UMass Minuteman (basketball)

The men's basketball program of the university has more than 100 years and in the 2008/09 season celebrated its centenary ^[1] . The first official game of the team dates back to January 10, 1900. The first basketball coach at the University of Massachusetts was Harold Gore , who won 85 wins in 11 seasons and suffered 53 defeats. The most successful for him was the 1925/26 season, in which his team finished with a score of 12-2. In the 1933/34 season, Massachusetts was the only university whose men's basketball team did not lose a single match. Before the 1948/49 season, Massachusetts, joining the Yankee conference , for the first time in its history joined one of the sports conferences and subsequently became the ten-time champion of this conference.

The 1960s and 1970s were the most successful for the University of Massachusetts in its history. In the 1961/62 season, the team scored 15–9 and took part in the NCAA for the first time. In the 1960s, Umass 4 times became champions of the Yankees conference, and in the 1969/70 season participated in the NIT tournament. In the same year, the future professional basketball star Julius Irving began to play for the university, who in his first match at the student level scored 27 points and made 28 rebounds. In total, during this decade the team won 142 victories, having suffered 103 defeats.

In the first eight seasons of the 1970s, Redman / Minuteman won 70% of the matches. They became conference champions five times and participated in the NIT tournament as many times. Players on the team were Irving, Al Skinner and Rick Pitino . Jack Limen , who ended his career in men's basketball at the end of the 1978/79 season, was the head coach at the time.

In the late 70s and 80s, the team did not achieve any significant success. Only since 1988, when the Minuteman was headed by John Kalipari, a rise was seen in the team. In the 1990s, under his leadership, Minuteman became five times in a row champions of the Atlantic 10 Conference (1991/92, 1992/93, 1993/94, 1994/95, 1995/96) and nine times participated in the NCAA tournament, including two appearing in the 1/8 finals of the tournament and reaching the Final Four, and then winning the third place of the tournament - the best achievement in the history of the university. However, later the NCAA canceled all the Minuteman results and achievements in the 1996 NCAA tournament . In the 1990s, Minuteman was often placed first in the Associated Press rating.

After 1998, the team for a long time did not show good results and only in 2014 after a long break was able to enter the NCAA tournament . In this period, the greatest achievements of UMass are winning the regular championship of the Atlantic 10 conference in the 2006/07 season (shared this achievement with Xavier ) and reaching the second round of the NIT tournament. In the 2007/08 season, Minutemen reached the NIT finals, but lost the Ohio State Bucks in the last game with a score of 92:86. In 2012, Minuteman again participated in the NIT tournament, where they lost to Stanford in the semifinals. In 2013, the team again participated in the NIT.

In the 2014 season, the team made a huge breakthrough, entering the NCAA tournament for the first time in 16 years. The Minuteman regular season began with a score of 10-0, and then 16-1. Such a good game allowed the team to take 13th place in the AP ranking and second in the ranking of coaches ^[2] . In the NCAA tournament, the Minuteman reached the second round, where they lost to the Tennessee Volunteers .

The University has forever assigned their game number to five former Minuteman players ^[3] .

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