AMHERST – The drought continues.
George Washington beat the UMass men’s basketball team for the ninth straight time 77-68 on Wednesday at the Mullins Center. The Minutemen haven’t beaten the Colonials since 2014.
The Colonials out rebounded UMass 41-29. George Washington’s James Bishop, one of the Atlantic 1o’s leading scorers, led the visitors with 24 points. He didn’t make a 3 but went 8-of-11 from the free throw line.
“We got out played, out worked, out efforted. They played so much harder than us,” UMass coach Matt McCall said. “That’s the bottom line. We had zero resistance.”
Trent Buttrick had a double-double for UMass with 17 points and 11 rebounds.
UMass didn’t lead in the second half. The Minutemen shot just 35.7 percent after halftime and only made 2-of-12 3s. They didn’t score for the game’s final 2 minutes, 24 seconds as George Washington closed on a 5-0 run.
“At the end of the day, I’m the leader and I’ve got to do a better job, because in games like (Wednesday), the message isn’t registering,” McCall said. “I’ve got to do a better job.”
They cut their deficit to 1 after Buttrick went 1-of-2 from the free throw line with 5:38 left, but Bishop cashed a tough fall-away layup, followed by a Joe Bamisile 3 to push George Washington’s advantage back to 67-62 with 4:44 left.
“They didn’t let our shot-making affect their ability to guard. They didn’t get deflated at all,” Buttrick said. “I feel like we got deflated when they hit some tough shots. We’ve got to be better at that and stay level headed on the defensive end.”
The Minutemen battled foul trouble in the second half. Noah Fernandes picked up two fouls within a minute of game time. He had one with five seconds left in the first half then another 54 seconds into the second.
The Minutemen only trailed by three when he sat down with 16:59 remaining, but the Colonials only extended their lead to six in the 6½ minutes Fernandes was on the bench.
Once he returned, UMass ripped off a 6-0 run to tie the game. UMass backup guard Javohn Garcia knotted things at 57 with a deep 3 with 9:54 remaining, then Bishop immediately responded with a tough jumper.
“He’s the type of player that we can just give him a little bit of an advantage and he can turn it into 25 or 26 points,” George Washington coach Jamion Christian said.
C.J. Kelly then made it 59-all with two free throws at 8:11 and 61-all with a driving layup at 8:38.
UMass (10-12) opened the game with back to back 3s and built a 15-8 lead over the first 4:40. The Minutemen hit 4-of-5 3s and shot 71.4 percent in that stretch.
At that point, George Washington began switching screens to not give Buttrick so much room to operate. He had six of UMass’ first 15 points. That created positional mismatches that the Minutemen didn’t exploit enough.
“We have to do a much better job there,” McCall said. “We took some selfish shots at times. All we talked about going into the game was breaking them down. I thought we had some decent possessions of that, but not enough.”
Then George Washington outscored them 35-23 the rest of the way to halftime. The Colonials made 65 percent of their shots the rest of the first frame and held UMass to 8-of-18 shooting, just 2-of-7 from 3.
George Washington (9-13) out rebounded UMass 20-15 in the first half and outscored them 24-14 in the paint.
The Minutemen took a 34-33 lead with 3:34 to halftime after Rich Kelly drilled a wide-open 3. He set up the play with a drive to the hoop followed by a mean up and under move that faked George Washington center Hunter Dean off his feet. Instead of shooting, Kelly dropped the pass off to Buttrick in the post. Buttrick swung the ball out to a wide-open Kelly for a comfortable 3 and the lead.
The Colonials closed the first half on a 10-4 run, holding UMass to one field goal (a Greg Jones layup) and two Buttrick free throws to enter halftime with a five-point lead.
“At times we played the right way on offense and at times we played really selfish,” McCall said. “I’m trying to get this team to still embrace when they utilize each other, when they celebrate each other’s success, we can be really good. When they try to do it by themselves, we’re just very, very, very OK.”
Rich Kelly (15 points) and C.J. Kelly (10) also reached double digits for UMass.
The Minutemen remain at home for their weekend game: a noon Saturday tilt against Saint Joseph’s.
“We really needed this win to spark some momentum. We still have some winnable games ahead of us. We need to come together,” Buttrick said. “I’ve been in really tough seasons. Things will turn around. We’ve just got to believe that. It’s hard to when you lose and people are yelling at each other. We’ve just got to get our emotions in check and get back to getting better.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.