MHERST (JAN. 12) - With 16:10 remaining in Saturday's game with George Washington, University of Massachusetts small forward Chris Kirkland knocked down an open jump shot to put the Minutemen ahead, 49-31.

GW coach Mike Jarvis came unglued. Despite trying different looks offensively and defensively all game long, nothing seemed to work. Swearing as he stomped down the sidelines to beg for a UMass foul away from the ball, Jarvis earned himself a technical.

If he had any idea how the rest of the game would turn out, he might have tried to draw a second one and the ejection that would come with it.

UMass dominated its Atlantic 10 rivals from the tip-off to the final buzzer to steamroll the Colonials, 79-48 at the Mullins Center.

"This was the best total game we've played so far," UMass coach Bruiser Flint said. "We played the full 40 minutes and didn't make mistakes at the end."

After the game, Jarvis was cordial in defeat.

"UMass played the best I've seen them play all year," he said. "I don't know how much we had to do with it, but they played very well."

The Colonials started the game in a 1-3-1 zone in an attempt to force UMass (9-5, 3-0 A-10) to score from the perimeter. Monty Mack was glad to oblige.

The sophomore guard opened the game with a 3-pointer from the right corner to set the tone for the afternoon.

A trey by Charlton Clarke and another by Mack caused GW (13-3, 2-1 A-10) to abandon the zone. Mack finished with 19 points.

Monty Mack abused the GW D all day

Freed from the problems created by the zone, the UMass inside game took over as Lari Ketner, Tyrone Weeks and Ajmal Basit all had stellar outings.

Ketner finished with a game-high 21 points to go along with nine rebounds. Weeks grabbed 14 rebounds in addition to scoring 11 points and making a career-high five blocks. Basit was held to just 11 minutes of action due to foul trouble. But he made the most of his minutes.

In addition to his eight points and six boards, he displayed some impressive interior passing skills. After Basit collected the ball in the low post on one play, two George Washington forwards cut off his look at the basket. Basit spotted an open Mike Babul cutting to the basket and fed him the ball for any easy hoop to put UMass ahead, 19-10.

Alexander Koul responded with two of his six points at the other end, but Mack buried another bomb to give UMass a 22-12 lead.

The Minutemen built that lead to 40-25 at halftime and never looked back.

Chris Kirkland drives through traffic

It got a little worse for the Colonials prior to Jarvis' technical, and even though Weeks missed both ensuing free throws, it got a lot worse afterward. UMass outscored GW, 30-17 the rest of the way.

Few would have predicted that junior walk-on Ross Burns would see action in a game of this magnitude, but he scored three points, all on free throws, to come within one of his career high.

The Minutemen return to action at 7 p.m. Thursday when they take on UNC-Charlotte in the first game of the Atlantic 10-Conference USA Shootout at the Providence Civic Center.

MHERST (JAN. 12) - The rims on the hoops at the University of Massachusetts have the reputation of being unforgiving to shooters, but the Minutemen were glad to see those rims and everything else at the Mullins Center after a month on the road.

The Minutemen found a large welcoming committee to greet their return. The 9,493 fans in attendance marked the first sellout of the season and the game was worth the price of admission as UMass crushed George Washington, 79-48.

Life on the road makes it difficult to practice, a fact that made it hard for UMass to correct its errors, according to coach Bruiser Flint.

"We've been able to practice. We've been on the road so much that you just walk through and talk about what you want to do. You don't put bodies in places," Flint said. "When you practice a little bit, we've been able to tighten up things that we've needed to work on."

Since the Minutemen last wore their home white uniforms, there have been subtle changes to their home floor.

Instead of a red dot at center court the trademark UMass symbol now adorns the tip-off circle.

Six new members have been added to the UMass Hall of Fame, which resides on the Mullins third floor. The honorees or representatives for them were all honored in a brief halftime ceremony.

Completing the new decorations was the addition of the 1997 NCAA Tournament banner that was revealed prior to the game.

WHEN ASKED if he was the best sixth man in the Atlantic 10, Ajmal Basit smiled mischievously.

"Of course," he said. "The best sixth man in the NCAA..."

Ajmal Basit throws the long-bomb

GW FORWARD Yegor Mescheriakov entered the game needing just 14 points to score 1,000 for his career. Despite being on the road, there were plans to stop the game when he reached the milestone and present him the ball, but the junior only had 11 points and will have to wait until Wednesday, when the Colonials take on Xavier.

