When Trey Davis threw up an off-balanced shot to beat the buzzer from just over half court to close out the first half Saturday afternoon, the relatively quiet Mullins Center crowd came alive and it appeared the Massachusetts men’s basketball team had shifted momentum entering the break.
But it was Saint Louis who then came out and went on a 22-2 run starting four minutes into the second half to build an inescapable deficit for the Minutemen, who dropped their fifth straight in a 86-75 loss.
UMass (8-10, 3-4 Atlantic 10) held a brief 46-43 lead behind six straight points from Donte Clark to open the second half. But starting at the 16:28 mark, the Minutemen’s offense went cold amidst a 22-2 run by SLU that opened up to a 65-48 lead at the midway point in the half.
Carried all afternoon by Davis (36 points), UMass countered with a small run of its own to bring the deficit to single digits in the final five minutes of regulation, but the Billikens (8-11, 3-4 A-10) clinched their second straight victory with 8-of-8 free throw shooting in the final minute.
“It was kind of a telltale sign of how the second half was going to go. They made a couple plays, we didn’t execute on two quick sets out of the huddle and then we went down quite a bit,” Minutemen coach Derek Kellogg said about SLU’s second half run.
“I thought we made a nice, valiant effort coming back and scrapping some. And then we didn’t make some basketball plays down the stretch that we talked about.”
Davis reached 30 points for the third time this season on 10-of-16 shooting, including 6-of-8 from 3-point range. But the Minutemen’s second and third-leading scorers Donte Clark (4-of-11) and Jabarie Hinds (4-of-16) combined to shoot under 30 percent from the field to highlight UMass’ offensive struggles.
“Right now obviously (Davis), Jabarie and Donte are giving us most of our points. We are still trying to formulate that fourth or fifth scoring option, which hasn’t really formulated itself. I think 36 (points) is probably a little much but (Davis) did it on 10-for-16 (shooting),” Kellogg said.
Kellogg added: “When that happens, you’re trying to be the main scorer, you put a little too much pressure on yourself sometimes and I think he can do that and rely on his teammates and some of those guys have to make some plays.”
On defense, UMass had problems getting back in transition all game, as SLU consistently broke the press in an up-tempo pace that Billikens coach Jim Crews said is consistently stressed in practice.
“We want to be in attack mode… We don’t want to break the press and then set up at half court,” Crews said. “We want a seamless offense, not two different things, and they did a good job of that.”
“They did a good job of hitting middle. We took the press off pretty quickly after, I think they got one layup drive at that point,” Kellogg said. “Those are the ones where you’re kind of hopeful that maybe someone makes a big block or big play. I don’t think we’re at that spot yet, so we ended up playing a little more half court (defense) than I’d like.”
The Billikens finished with 40 points in the paint behind their aggressive attacking style that opened up 3-point opportunities in the second half as SLU shot 4-of-9 from deep out of the break.
Four SLU players scored double digit points and its bench contributed 46 points compared to UMass’ nine.
Clark finished with 12 before fouling out and Hinds had 10 alongside Davis’ game-high performance for UMass.
All five losses during the Minutemen’s current slump have been by double digits. UMass will next try to snap its longest losing streak since the 2009-10 season Wednesday night at Saint Joseph’s.
“I’m going to continue to come in here with my hard hat on. I’m going to have to get a few more hard hats to spread around the team and make sure that everyone has one because we are going to dig ourselves out of this,” Kellogg said.
Anthony Chiusano can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @a_chiusano24.
