ryan Bamford promised. There's a seemingly "winnable" bunch of games upcoming (take that with a grain of salt), and we're predicted to finish 9-9, 7th place by Nolan. Torvik has us at 8-10, 9th place and missing the tournament. The wins need to start coming immediately because we're going to be near that 8th seed cut line most likely, and we need to also start thinking about tiebreakers.

Following the NIU loss, the prediction sites are remarkably still somewhat optimistic on us. Nolan has us at 8-10, grabbing the 8th spot, and Torvik also has us at 8-10, but in a tie for 8th w/ EMU so our fate would come down to tiebreakers. I'm not even sure that it matters at this point. It would take a near miracle for us to squeak into the MAC tournament, and even then we would face Miami (OH) or Akron and get our doors blown off in the first round.

The next stretch of games: home vs a solid Toledo squad, and then on the road at a surprisingly good Buffalo, followed by on the road at currently undefeated Miami. The season could very well come to a disastrous end in the next week or so. It's astonishing what Bamford and Frank Martin have done to this program.

[vanmeter]

Mens Basketball Net 198 (8th NET in MAC)

Womens Basketball Net 89 (2nd NET in MAC)


Neither team has PLAYED a Quadrant 1 or 2 game

[kdogg8173]

What I’ve been surprised about is just how bad the defense has been. That’s been Franks calling card during his career but it’s a mess out there. They just can’t defend screens and most of the time look completely lost on what to do. Some guy will switch, some guys hedge, some guys fight over or under but almost everytime there’s hesitation and they get beat in one way or another.

[vl14]

Agreed! I can’t understand this defense- aggressively overplaying, trapping in the center of the court, and picking up their guy almost at mid court. If it resulted in a large number of steals or disrupting the offense, I’d get it but the risk/reward doesn’t seem worth it.

Bringing the center way out of the paint to trap a guard in the middle of the court makes me insane. It rarely works (once yesterday was the first time I’d seen a turnover off it in recent memory). Once the trap is busted (which is most all the time), the centers can’t get back on defense in time. It’s 4 vs 3.

And who traps in midcourt? Sidelines, baselines —> all day long.

I was also thinking… Maybe if we didn’t play this all out,overplaying style of defense, there would be fewer fouls and our better guys could play more minutes (less exhausted). Top players usually play over 30 minutes a game but ours rarely do.

Don’t get me wrong. - play tight defense but not necessary 40 feet from the baseline. We’re just not good enough defensively to pull that off.

[tdmass]

^ Having your best player chasing a guard 25 feet from the basket makes No sense, especially a foul prone best player. Yesterday Bettiol had 2 of his fouls this way yesterday causing him sit a lot!

[DanaDingle3]

I thought last year was an anomaly for Frank's career. Wrong! This year is awful. I'll roll with him for one more year, but I'm with others -- the best thing the Collective can do is help with a buyout.

[69MG]

If anyone watched the Pat's post-game show today, Ted Johnson made some interesting comments. He was asked about Vrabel's rah-rah style. He talked about many of his former coaches, especially contrasting Bill B. and Vrabel.

His main point was that today's players are different than those of 15 years ago. They don't respond well to Bill's personality type. He said something like it wasn't fun playing for Bill, even though we were winning. Today's players respond a lot better to Vrabel's style. The team meetings are looser, and the players enjoy coming to work. Is Vrabel hard on them, sometimes yes. But he's not that way all the time.

I think we're well aware of this now. Even if the players know Frank's reputation, it's different once you get here and get cursed out every game.

[rt63]

It’s a dumpster fire. Throw Frank’s 2 million plus at Kimani Young and let him turn this disaster around.

[Juice Stand]

What I’ve been surprised about is just how bad the defense has been. That’s been Franks calling card during his career but it’s a mess out there...

Right on. That's probably been the biggest disappointment for me in his 3+ years. I'm pretty sure that he has consistently lamented our terrible interior defense every single year, going back to Wildens, then Cohen, Malek and now Leo. It may have been his calling card in the past, but he hasn't shown any ability to coach that area at UMass.

Others have mentioned the stupidity of having your center run out to half court to trap, and then have to try to run back to the basket, only to get scorched every time for a layup or a foul. It's just a dumb tactic that hardly ever works out. He says all the time that the game is played from the inside out, not the outside in. So why does he play with his center out and force him to run back in? That's playing defense from the outside in. If he was true to his word, he would pack the paint and force teams to beat him from outside.

I'll add that his over aggressive defensive style results in way too many wide open corner 3's. We give them up constantly since he's been here. It's a feature of his defense. Leave the weak side wide open to try to pressure the area with the ball, but any team that's remotely decent at moving the ball can beat that easily.

I'll give a bit of credit. I actually think our zone defense has been good. In times when we've struggled, switching to the zone has helped get us back in games or take the lead. I don't know why it can't be our main defensive scheme instead of our porous man-to-man that he acknowledges is terrible.

[Steve81]

Granted Frank has a core of behavior, but most of us can be influenced for the better. While acknowledging he has to adjust on how he talks to certain players, doing it in the heat of the moment has not happened. I like the program that Bruiser had with the players would be good for Frank especially. Once you know people’s story, background and emotional baggage you can understand, adjust, treat and respect them more.

I'm all for team work and Frank is part of the team and needs to work at it as well. We are all capable of adapting, changing, and progressing in live. (No matter the age.) My experiences for building connected units and team work from the military may offend some. Know it worked and seemed to work fine for VCU in the season following the pre-session training.

Frank needs to benefit from the approach used by Bruiser’s team, physiologist work. Don't know if others are old enough to remember it and can describe it better. While giving my military approach is valid, but the Bruiser approach seems better. Ideally it would have simple be by a player only lead talk/meeting. But Frank needs some work as well and we all want to see UMass thrive.

[minutefanjsf]

The defense is horrible because they lack in fundamentals. They overpursue, jump out too far on hedges, lose connection to weak side, etc. they play as if they are much more athletic, unable to judge the speed, strength p, etc. of their opposition.

[Juice Stand]

We've won 4 of the last 5, are out of the basement, and occupy 7th place by ourselves at 4-5. We're a half game behind Bowling Green, who we face on the road on Feb 28, and one full game behind Ohio, who we get at home as our finale on March 3. Of the teams directly below us at 3-5 (Buffalo, EMU, and Ball St), we face all three of them down the road, Ball St on the road and EMU and Buffalo at home. Even if we lose to Miami on Tuesday, I think we have a chance to stay in that 7/8 spot heading into next weekend's showdown with EMU.

[TruBluMaroon]

It’s a dumpster fire. Throw Frank’s 2 million plus at Kimani Young and let him turn this disaster around.

In 1999, Young was arrested for having 96 pounds of marijuana, and he was sentenced to a year in federal prison. Maybe a good source for NIL money…