With March less than a week away, teams will start to garner momentum that barrels into the conference tournament and even the NCAA Tournament. A clear omission from this list is the Massachusetts men’s basketball team, who have now lost its third straight and sink into the bottom four of the Atlantic 10 standings.

Fordham’s 85-73 win over the Minutemen (12-16, 5-11 A-10) gives Rhode Island the edge of the 10th spot in conference standings, pitting UMass to the dreaded Wednesday games. Since the bottom teams have played on Wednesday starting in the 2013-2014 season, not a single first round team won more than a single game.

Known for their lack of offense, the Rams (14-14, 7-9 A-10) average 65.8 points per game this season. The 85 they scored on the Minutemen is their second highest mark of the season, the most coming in an 89-83 double-overtime win over Central Connecticut State, who is currently 8-23.

UMass doubled down on its conference-worst 77.7 points allowed per game over its past five, allowing 80 points during that stretch. That would put them at 350th of 358 Division-I teams.

“You can’t give up 85 points to a team that you know offensively hasn’t put up those types of numbers this year and expect to win,” Minutemen coach Matt McCall said.

Chuba Ohams is another addition to the list of big men who have scored their career high against UMass this year, posting 23 points, 11 rebounds and five assists. Greg Jones has drawn more praise than any of the Minutemen’s bigs from McCall when it comes to defensive energy, but he played 15 minutes off the bench and wasn’t able to be a factor in his limited time.

“Probably should’ve played [Jones] a little bit more,” McCall said. “Obviously Dyondre [Dominguez] playing 17 helped [him not play as much]. We didn’t have any answer on Ohams out there, he really, really hurt us. We drew multiple bodies out at him… and then at the end of the game we’re down, we’re trying to play four guards and crawl back into the game with our offense.”

With the concern of Ohams in the interior, Fordham also made UMass pay from the outside. They made 11 threes at a season-high 58 percent mark, almost double of the 29.5 percent clip the Rams shoot from deep this season. The Minutemen have now allowed its opponents to shoot 49 percent in the past five games.

“The [defensive] priority going into the game is what are we doing on Ohams,” McCall said. “…But the guys that made threes; Patrick Kelly is a good 3-point shooter, [Rostyslav Novitskyi] hasn’t shown an ability to make a lot of threes, [Josh Colon-Navarro] was shooting I think 30 percent going into the game and [Antrell] Charlton the same thing. [These players] just hadn’t taken that many on the year.”

Novitskyi was 2-of-12 from three on the season before making both of his attempts Monday night. Colon-Navarro and Charlton shoot a combined 28.7 percent from beyond the arc this season, but went 5-of-7 against UMass.

The 3-pointers have not been falling like the Minutemen are used to. Two of the three lowest percentages from the 3-point line for UMass have came in two consecutive games. Dominguez and Preston Santos played in the rotation Monday after McCall appreciated their efforts in the loss Saturday. Fordham had no respect for either of their perimeter abilities, consistently leaving them wide open while an additional defender was in the paint. The two proved the Rams right, combining for two makes on 11 long range attempts.

“[Dominguez] had a bunch of wide open [3-pointers], I thought the shots [Santos] got in the minutes that he was in there were open,” McCall said. “That’s how they want to guard, that’s their defense and got to credit their defense because they obviously did a good job, but I did think we had some open looks that we missed.”

For the second time this season, the Minutemen play the same opponent in back-to-back games, hosting Fordham Wednesday night. The chances of UMass getting out of the bottom four plummet with a second straight loss to the Rams, as the only game remaining is a road matchup against George Mason. The Patriots defeated the Minutemen at the Mullins Center 72-62, and UMass is 2-8 on the road this season.

Joey Aliberti can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @JosephAliberti1.