At halftime of tonight’s contest between the Massachusetts men’s basketball team and Atlantic 10 rival Rhode Island, former UMass great and current Boston College head coach Al Skinner’s number 30 will be retired alongside George Burke and Julius Erving’s number 32 and Loe Roe’s number 15 on the William D. Mullins Center’s south wall, marking the highest honor an academic institution can bestow upon one of it’s former student-athletes.
“I am very honored and happy to be receiving this recognition, but this is not just an individual award,” Skinner said in a release after learning of the honor. “I share this with my teammates. I am glad that our accomplishments have been able to withstand the test of time. I realize this is the highest honor that the University of Massachusetts can bestow upon a student-athlete. I again truly appreciate the recognition.”
With special guests to include former ABA/NBA legend Julius Erving and Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, the night will surely be one of celebration and emotion. Thus, the task at hand for Maroon and White (9-13 3-7 A-10) head coach Steve Lappas is to overcome this controlled chaos and focus on the fact that there is indeed still a basketball game to be played.
“It is obviously going to be a special night for Al and his family and the University of Massachusetts, but we have to focus on the task at hand and that is basketball,” Lappas said.
One area where the Lappas and the Minutemen may benefit from the hype surrounding the night is that of fan support. With the sparse Mullins Center crowds that have plagued the team for much of Lappas’ tenure in Amherst growing slightly larger as the 2003-04 has progressed, quietly team and university officials are predicting – and hoping for – a large turnout from paying fans as well as the students who have been all but completely absent from the equation for much of the season.
“We hear the crowd when they show up,” team captain Anthony Anderson said. “[When we played Dayton at home] we knew they were there, and we fed off them. We obviously want more people to continue to come out and support us, and those who are there making a lot of noise help us too.
So with a former legend and a strong home crowd behind them, the Minutemen will hope to duplicate one of their more impressive efforts of the season, a 67-63 win at the Ryan Center on Jan. 31 in which freshman Maurice Maxwell’s 3-pointer with 25.6 seconds remaining helped seal UMass’ third victory in a row.
The task may be easier now that the Rams (14-11 3-8 A-10) have begun to slide, losing eight of 10 after beginning the season 12-3. However one player who has continued to thrive in coach Jim Baron’s system despite recent woes is guard Dawan Robinson.
“He’s a dynamic player who can do a lot of things on both sides of the ball,” Lappas said prior to the teams’ last meeting. “He’s quick off the dribble and create a lot of his own offense.
“He makes a lot of good things happen for himself and others around him.”
On the season, Robinson leads the team in scoring at 16.8 points per game – more than comparable to some of the better backcourt players to come through Kingston in recent memory including current NBA stars Cuttino Mobley and Lamar Odom.
Senior guard Brian Woodward (13.4 ppg) and junior swingman Dustin Hellenga (11.8 ppg) help carry the offensive load for the Rams, and are second and third on the team in scoring, respectively.
“They have a lot of players who can beat you,” Lappas said. “Our team defense, as it always is, is as important as anything.”
Another area of concern for Lappas will be rebounding, as URI leads the A-10 in rebounding with 40.6 per game, including 5.1 rebounds per game from Woodward and 4.7 rpg from center Marcel Momplaisir. Yet if the last time these two teams met is any indication (the Rams outrebounded UMass 36-31), the Minutemen know that keeping the rebounding margin to a minimum will be important.
“We’re going to find ourselves outsized night in and night out,” Lappas said. “We just need to continue to battle and do what we can on the glass, and if we come close to breaking even we’ll be OK.”
For the Maroon and White, it will also be important to find a rhythm offensively, something they were not able to do following the suspension from the starting lineup of both Anderson and sophomore forward Rashaun Freeman in a 64-44 loss to Xavier on Saturday.
UMass was led by Art Bowers 10 points in losing to the Musketeers, and the freshman guard is hoping to duplicate his game-high 18 point effort against Rams in Kingston, which also saw all five starters in double figures for the Minutemen.
