AMHERST — It may be time to lower expectations for the 2024-25 UMass men’s basketball team.

The Minutemen have had a tough start to the year – a five-game skid sandwiched in between their season-opening win over New Hampshire and a pair of sluggish victories over Harvard and NJIT. Some teams take a while to get going, and that’s totally fair in this era of college basketball where players come and go as they please.

But Wednesday at the Mullins Center, UMass fell 73-69 to Central Connecticut State, looking every bit the part that its 3-6 record shows.

“Really happy for [CCSU head coach] Patrick Sellers and his team,” Minutemen head coach Frank Martin said. “I’m jealous, because that’s what we all used to have, is you brought guys in and learn how to win together. And then once you learn how to win together, you can create competitive spirit where you don’t care about individuality, you don’t care about the moment you just stay disciplined and make the play – that’s what college basketball used to be about.”

Holding on to a 65-63 lead late in the second half, the Minutemen allowed the Blue Devils (5-3) to convert on their next three field goals – scoring five straight points to jump ahead 68-65. CCSU wouldn’t cough up its lead the rest of the way, and the all blue jerseys danced and skipped their way off of Jack Leaman Court with an upset win.

As ugly as it looked for UMass throughout the entire 40 minutes, the Minutemen somehow found a way to crawl ahead late although they couldn’t sustain it. CCSU’s veteran presence and overall college basketball experience showed in the final minutes, and the Blue Devils – which courted four seniors and a junior for crunch time – made play after play when it mattered most.

“Coming down the stretch, we figure out a way to take the lead,” Martin said. “Don’t ask me how, but we did. And then we got one stop the rest of the game the second we took the lead. And [it was because the officials] called a travel, and it should’ve been a foul… Every team we’ve played that’s got a group of guys that have been together, that has that edge to them, we can’t get over the hump. [CCSU] is good, and we tried to tell our players that.”

Daniel Rivera led UMass with 19 points and 10 rebounds, stepping up at the forward position w  ith Daniel Hankins-Sanford out indefinitely dealing with a hand injury. Rahsool Diggins entered Wednesday going through potentially the worst shooting slump of his career, making just 10 of his last 54 shots from behind the arc (18.5 percent). And after starting the night 1-for-6, he ended with 14 points and four made 3s. Jaylen Curry struggled from the field as well, scoring 10 points on 12 shots.

With no real scoring presence down low, UMass has to look to its backcourt (Diggins and Curry) to put the ball in the basket. And despite having decent scoring outputs, the duo shot poorly from the field and only combined for four assists. The Minutemen currently rank 326th or worse in all of Division 1 in effective field goal percentage, free throw percentage and three point percentage – a lot of it having to do with the fact that they have no outside threats.

“We’re not connected, and if we’re not gonna have that competitive spirit and then we’re gonna shoot 8-for-28 from the two guards, it’s going to be hard to win,” Martin said. “And we’re getting nothing out of our center spot. Nothing. It’s a zero. We gotta figure that out. We don’t get to pick and choose what guys we’re not happy with and sign somebody else right now. It’s who we signed, it’s who we believe in and we gotta figure it out.”

While only three UMass players ended up in double figures scoring, four CCSU players put up 10 or more points and a fifth was one away. Devin Haid netted 18 points and grabbed seven rebounds, Jayden Brown put up 12 points, Joe Ostrowsky and Davonte Sweatman scored 10 apiece while Abdul Momoh chipped in nine.

UMass shot 8-for-25 from 3 and 40 percent overall compared to 47 percent shooting from CCSU. The Minutemen were out-scored in transition 21-6. Martin was perplexed that his team didn’t get back on defense on Wednesday, especially after missing so many shots. UMass shot just 50 percent (13-for-26) on layups, many of them not coming close.

“Ask the players [why they didn’t get back in transition],” Martin said. “I’m not the one running back on defense. I mean, that was embarrassing. We shot air balls and we couldn’t get back defensively. Couldn’t get matched up. So whenever we have a press conference, ask the players why they don’t run back.”

A quick 11-2 start to the second half catapulted CCSU ahead 44-33, prompting Martin to call timeout. Out of the stoppage, Diggins finally cashed in his first 3 of the night, starting a flurry of four that he would knock down in the latter frame. After his second and third triples, Diggins fired a one-handed pass to a cutting Nate Guerengomba for a layup to give UMass a 55-54 advantage. The lead wouldn’t last long, as Haid came down to bury a triple and put CCSU back in front. The two teams went back-and-forth the rest of the way until the Blue Devils’ late spurt.

UMass led for just 3 minutes, 40 seconds of game time on Wednesday. The Minutemen (3-6) return to action this weekend, hosting UMass Lowell (5-4) on Saturday afternoon at 12 p.m.