ONE POTENTIALLY good sign for UMass fans with an eye toward the future: The basketball team from the Winchendon School was in attendance at Sunday's game. The school, which is coached by UMass alumnus Mike Burns, has a reputation for turning out Division I players. It would be hard to imagine that they weren't impressed by UMass' showing.

rior to Saturday's game against George Washington, University of Massachusetts coach Bruiser Flint offered his team some extra motivation.

"I told them this was the team that made us sit in Pinocchio's with knots in our stomachs on Selection Sunday (last season), so we owed them a little bit," Flint said.

Flint was referring to a loss in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, when the Colonials bounced UMass, 58-49, and made the Minutemen sweat out a bid to the NCAA Tournament, but that was hardly the only loss UMass had to pay GW back for.

Twice the Colonials have knocked UMass from the No. 1 ranking and on Feb. 14, 1995, GW ended UMass' nation's longest home winning streak.

While UMass' 79-48 drubbing of the Colonials may not take away the sting, it throws another log on the rivalry's fire.

"Bruiser stressed that we have only lost a couple games in the Mullins Center and they got two of them," said UMass center Lari Ketner. "He really wanted to beat them because of the personal thing between him and the coaches there."

Ketner was referring not to animosity, but to a friendly rivalry between Flint and coach Mike Jarvis. According to Flint, the bitterness left with former coach John Calipari.

"Me and Mike ... we're cool. I like him," Flint said. "That was the old coach. Mike used to get under John's skin pretty bad. My thing is to win ball games."

Most of the crowd could see, but not hear, Jarvis yelling at Flint in the waning moments of the game as Tyrone Weeks was reinserted into the UMass lineup. Thinking Jarvis was angry that the UMass coach was returning a starter to the court when his team was so far ahead, many of the Mullins faithful jeered the GW coach.

"It was sort of a joke," Flint said, explaining that the two are friends. "Nike gives a trip to all of their coaches. So my wife and I hung out a lot and had dinner with Mike Jarvis on the trip. So he was saying, 'Don't put Tyrone back in the game,' but I said, 'I only got eight guys. I don't want Lari to get hurt.' It was just a joke. He actually asked me, 'where's your wife?' He wanted to wave to say hello."

Jarvis joked that his team was better at beating Calipari's squads.

"Yes, I want Calipari to come back," Jarvis said. "Of course I do. I miss him tremendously. It's not quite the same without him, so next time I'm going to bring his picture and put it up in the locker room. Then we'll win. That's a promise."

So goodbye to the scorn that had permeated previous UMass-George Washington matchups. Does that mean the rivalry is dying?

Hardly.

Sometimes the best rivalries are the ones that come against your best friend. And while Jarvis and Bruiser might break bread together in the off-season, the Colonial players won't soon forget a loss that had sportswriters scanning a thesaurus searching for clever ways to say "beat the tar out of."

Despite feasting on opponents in home and neutral site games, the Colonials had struggled in their two previous games in an opponent's gym. They lost 80-57 to Texas Tech and barely beat Old Dominion, 58-56, but Jarvis disputed that this Saturday fell into this category.

"This is our home court. We've won every time we've come up here. One other time we didn't win on the scoreboard," said Jarvis, in reference to UMass' 56-55 win on Jan. 22, 1995, a game that Jarvis has repeatedly said was decided by a bad call. "This is our home court, so as far as I'm concerned we lost a home game tonight."

MHERST - The big surprise was not that they were able to obtain such a big lead against a formidable adversary yesterday, for the University of Massachusetts has dealt Kansas, Cincinnati, and Fresno State halftime deficits this season.

The big surprise was that the lead held up. There was a momentary lapse during the last five minutes of the first half, when they resorted to the type of sluggishness that has allowed opponents to overcome deficits. Yet other than that, UMass was a buzzsaw, scoring, defending, rebounding, and rejecting shots like the Refuse to Lose teams of old.

That spelled curtains for George Washington, which entered the game sporting an eight-game winning streak and its best start since the 1953-54 season but left on the losing end of a 79-48 score, victimized by the best 40 minutes of UMass basketball this season.

It was arguably the most impressive showing by the Minutemen under second-year coach Bruiser Flint, whose team staged the largest margin of victory against George Washington in the 43-game series and notched the largest home win since a 93-60 triumph over Penn in 1995.

Junior center Lari Ketner tied a career high with 21 points while holding GWU center Alexander Koul to just 6 points and one rebound (Koul subsequently fouled out).

