BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Massachusetts men’s basketball head coach Frank Martin and senior forward Matt Cross made the trip to Brooklyn for Atlantic 10 Media Day on Tuesday afternoon at Barclays Center.
First seasons are always difficult to navigate for head coaches. Whether it’s throwing together a staff to be ready for training camp, trying to become familiar with the players on the team, or settling into a completely new environment – that first season is typically filled with bumps in the road for both the players and the coaching staff.
Martin & Co. experienced plenty of those bumps a year ago.
“Year ones, I don’t care where you go or what level of success you have, year ones are a blur,” Martin said on Tuesday. “They’re complicated. You don’t know your team, you don’t know the people. You get hired, but you don’t really know but one or two people. You’re trying to learn the community, you’re trying to hire a staff — my family was away from me for my first six months. If you’re about family, and I am, that’s not easy to do.”
Now, Martin is entering his second season leading the Minutemen and feels much more comfortable in the position. He said everyone in the program is on board with what he’s trying to preach and what he wants out of his players.
There has been a level of commitment and determination from not just the 14 players on the roster, but the entire coaching staff – one where all members but one have played under Martin at some point, and one that contains three former head coaches.
“Everyone is in a much better space and has a much better understanding of what I want,” Martin said. “And I’ve learned who they are as coaches. I hired them because of who they are as human beings, and now I know who they are as coaches. I’ve got people I trust on my staff. The players are the ones who are going to benefit the most from that, which is our ultimate job.”
The Minutemen have only three returning players from last season’s roster. Cross and guards Rahsool Diggins and Keon Thompson will be leaned upon to contribute heavily for UMass, and will also be looked at for leadership being the longest tenured players on the team.
Cross (12.2 points, 6.3 rebounds per game) was elected to the A-10 Preseason All-Conference Third Team by coaches within the league and select media members on Tuesday and is sure to be the Minutemen’s go-to guy once again. UMass was picked 13th out of 15 teams in the A-10 preseason poll. Dayton was the preseason favorite to win the league.
Diggins and Thompson have taken strides as scorers and play makers, and UMass, to no surprise, will rest on them to be the primary ball handlers.
“Everything starts with your returning players,” Martin said. “If you got a program depending on first-year guys, you’re not gonna be very good. You need your returners to be rock-solid and be ready to go. All three of them are much better, Matt’s an all-league player. He’s playing basketball at a high, high clip right now. I’m really excited for him, and Keon and Rahsool are day and night compared to where they were at a year ago.”
On top of the small group of returning contributors, the Minutemen have a strong core of incoming talent. Senior transfer Josh Cohen won the 2022-23 Player of the Year award in the Northeast Conference at Saint Francis, averaging 21.8 points and 8.3 rebounds.
Cohen is going to make an immediate impact at UMass, and freshman guard Jaylen Curry is likely to as well. Curry was a top 50 recruit for most of his high school career and can score the ball from all three levels. Sophomore forward and South Carolina transfer Daniel Hankins-Sanford was another highly-recruited player out of high school that landed in Amherst this off-season.
Martin dug deep into his bench for the majority of last year – often playing a double-digit rotation. With the abundance of incoming impact players and the style of play the Minutemen like to impose, he plans to do the same this season.
“I play people that deserve to play,” Martin said. “If I only have six, then I’ll play six. If I have 11, I’ll play 11. That’s the way we play the game. Offensively, we were top 15 in the country in pace of play – that means we play really fast. Defensively, we’re an aggressive, man-to-man pressure team which is really taxing on players. Because of that, you have to play more than six or seven guys.”
One position where that might not be possible is at center. UMass has only one player listed as a true center, and that’s 7-foot-3 freshman Mathok Majok. The Minutemen have two players taller than 6-foot-8, with Cohen being the other. Cross and Hankins-Sanford can each play up a position briefly if needed, but that’s about it for bigs. Martin has challenged them to be in tip-top shape by the start of the season knowing that they are each going to play considerable minutes.
“If we were thin in the front court with nothing but freshmen, I would probably jump in a garbage can and not come out,” Martin said. “But lucky for us, we got Josh Cohen, Matt Cross who can slide over to play closer to the rim if need be, Daniel Sanford. Those are some big dudes. We might not have that 6-11, 260-pound guy, but Josh Cohen is pretty big. Mathok has to go against Cohen every day and learn how to defend an established Division 1 basketball player, which is good for him. At the end of the day, we’ve gotta manage what we’ve got.”
The Minutemen are eager to get their season started and seem to be bought in to Martin in year two. The veteran coach isn’t worried about hitting a certain number of wins, he’s instead focused on controlling what’s directly in front of him. He wants to hone in on building good habits and laying a foundation. If Martin coaches at a high level, and the players play at a high level, those wins will start to stack.
“We got players in the program that are excited about playing for us, and they’re really good players,” Martin said. “I’m excited. We’ve got a fun group. Does that mean winning or losing, I got no idea. I’ve never been one to worry about the future. I worry about the guys in place. The guys in place make it fun for me every day, and they’re committed to each other. I’m excited to coach them.”