Good morning!
Leave it to the underachieving UMass basketball team to knock the hockey team off the lead story, and for all the wrong reasons. Hoops fans were gut-punched Monday when they learned Tre Mitchell was entering the transfer portal.
The 6-foot-9, 240-pound Pittsburgh native was the A-10’s Rookie of the Year last season and was a first team A-10 selection this season. Hoops site bustingbrackets.com listed 10 teams that would roll out the carpet for him, including BC, Pitt, Baylor, Ohio State, Providence and Virginia.
Mitchell arrived under shady circumstances and is leaving the same way. It started two years ago when coach Matt McCall fired his hand-picked assistants Peter Gash (now the director of player development at LaSalle University), Cliff Warren (currently at Georgia State) and Rasheen Davis (parts unknown).
Their removal paved the way for McCall to hire Tony Bergeron of Woodstock (Ct.) Academy. Bergeron was Mitchell’s coach, and his mother’s boyfriend. The deal also included several of Mitchell’s teammates from Woodstock who needed free rides.
It was Calipari-esque, except Calipari would’ve made another coach take the weight, like the time he got Tony Barbee’s brother Chris a football scholarship.
The Minutemen were 22-24 during the Tre Mitchell era. His shocking decision to transfer was a haunting reminder of four years ago on March 23 when Pat Kelsey bolted Amherst a half hour before his scheduled press conference. Kelsey came from little known Winthrop University in South Carolina, where he had racked up a 102-59 record in five years.
“He’s gonna rock it at UMass,” promised Bret McCormick, the beat writer for The Herald of Rock Hill, S.C. “His teams play fast on offense and kind of ‘pack’ it on defense. The veins will start popping when he gets going. He’s very emotional.”
Kelsey played for the late Skip Prosser at Xavier and was his assistant at Wake Forest until a summer day in 2007 when Prosser died in his office after jogging. He walked away from a five year, $4 million deal in Amherst that would’ve quadrupled his income. No official reason was given, but word had it that two UMass players had asked Kelsey if they’d be getting the same financial arrangement they had with deposed coach Derek Kellogg. Those two players are still in the game and playing for a team that’s in the NCAA title hunt.
A frantic AD Ryan Bamford found Matt McCall in Boston and hustled him to Amherst for a slam-bam contract negotiation. McCall grew up in Ocala, Florida, was a grad assistant for Florida coach Billy Donovan, and had 66 games of head coaching experience at Tennessee-Chattanooga.
Bamford introduced him to the media on March 30, 2017. “The goal is to win championships and hang banners,” said McCall.
Right. That’s what they all say.
The diminutive McCall looks like the team manager and not a crazed x’s and o’s coach with a Napoleon complex. His team lived and died by the trey, mostly the latter. UMass was 47th in 3-point attempts, and 227th in conversions.
On Tuesday, the UMass Daily Collegian reported as many as five other players were ready to transfer, which after senior graduation would leave McCall with three scholarship players. Maybe they’re trying to tell Bamford to fire McCall and promote Bergeron.
Winthrop meanwhile finished 23-1 this season and played Villanova last night in the opening round of March Madness. Kelsey’s one good player away from having a top-25 team next year. You don’t suppose…
Tonight’s Hockey East championship tilt between UMass-Amherst (15-5-4) and UMass-Lowell (10-8-1) at the Mullins Center is an historic occasion. Both will be going head-to-head to stake their claim as the Commonwealth’s flagship hockey school.
Intense? It will be like watching the seventh game of a Stanley Cup final.
In Wednesday’s semifinals, UMass-Lowell fought back from a 4-1 deficit in the final ten minutes to beat the Eagles in double overtime, 6-5, and the Minutemen dispatched the Providence Friars, 5-2, at the Mullins Center.
Going into this season, the River Hawks were 20-3-1 against the Minutemen under coach Norm Bazin, but they were swept on back-to-back nights in January by a combined 7-1 score.
In the pregame show before the first encounter, WHMP’s Brock Hines asked UMass coach Greg Carvel how he game planned against Bazin’s 16th-ranked River Hawks. “He plays a unique system with a defensive overload,” said Carvel. “You gotta spend time focusing on what Lowell does, because it’s unusual compared with other college hockey teams.”
