AMHERST — They always say to save the best for last, right?

Frank Martin’s crew is certainly hoping so, as the third-year UMass men’s basketball head coach leads the Minutemen into what will be their final season in the Atlantic 10 – a conference in which they were a founding member of back in the 1970s – before they move into the Mid-American Conference (MAC) next year.

UMass opens its season on Monday against the University of New Hampshire at the Mullins Center in Amherst. Tip-off is slated for 7 p.m.

Coming off its most successful season in a decade, UMass was picked to finish ninth following a fourth-place regular season finish last winter. Martin has never been one to care about preseason polls, and with entire rosters turning over as each season passes, it’s impossible to predict how well a team is going to do.

One thing is for sure, this UMass team is going to play its tail off on defense – just as every Frank Martin team has done throughout his storied career.

“Defensively, we’re ahead of the game right now,” Martin said. “It’s the first time since I’ve been here where defensively we’re ahead of the game… When my teams are good defensively, we’re out there forcing you to play fast and disrupting what you’re doing. So when people are playing fast, it forces guys to be ready to help and rotate. Now we’re forcing people into earlier, rushed shots.”

It was quite clear what Martin’s approach was in the portal this offseason: more athleticism in the frontcourt.

Bringing in players like Malek Abdelgowad (6-foot-10, Murray State), Shahid Muhammad (6-foot-10, Seton Hall) and Akil Watson (6-foot-9, Arizona State) pointed to that. Last season’s A-10 All-First Team forwards Josh Cohen and Matt Cross were effective in their own right, no doubt. This year’s team is just going to look much different.

Different doesn’t necessarily equate to better, but even Martin said he’s seen several dunks in practice that he hadn’t seen during his first two years in Amherst.

Rim protection, ball-screen defense and the overall ability to guard multiple positions – the three defensive weaknesses of last year’s team – is expected to be miles better in 2024-25.

“Our athleticism, our strength, blocking shots,” Martin said, referring to the biggest difference from a season ago to now. “We had two dunks in practice [the other day] where I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ Not like breakaway windmills. Anyone can do that. I’m talking about in traffic, putting a body on a body and figuring out a way to get through that contact and still dunking the ball. We’ve had plays like that. We’ve never had that.”

As the old college basketball adage goes, you need guards to win in March. UMass may have lost its frontcourt from last year – which as just stated, Martin has replaced – but it kept the majority of its backcourt intact. Rahsool Diggins is back for his senior year after putting up career high numbers in points, rebounds and steals, and he will run the point for the Minutemen this winter.

Guards Jaylen Curry, Jayden Ndjigue and Marqui Worthy all return for their sophomore seasons, and Martin said all three have improved tremendously. Incoming freshman Nate Guerengomba – a 6-foot-4, 215-pound combo guard from Washington, D.C. – has a college-ready body and could help out as the season progresses.

Daniel Rivera, a 6-foot-6 forward who transferred from Bryant, averaged 13.3 points per game for the Bulldogs last year. Martin mentioned Rivera when asked about who he believes will help shoulder the scoring load with over 40 points per game departing between Cross (SMU), Cohen (USC) and Keon Thompson (Stephen F. Austin).

“Last year, scoring from our guards was not something we were very good at this time of year,” Martin said. “We had to learn to do everything through Matt and Josh. And then as the year evolved, Rahsool started growing from a confidence standpoint so we started doing more things for him. How’s this team going to evolve there? Daniel Rivera is an experienced college player, Jaylen Curry is a much better player than he was at this time last year, Rahsool is a much better player than he was at this time last year. Then you keep going, I can see Malek giving us 10, 11 points a game… My job is to create an offensive structure in the half court that fits the people that can score so we can be an efficient offense.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Martin does that considering UMass will once again struggle to shoot the 3-ball. Outside of Diggins, none of the Minutemen’s returning players shot it well from deep consistently. Akil Watson has potential to stretch the defense from beyond the arc, and freshman Luka Damjanac (6-foot-10) has a good stroke for his size.

Outside of that, UMass needs Curry and Ndjigue to shoot better from downtown to help the spacing and balance of the offense.

During the Minutemen’s private scrimmage with Iona, they shot very poorly from 3, according to Martin, and during their exhibition against Providence last week, they didn’t make a single 3-pointer. Despite that, Martin is unbothered by the slow shooting start.

“We didn’t shoot the 3 well, and I’m OK with that right now,” he said. “Because we’re learning. We’re learning to attack the paint, and now, as the season goes on, we gotta learn how to go in and out, in and out, to get more 3s. But I’m in a peaceful world. I think we’ve made drastic improvement in the last two weeks.”

All signs point to a classic Martin squad: a physical, grind-it-out team that nobody looks forward to playing. UNH gets the first crack at the new-look Minutemen on Monday night.