AMHERST — There wasn’t much time to settle in initially.

Rasheen Davis and Peter Gash were hired as Matt McCall’s first UMass assistant men’s basketball coaches and very quickly had to hit the road recruiting to fill the holes left by the seven players who transferred out of the program following the coaching change.

They were charged with convincing players to join a program that not long before they didn’t work for. But on July 10, seven players whom they helped land will join the program for the second session of summer school.

“Give our assistants a lot of credit for hitting the ground running here and bringing in seven guys,” McCall said. “You sell the opportunity to come here and be a part of something special. You sell the league. The league is great. It gets three and four teams in the NCAA Tournament. Sometimes that’s more than the SEC. There’s a lot to sell: new coach, style of play, the history of the school.”

Gash and Davis both had a working knowledge of UMass basketball going in.

Davis spent the last two seasons at Atlantic 10 rival VCU and had actually been the assistant assigned to prepare a scouting report on UMass. Davis said UMass was more appealing from the inside.

“There’s even more to offer than I originally thought. When you come here as an opponent, you go to the hotel. You got to the arena and go back to the hotel,” he said. “The campus is beautiful. The people are beautiful. I obviously haven’t experienced the winter yet. But it’s a beautiful place.”

Davis said what he had to learn quickly was what McCall likes in a player.

“My mindset was trying to find out what Matt wants. What type of players he wants? This place sells itself once you actually get here,” he said. “I think the staff did a really good job of identifying people we thought could help us, either immediately or moving forward. This is a tremendous opportunity.”

Gash knew what McCall wanted. He’s worked with him at multiple places, including the last two years at Chattanooga. He knew about UMass too.

“Growing up in the Northeast and being into college basketball when UMass was rolling, I knew what there was here,” Gash said. “Once I actually got up here it was easy. I saw the new building and the new facilities, it was really easy to sell the school. It was easier than I thought it would be.”

Gash, who is from Long Island, was glad to be back in the region.

“It was an easy transition. I like basketball up this way. It really matters in the Northeast,” he said.

McCall, Gash and Davis were helped on the recruiting trail this summer by Lucious Jordan, who’ll be UMass’ director of basketball operations. He filled in as an assistant coach before former Maryland assistant Cliff Warren was hired earlier this month.

NEW SCOREBOARD IN — The Mullins Center’s new center-hung scoreboard and new videoboards in each end zone are all hanging. There are final tests to be done, but they’re expected to fully operational shortly.

“They look magnificent,” UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford said. “It’s a huge difference.”

According to Bamford, the final costs for the new scoreboards aren’t in yet, but he was confident that they were under budget.

Adding to new look will be a banner consolidation. Instead of hanging separate banners for each opposing school in the Atlantic 10 and Hockey East, there will be one banner showing each conference.

On top of that, UMass will have two larger banners. One displaying the year for each Atlantic 10 title and one with the year for each NCAA Tournament appearance.

The school will still hang separate banners for the 1995 Elite Eight and 1996 Final Four appearances as well as the retired jerseys.

The old banners are hanging on the wall inside the Champions Center.

ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT STAFF SHAKE-UP — The hierarchy atop the UMass athletic department just below Bamford will look different in 2017-18 as the summer has featured movement in the administration.

Tom McElroy, who had been UMass’ senior associate athletic director for external relations, will no longer be a full-time employee. Instead, he’ll work as a consultant from his Rhode Island home. McElroy, a former URI AD and Big East administrator, was among Bamford’s first hires.

He was the sports administrator for men’s basketball and did most of the sport’s nonconference scheduling.

That job will be divided among other administrators.

Amid the changes, Darrice Griffin will become the program’s deputy athletic director and the No. 2 person in the department.

EXHIBITION — UMass, which has played mostly closed scrimmages instead of exhibition games in recent years, will play Springfield College in a Nov. 3 exhibition at Mullins.

Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage

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