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Monday, February 24, 2003

By Ray Fittipaldo, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

AMHERST, Mass. -- It must have seemed like practice for Massachusetts guards Anthony Anderson and Jeff Viggiano. Time after time, they would catch the ball, square up to the basket and shoot their 3-pointers with no one around to defend them.

Massachusetts is last in the conference in 3-point shooting accuracy, but the Dukes proved that leaving anyone wide open can be disastrous. Massachusetts picked the perfect game to have its best shooting performance of the season.

The Minutemen got hot and buried the Dukes under an avalanche of 3-pointers in the second half of a 70-55 victory at the Mullins Center.

Massachusetts (11-14, 5-7 Atlantic 10 Conference) made a season-high 10 3-pointers and shot 52.6 percent from beyond the arc. That's almost twice as good as the Minutemen normally shoot from 3-point range.

That it came against the Dukes shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The Dukes (9-17, 3-10) are last in the league defending the 3-point shot. Opponents are connecting at almost a 43-percent clip.

Anderson was 5 for 7 from 3-point range and scored 22 of his game-high 25 points in the second half, when the Minutemen erased a 28-25 halftime deficit.

Viggiano hit three of his four 3-pointers in the second half, when the Dukes' perimeter defense was especially shoddy.

"I don't know why it wasn't better, but it was poor," Dukes Coach Danny Nee said. "Anderson created a lot of those opportunities. We couldn't guard him one on one. He'd break us down and then pitch it out to Viggiano."

Massachusetts made four 3-pointers in the first five minutes of the second half -- two from Anderson and two from Viggiano -- as part of a 16-4 run that turned the game in its favor.

"It was all penetration," Dukes senior guard Kevin Forney said. "We scouted them. They weren't a good 3-point shooting team. But once they got on a roll, they were hard to stop."

This is the same team that made 1 of 15 3-point attempts in a mid-January loss to Xavier and 2 for 18 in a November loss to Indiana.

But that was then. In the past three games, the Minutemen, winners of three in a row, are shooting 44 percent from beyond the arc.

"If you leave us alone, we're dangerous," Massachusetts Coach Steve Lappas said.

Lappas put the clamps on the Dukes' two most potent scorers by playing junk defenses on Forney and Jimmy Tricco. Forney led the Dukes with 14 points, but eight of those came in the final five-plus minutes when the game already was decided. The defense was so tight on Tricco that he failed to get off a 3-point attempt for the first time this season and scored just two points after making five 3-pointers and scoring 21 points in a victory against George Washington last week.

"They were putting in junk defenses to stop me and Jimmy, and stopped our momentum," Forney said. "They were doing a triangle-and-two and boxes-and-ones, and we weren't getting the type of ball movement we needed."

The strategy worked because the Dukes' secondary scorers didn't help out. The only other player in double figures was Simplice Njoya with 12.

The game started well for the Dukes. They led, 16-5, with 10:34 remaining in the first half as Massachusetts tried to figure out a way to play without starting guard Michael Lasme, who sat out with an elbow injury, and the late insertion of leading scorer Jackie Rogers, who did not start because he was late for pregame warm-ups.

After sitting out the first five minutes, Rogers scored 10 of his 18 points in the next 15 minutes to help the Minutemen get back into the game.

"We were missing too many shots," Nee said. "We probably should have been up by 10 at halftime."

NOTES -- The Dukes play No. 14 Xavier, which has won 11 in a row, at home Wednesday. ... The Dukes had 16 offensive rebounds, but only four of those came in the second half. They won the rebounding margin, 30-26. ... Massachusetts shot a season-high 57.8 percent from the field. ... Anderson's 25 points tied a career-high. ... Massachusetts overcame a 10-point deficit for the second consecutive game.