Noah Fernandes gave the UMass men’s basketball team just enough room to hold off the charging Buffaloes for a signature win.
The senior point guard from Mattapoisett made 1-of-2 free throws with nine seconds left to seal the Minutemen’s 66-63 win over Colorado on Thursday in the Myrtle Beach Invitational in Conway, S.C. He scored 22 points, his highest output of the season to go along with three rebounds and a steal.
“At the end we had some mental errors I think we could fix to put us in a better position to win, but it’s always good to critique after a ‘W’ rather than after a loss,” Fernandes said. “After playing against Towson it kind of opened up our eyes and our mentality, like, we’ve really got to bring it.”
UMass (2-1) will face Murray State in the Invitational semifinals at 2:30 p.m. Friday on the campus of Coastal Carolina after the Racers bested No. 24 Texas A&M, 88-79.
Buffaloes guard KJ Simpson, who had 13 points, attempted two game-tying 3s in the final seconds. He missed the initial one, then J’Vonne Hadley snared an offensive rebound and kicked the ball to him for another chance. Simpson’s replica at the buzzer rimmed out, and UMass earned the biggest win of the nascent Frank Martin era.
The Minutemen’s defense held Colorado (2-2) to its lowest output of the season, 12 points below its average entering the game. The Buffaloes shot just 34.2 percent from the field and 24 percent from 3. UMass forced 13 turnovers and blocked eight shots. South Carolina transfer Wildens Leveque (three points, four rebounds) rejected five, while freshman RJ Luis added two.
Luis rebounded from an 0-for-10 outing in his last game against Towson with a career-high 18 points off the bench with five points and two steals. He keyed UMass’ 11-0 run midway through the second half. The Miami, Fla., native had five points, hitting a 3 and hammering home a massive two-handed dunk.
“He’s a talented player, but he hasn’t done that against anybody they’ve played, but he did against us,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said.
The Minutemen turned a 47-47 tie with 13:19 left to a 58-47 lead with 7:31 on the clock. Colorado went 0-for-9 during the stretch and turned the ball over five times. But like UMass’ five-point burst to open the half that built an eight-point lead, the Buffaloes responded.
Colorado scored 15 of the game’s final 23 points and outscored UMass 13-6 in the final seven minutes. The Minutemen held off for just long enough, however.
“Our offense let us down in the last five minutes of the game or so. That’s part of the learning process. The last four or five minutes of the game we stopped listening and you can’t do that in this type of game,” Martin said. “The basketball gods protected us because we almost messed that game up at the end.”
They used a 10-player rotation for much of the game, working around Brandon Martin’s foul trouble, and three Minutemen reached double figures. LIU transfer Isaac Kante put in 10 points. Matt Cross led UMass with eight rebounds.
“We’ve got a lot of depth and talent and everybody on the roster plays hard. For a coach, it makes it hard to figure out who to put in the game and as a team I think that’s what you want to do to the coach,” Fernandes said.