The Massachusetts men’s basketball team find themselves in an interesting situation to end the season with two critical games and the ball in its court as to where it is seeded for the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

UMass (13-16, 7-9 A-10) is coming off of a blowout loss to Richmond on the road and will square off against a streaky La Salle (14-14, 3-11 A-10) team. The Explorers has won three of their last four games yet went on a seven-game losing streak from the span of early January to the start of February.

The Minutemen were victorious when they first matched up against the Explorers in early January beating them 77-69. In that game they had four scorers in double figures, something that has rarely happened this season and something UMass coach Matt McCall has spoken heavily about throughout the season.

“There is a lot you can take,” McCall said on what he can look at from their early game against La Salle. “It seems like every time Saul Phiri or Isiah Deas see Massachusetts their eyes light up, and they have terrific games. We can’t allow that to happen. Those guys have been UMass killers forever and I think we’ve got to defend, we’ve got to rebound; we can’t think we are going to down there and shoot 50-60 percent from three. I don’t think that’s happened, so we have to rely on our defense and rebounding and we got to bring that effort… It’s going to be a physical game…and we got to embrace that.”

The Minutemen ended their winning streak of three games with a loss to Richmond over the weekend that saw them fall out of the tie with VCU and move down in the A-10 standings. The next couple of games for UMass will be a huge test whether it can figure out its road struggles and compete on the last day of the season against a Rhode Island team that is vying for an NCAA Tournament spot.

The key moving forward will come from the play of Dibaji Walker who has shown at times that he can be a potentially compliment the scoring of Carl Pierre and Tre Mitchell.

Walker got into a rhythm late in the second half on Saturday when the Minutemen were well out of reach of the lead against Richmond. It was more of a confidence booster for the transfer sophomore who got into a groove shooting the ball and proved that he has the potential to contribute to the offense. Walker came up big for the Minutemen against Saint Louis at home, but then was held scoreless to VCU and only finished with seven points against Fordham. His 19 points proved that he can be a scorer at this level but only when he can create space with his footwork and ball handling, and also when he is facilitating around three-point range.

“I am getting more into a flow, more confident and more relaxed,” Walker said. “I am just trying to pretty much assert myself when I feel like I have an opportunity to score.”

UMass has struggled mightily from 3-point range over the span of the last several games, and with Pierre struggling to knock down a basket from deep as well, the team hasn’t found a reliable threat from beyond the arc. In conference play, UMass is shooting just 29.8 percent from three which is ranked 12th out of 14 teams. Part of that might come from the load that Pierre has had to take on. The junior is averaging 33.7 minutes per game, and that ranks 15th amongst his fellow conference counterparts. With T.J. Weeks out for the season, the Minutemen have had to rely on Pierre a lot.

Along with Pierre and Walker, Mitchell has simply been an unstoppable force these last few weeks, and frankly for the majority of the season. With Djery Baptiste out the last couple games and for likely the last two games of the season, Mitchell’s minutes have increased. Mitchell picked up another A-10 Rookie of the Week honor and put up 18 points against the Spiders on Saturday.

“It is hard,” McCall said on managing the minutes of Mitchell without Baptiste. “It’s not just the minutes, it’s the physical confrontation of every game that he is having to deal with. The banging, the hitting, the double teams, the triple teams and then we are asking him to go down on the other end and defend. It puts a lot on his body and you got to try to manage his load in practice even more than anything and find a way to get him more rest.”

The Minutemen square off against La Salle on the road Wednesday with tip off scheduled for 7 p.m.

Frederick Hanna III can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @FrederickHIII