Going out with a whimper would have been an improvement.

The UMass men’s basketball team scored a season-low 38 points and fell 71-38 against Richmond in the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament’s opening game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday, ending their season. It was the Minutemen’s worst scoring output of the season, ducking well under the 44 points UMass cobbled against North Texas.

“I thought we did a lot of standing around. Lack of leadership, lack of a guy who gets us into what we’re trying to do and gets guys where we belong,” UMass coach Frank Martin said.

UMass hadn’t scored that few points since also putting up 38 against Saint Joseph’s in 2002.

The Minutemen had never lost an A-10 tournament game by a larger margin.

“We weren’t playing like how we’re supposed to,” UMass freshman RJ Luis said. “I don’t really think there’s any positives to be honest.”

Richmond forward Tyler Burton provided much of the separation. The A-10 second team selection scored 28 points, his 14th game of at least 20 points this season.

He outscored the entire UMass team for more than half the game. Burton hit two free throws to notch his 14th and 15th points of the first half with 5:06 to halftime. The Minutemen had only scored 13 points in the previous 15 minutes.

Burton, an Uxbridge native, poured in 19 points in the first half. UMass scored 18, tied for its lowest output of the season, and Richmond led 31-18 at intermission.

The Minutemen briefly pulled ahead of Burton in the second half when Wildens Leveque dropped in a hook shot to make it 31-20. 

That’s as close as UMass got. Burton sank another layup 30 seconds later for his 21st point. He finally sat down on the bench for good with 5:35 remaining, amassing six rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks.

The Minutemen didn’t pull ahead of him for another minute when Luis hit a free throw to make it 58-29.

“Missing shots broke our spirit. And when your spirit breaks, there’s no going back,” Martin said.

Luis, named to the conference’s All-Rookie team earlier Tuesday, led UMass with 12 points. Leveque (six points, four rebounds) and T.J. Weeks Jr. (four points) were the only other Minutemen to make multiple field goals. 

“It was just us. We needed to execute,” Leveque said.

UMass hit one 3: Matt Cross’ triple with 13:08 left in the first half that cut Richmond’s lead to 10-9. The Minutemen were 1-of-16 from deep and shot just 24 percent from the field.

“They’re extremely good inside. We did a really good job of keeping them off the post, especially not their duck-ins and in transition,” Richmond interim head coach Peter Thomas said.

The Spiders then ripped off a 9-2 run followed by a separate 8-0 run to push their advantage to 27-13. It never slipped under double digits again.

UMass turned the ball over 20 times, which led to 19 Richmond points.

The Minutemen exited the A-10 tournament after one game for the first time since 2019. Tuesday’s loss marked the end of Martin’s first year at the helm.

“Disappointed in not just our performance (Tuesday) but in the fact that the season's over,” Martin said. “Year ones are complicated. Year one is kind of a discovery, finding deal. Everyone’s trying to understand each other. It becomes a roller coaster sometimes. Back in pre-Christmas the roller coaster was fun. (Tuesday) the roller coaster was not fun.”

The ride ended at its lowest point. Martin, his staff and the players that remain will now turn their attention for the climb to year two.

“We’re going to work. We’re going to roll up our sleeves,” Martin said. “Now it’s a matter of disengaging from the emotions of the season and figuring out ‘how do we build?’ We've built, we've grown. Now the winning and losing isn't where it needs to be. Now we got to take another step.”

Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.]]>