The Minutemen are running on all cylinders, good offense, good defense and good goaltending. Win or lose, they’ll be going to the NCAA Tournament, but tonight’s outcome will dictate their momentum going forward.
On Carvel’s first line, seniors Oliver Chau, Jake Gaudet and Carson Gicewicz have 19 goals and 28 assists. His second line of Bobby Trivigno, Josh Lopina and Minnesota Gopher transfer Garrett Wait have 26 goals and 39 assists.
Trivigno, who has two goals and four assists the last two games, keys the Reaper Line. He grew up on the north shore of Long Island in Setauket, the home of Blue Oyster Cult. “He’s willing to do the dirty things,” assistant coach Jared DeMichiel told UMass broadcaster Jay Burnham. “He wasn’t super recruited, he was the the ugly duckling, but he kept working.”
Trivigno is 5 feet, 8 inches of menace an has drawn comparisons to Boston’s Brad Marchand. “He has a burning desire,” said DeMichiel, “a ball of hate running around out there creating chaos.”
The NCAA Selection Show is Sunday on ESPNU at 7 p.m. This year’s regionals will be March 26-28 in Albany, Bridgeport, Fargo and Loveland, Co. The winner from each bracket will meet in Pittsburgh for the Frozen Four on April 8-10.
The boxing world was shocked by the passing of Marvelous Marvin Hagler last week at his home in the White Mountains. Hagler’s pro debut was May 18, 1973, at the Brockton High School gymnasium. He knocked out Terry Ryan in the second round and 12 years later he TKO’d Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns in the third round of a 15-round title fight at Caesars Palace.
The first round is considered the best in boxing history. According to boxingscene.com, Hagler landed 56 punches and Hearns landed 50. After the bell sounded the crowd roared with bloodlust for what they had witnessed.
The morning after Hagler died, his friend Teddy Atlas tweeted one of Hagler’s favorite sayings: “It’s tough to get out of bed and do roadwork at 5 a.m. when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas.”
Dustin Pedroia and Georgetown basketball coach Patrick Ewing have something in common. Ewing played 15 seasons for the New York Knicks and yet Madision Square Garden’s security guards didn’t recognize him at last week’s Big East tournament. “I thought this was my building,” Ewing told the NY Post’s Zach Braziller. “Everybody in this building should know who the hell I am.”
Pedroia showed up at Coors Field for the second game of the 2007 World Series and went ballistic when security questioned his player ID tag. “Ask Jeff Bleeping Francis who the Bleep I am! I’m the guy who hit a bomb and just ended their Bleeping season!”
SQUIBBERS: The 3rd annual New England Green River Marathon is scheduled for Aug. 29, giving runners time to recoup for the Boston Marathon on Oct. 11. … Charlie Weis on the highs and lows of the Super Bowl: “I was there five times and four times I won which was wonderful, but the high of those four wins put together did not equal the low of the one loss.” … The BC basketball program is 130-198 since Al Skinner was fired in 2010. Skinner was 247-165 in 13 seasons and was fired for missing the NCAA tournament for the second time in four years. … The URI football team’s biggest win of the century went largely overlooked last week. The Rams beat No. 6 Villanova 40-37 in overtime. … Yankees fan Vinny Natale informs us that Jay Johnstone was the first to do games with John Sterling, not Michael Kay as we reported last week. “By the way, he and Michael were re-united on Monday’s YES TV broadcast, and they’ll be doing one more together this spring.” … The Patriots told the football world this week that they will not be going quietly into the night. “Teams that have money have power,” said Sirius-XM’s Jim Miller, “and the Patriots are going after it to rectify last season.” … One those Patriots’ free agent signings, tight end Jonnu Smith, played at McGuirk Stadium when he was at Florida International. Smith caught five passes for 26 yards in his two games in Amherst, both won by UMass. … After wins over ranked Auburn and Duke, the BC baseball team was swept three straight by Louisville last weekend. Lexington’s Sal Frelick is batting .407 for the Eagles and has just six strikeouts in 67 plate appearances. … We hear that the outdoor hockey rink that Deerfield Academy put in for the kids to cope with the pandemic is being replaced by beach volleyball courts. It must be time for the Preppy Olympics.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet95@yahoo.com