The overall youth of the UMass men’s basketball team finally slipped through the cracks and came to the forefront in the Minutemen’s 81-71 road loss to Towson on Wednesday night.

UMass hadn’t been away from home yet this year, and maybe that’s much of the reason the team struggled down the stretch. The Minutemen cut the Tigers’ lead – one that hovered around eight points the majority of the second half – down to four (65-61), but then surrendered an 11-0 Towson run to put the game out of reach.

Sophomore Keon Thompson netted a career-high 19 points, and while he and the rest of the bunch aren’t ready to completely dismiss the loss, they do know they’re capable of much more – and their first glimpse of an away game will be taken as a lesson learned.

“It’s a learning experience,” Thompson said. “With us having so many freshmen, a lot of guys aren’t that used to that type of adversity and what it takes to win road games... Towson’s a team that’s constantly winning 20-plus games every year. It’s just a learning experience for all of us, us growing as a team, building chemistry through each other through the tough moments. Honestly, I’m not really worried about us, because I know we’re gonna bounce back.”

Wednesday’s performance was surely UMass’ worst of its non-conference slate thus far. Being around for as long as he has, head coach Frank Martin knew that Thursday’s practice would say a lot about where his team is at from a mental standpoint.

And just as they did the day after a tough loss against Harvard earlier this season, the Minutemen (4-2) responded with plenty of energy and effort in practice. The only thing they were concerned about was addressing their problems and fixing them, nothing less and nothing more.

“I was interested to see how we came in [Thursday] — were we gonna be mopey, and pouty, and tired, or were we gonna be competitive,” Martin said. “They came in with the right mindset, and they were actually really good. These guys are fun to be around in practice. They compete. They wanna get it right. They get along. That doesn’t mean they make it easy on each other, it means they respect each other. That respect comes from competition.”

Because 10 of UMass’ first 11 games are played at home or at a neutral site before Atlantic 10 play begins, that away contest with Towson was essential to the growth of the team. If the Minutemen think that environment was difficult, they’re in for a rude awakening come their initial conference road trip to Dayton on Jan. 7. 

But that won’t be the case, at least not according to Martin. 

“It’s important, it’s important,” Martin said of the road test. “That was a great learning experience. You’ve got to play road games against good teams to get you ready [for conference play]. We’ll be better for that.”

After almost every game this year, Martin has made sure to bring up ball-screen defense and how poor it’s been early on.

Perhaps some of it has to do with the team’s defending of guards coming off screens, or the fact that four of the six UMass guards that played significant minutes on Wednesday have played only six games of Division 1 basketball – meaning they still haven’t quite adapted to the speed and on-the-fly decision making.

Regardless, the Minutemen need to be better in that aspect of their defense.

“We have to fix our defense,” Martin said. “Our ball screen was embarrassingly bad, so we got to fix it. It’s not broken; we’ve done it the right way. We just didn’t do it very well the last two games. We have to clean that up and re-focus on the fundamentals of what we try to do defensively.”

UMass will have a chance to fix its defense on Saturday afternoon, as the Minutemen had just two days off before turning the page to UMass Lowell (6-2). Sometimes quick turnarounds are ideal for young teams – they’re eager to rid the bad habits right away rather than sit with the bad taste in their mouths.

UMass Lowell’s dynamic is a lot different than the Minutemen. The River Hawks are old; they have six players who are in their fifth year of college basketball – led by Ayinde Hikim’s 19.8 points per game. UMass, however, is as young as a team can get with nine of 14 players being either freshmen or sophomores.  

The River Hawks also won 26 games in 2022-23 under head coach Pat Duquette, who is one of very few to seemingly build a steady program in this era of college sports.

“They’ve got six super-seniors,” Martin said. “They’ve got five juniors, six seniors. They’re old. Pat has done an incredible job of building a program there. They’re good. They won 26 [games] last year. They went into this year and beat Dartmouth by 35. You don’t do that unless you got a good team. Went to Arizona State and completely controlled the game. They’re good. They obviously beat us last year. We got a couple returning players, but for the most part we got a new team. They got the same team. So we got our hands full. We gotta make sure we play well.”

The in-state rivalry always adds another layer of meaning to the UMass-UMass Lowell match up. Tip off is scheduled for 12 p.m. and the game is available to watch on NESN-Plus and ESPN-plus.

“Our next game is always our biggest game,” Thompson said. “We know, outside of us, this is a big game for everyone in the state. We take it as a really tough game as well. It’s just about coming in prepared, coming with the mindset that this isn’t gonna be an easy game. There’s gonna be a lot of fans, of course, so just staying mentally locked in, staying physically in the game, and come out with the right results.”