AMHERST — When UMass men’s basketball head coach Frank Martin was first hired in March of 2022, very rarely would he hear the noises of bouncing basketballs, squeaking sneakers and loud chatter from his office – which overlooks the practice court inside the John F. Kennedy Champions Center.

Fast forward a few months north of two years, and those sounds have become so ingrained in his head throughout the summer he barely even notices it.

The entire UMass roster has lived in the gym during both of their on-campus sessions this off-season. Martin said nobody used to come in to shoot the ball or workout on their own time during his first few months as coach. Only he and assistant coaches Brian Steele and Allen Edwards were in the Champions Center.

So as Martin called Edwards last week to check in on how the team’s workout went while he was away recruiting, he realized just how much the habits have changed when Edwards told him not only did the workout go well, but each member of the team came in over an hour early to get shots up and help one another work on their game. Not one player was missing.

Martin think he’s found the right group of guys to help take the Minutemen’s rebuild to another level.

“Right now? You can’t get these guys out of here,” Martin said during Monday’s media availability. “It’s the biggest difference that’s happened with our team… Does that mean we’re going to win? No. Does that mean we got the right guys to figure out how to win? Yes.”

Rising senior and unquestionable team leader Rahsool Diggins mentioned that he and the rest of the team are in the gym all the time. Whether it be early mornings or late nights, a competitive fire is always present. The other day the team played 4-on-4 full court to stay in shape, Diggins said. They’ve run 1-on-1, 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 full-court games as well, all to help with conditioning.

Trash talk has been a constant in those battles. As they say, iron sharpens iron.

“We just put 20 minutes up and keep running to stay in shape and stuff like that,” Diggins said. “It’s very competitive, because every single one of us thinks we’re better than each other. So if I’m guarding [Jaylen] Curry, Curry’s trying to kill me. If Curry’s guarding me, I’m trying to kill him. The freshmen all play hard, very downhill guys. We talk a lot of trash. I think we’re going to be a very mean team this year from the looks of it.”

After only returning three scholarship players a year ago, UMass will bring back six this upcoming season. Those half dozen players now have a blueprint for winning, and Martin feels the Minutemen have the firepower to take it a step further.

“Last year’s returners learned how to work, but they didn’t know how to win,” Martin said. “Now we return six or seven guys, and they’ve not only learned how to work, but now we also got guys that have learned how to win. So you got more allies to take on the challenges in the fight. I’m happy with our depth, our competitiveness and our length.”

Defensive improvement is a priority

Martin wasn’t even a little bit happy with how his team played defense last season, specifically their lack of restriction inside the paint. Opposing teams took advantage of UMass’ lack of rim protection, something Martin certainly addressed with his incoming class of freshmen and transfers.

Five of the Minutemen’s eight newcomers are at least 6-foot-9, including Amadou Doumbia (6-11), Luka Damjanac (6-10), Malek Abdelgowad (6-10), Shahid Muhammad (6-10) and Akil Watson (6-9). The other three have great size and athletic ability as well, with Daniel Rivera (6-6), Lewis Walker (6-6) and Nate Guerengomba (6-4) likely to be contributing wings/combo guards for Martin.

In this new age of analytic-driven decision-making, Martin has stayed true to what he feels is the best metric of them all – his own two eyes. But even he dipped into the Minutemen’s defensive analytics out of curiosity, and they matched exactly what he saw.

“I don’t deal with analytics, [everyone] knows that by now,” Martin said. “[But] when I looked at the analytics on our team – my eyes told me we were a bad defensive team – and when I looked at the analytics, we were not just bad. We were a very bad defensive team. I think this year’s team will be a lot better defensively.”

He’s made it a priority to bring in the right combination of players to fix that ahead of the 2024-25 season.

Who will be the last game on UMass’ schedule?

The Minutemen still need one more game to round out their schedule for the upcoming season, and Martin wants it to be a home game considering UMass will be spending a considerable amount of time away from Mullins Center this season.

But it’s been harder for Martin to find a game than he thought. With how aggressive and physical UMass plays, teams last year typically left their matchups with the Minutemen bruised and battered among other things. After almost every game, opposing coaches would mention how tough UMass was to play against because of its style of play.

That may be why finding a final game is so difficult.

Right now, UMass is slated to play West Virginia (road), Florida State (neutral), Arizona State (neutral) and old rival Temple (neutral) among others in the non-conference portion. The Minutemen’s schedule is loaded with exciting games, and Martin is hoping to find one more to complete it.

“We’ve got one game to get, and it needs to be a home game,” Martin said. “We’ve got too many games away from home, and our fans deserve for us to play another home game. It’s a challenging schedule. I would hope our fans are excited… I don’t like playing boring games. I like coaching good players, and good players don’t like playing in bad games. They like playing big games. To recruit good players, you gotta play in hard games. But as you recruit good players, then a lot of people don’t wanna play against your team – especially since we coach a physical brand of basketball.”

Five more for Frank

Back in June, Martin signed an extension that keeps him in Amherst through the 2028-29 season – meaning he has five years including the upcoming one. When UMass held its press conference officially announcing its move to the Mid-American Conference, Martin said he didn’t come to UMass to coach in the Atlantic 10 – he came to coach UMass and he was all in on doing so.

That extension – which included an “enhanced compensation package for Martin as well as new contracts with considerable compensation increases for his assistant coaches and support staff,” according to the press release – backed up everything he said. It also aligned with Director of Athletics Ryan Bamford’s comments saying he was going to further financially support the athletics programs with the move to the MAC.

Money aside, Martin said the decision to stick around as coach of the Minutemen was a no-brainer.

“I’m real happy here,” Martin said. “I really like the people I work for. I love the community… When I decided I wanted to pursue basketball, my grandmother dug a hole, put the concrete and stuck the pole in the ground so we could have a makeshift basket for me to shoot balls at. [That’s why] I believe in building. It’s the way I was raised. I believe in, ‘Let’s figure it out. Let’s build it and make it work.’ The people here, there’s an enthusiasm for helping me build.”