The Massachusetts men’s basketball team will have to rely on its youth and depth in tonight’s game against Central Connecticut State (1-1) at the Mohegan Sun Arena. Due to injury, the Minutemen’s backcourt depth has been cut from four players to three.
UMass (2-3) will play without freshman guard Art Bowers, who went down with an ankle injury in Saturday’s game at BC just 12 minutes in. UMass coach Steve Lappas will have to rely on freshman Maurice Maxwell to fill Bowers’ starting spot.
“He’s hurt, bad,” Lappas said. “It’s a bad sprain. A bad sprain could take anywhere from two weeks to a month, six weeks. Honestly we won’t know for a while. It’s very swollen, he can’t move. Missing Artie Bowers has more of an effect from a basketball standpoint then it does from a mental standpoint.”
Although Lappas knows that the way his team plays tonight will be altered because of Bowers’ absence, he’s hoping the rest of his backcourt will be able to step up and fill the holes.
“[Chris] Chadwick and Brennan [Martin] are the two guys on the bench from the perimeter so they both have to play significant minutes,” Lappas said.
In the chance that Lappas needs another player to fill the guard spot, he’ll look to sophomore Jeff Viggiano to step up and play the shooting guard.
In addition, the Maroon and White will look to use the knowledge of assistant coach Pat Sellers to their advantage. Sellers is a CCSU graduate, and has spent the last four seasons on the Central Connecticut sidelines, where among other things, he was in charge of recruitment.
“Obviously Pat knows them well, he recruited all the kids there, including the new kids,” Lappas said. “They’ve only played two games, they’ve got three, four new kids that haven’t played that much or they’ve only played two games so you don’t really know what they are. Pat at least gives you an idea of what they were recruited as and what they’re supposed to be.”
Sellers’ knowledge becomes especially important when it comes to guarding senior forward Ron Robinson. Sellers can give the UMass big men some insight into the best ways to shut down Robinson.
“That’s going to be important,” Lappas said. “He’s a really good player, he’s averaging 16 points a game right now so we have to do a good job on [him]. Robinson is their focus offensively, they’ve only played two games so it’s hard to really tell what they are right now being one and one, but they’re going to be a formidable test for us.”
Because UMass’ zone defense was highly effective against BC, they will use it again tonight to both keep players out of foul trouble and spread the floor.
“We had decided early in October when we were having our meetings that we needed to play more zone this year because of our depth,” Lappas said. “Our depth is going to be tested even more [tonight], so I would think that we’re going to have to definitely play some zone. Our zone is pretty good. We spent a lot of time on it lately, so it will be ready for us tomorrow.”
For the Minutemen, other than filling holes in the backcourt, they will need to work hard under the basket, as the Blue Devils have two accomplished rebounders in Robinson and junior Rich Pittman. The duo combined for 36 total rebounds in the Blue Devils’ first two games.
“Crash-the-glass rebounding is going to be a huge factor as it always is for us and that’s where we have to really do a good job,” Lappas said.
Junior captain Anthony Anderson will be vital to the Minuteman offense as he leads the team in scoring with 17.4 points per game.
Anderson was named Atlantic 10 Player of the Week after averaging 24.5 points per game against Vermont and Boston College, as well as scoring a career-high 29 points against Vermont. Anderson leads the A-10 in 3 pointers made (19) and is second in 3 point percentage (.514).