Sophomore guard Monty Mack scored 19 points while going 5 of 8 from behind the 3-point line, and senior power forward Tyrone Weeks had 11 points, 14 boards, and a career-high 5 blocks to lead UMass, which shot over the Colonials' 1-3-1 zone to gain a 19-9 lead with 14:10 left and stretched its lead by dominating the post at both ends.

''We wanted to come out with a lot of intensity and make a statement. We wanted to show that UMass basketball is back,'' said Weeks, one of many Minutemen who stessed how important it was to play well against the only team to register two victories at the Mullins Center. GWU fell to 13-3 and 2-1.

UMass led by as many as 20 points with 5:07 left in the first half, but went through a lull and led, 40-25, at halftime. The seemingly secure lead thrilled the sellout crowd of 9,493, but those who have followed the program this season know few UMass halftime leads are safe. The Minutemen entered having led at halftime in 10 of 13 contests, but went on to lose three of those games (to Kansas, Cincinnati, and Fresno State) in part because of untimely lapses and an inability to make a defensive stop at critical moments.

No such doing yesterday. The Minuteman defense kept forcing George Washington into bad shots, inside and out, and although UMass sank just two second-half treys it continued to increase its lead by dominating the offensive glass for second- and third-chance points. With 9:24 left, Ketner sank two free throws to put the Minutemen ahead, 69-37, and the game was all but over.

''UMass has played the best I've seen all year. We didn't establish the inside game and we allowed their big men to push us around and dominate the boards,'' said GWU coach Mike Jarvis, whose team was outrebounded, 45-33, in its worst defeat of the season. The former coach at Boston University and Cambridge Rindge & Latin School picked up a technical foul with 14:56 left, then jokingly chided Flint for putting Weeks back in with 52.5 seconds left. Flint laughed and explained he only had nine players suited up.

The triumph proved to be one of the most enjoyable moments for Flint, who at one point flailed his arms to urge on an already raucous crowd. He has stressed to his team the importance of playing well for 40 minutes. It appears now the players have received the message.

''We've got young players who have some experience under their belt now, so they know,'' he said. ''We knew that George Washington was playing well, so we had to make a statement today that this ain't the team we had last season. When you come into the Mullins Center, it's going to be tough to get a win.''

MHERST-- George Washington has 10 foreign players on their roster, but UMass ruled distant lands yesterday.

The Minutemen commanded inside territory, too, beating GW all over the court for an easy 79-48 win before 9,493 at the Mullins Center.

The victory, which improved UMass' record to 9-5 overall and 3-0 in the Atlantic 10, was so thorough and the Minutemen starters were in the game so long that you kind of got the feeling that coach Bruiser Flint had something against vocal Colonials coach Mike Jarvis.

Not so, insisted Flint.

"Me and Mike are cool," said Flint, whose team posted its most one-sided victory in the history of the series. "That was the old coach (John Calipari). Mike used to get under John's skin good."

Jarvis, who saw his team drop to 13-3, wouldn't argue with that. He shook off the 31-point loss quickly enough to joke that the next time GW played with UMass he would bring a picture of Calipari into the locker room to remind him of the days when the Colonials had the Minutemen's number, even at Mullins.

That clearly wasn't the case yesterday. George Washington brought an eight-game winning streak and a 2-1 Mullins record (Jarvis claims it's his home court) to Amherst only to be demolished by the Minutemen.

Playing its first home game in more than a month, UMass outrebounded GW, 45-33, and held the Colonials to just 29 percent shooting.

Lari Ketner, who tied his career high with 21 points, held highly touted GW big man Alexander Koul to just 6 points and 1 rebound.

"We wanted to get Koul and a couple of their big fellas in foul trouble," Ketner said. "After he got his second and third foul, he wasn't even sticking with me anymore."

Jarvis was afraid of UMass' inside game, so he opened with a zone, daring the Minutemen to burn him from the outside. They obliged.

Sophomore guard Monty Mack, who is leading UMass in scoring (14.8 ppg), torched GW for 19 points, hitting 5 of 8 3-point tries.

"They were leaving me alone," Mack said.

Flint said the Minutemen really aren't 3-point marksmen but they were successful yesterday because they were getting open shots and Mack was getting the ball at the right time.

When the Colonials finally stretched their defense to stop Mack and Charlton Clarke, the Minutemen went to work inside with Ketner, Tyrone Weeks (11 points, 14 rebounds, career-high 5 blocks) and Ajmal Basit (a whirlwind 11 minutes that included 8 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 block, 4 turnovers and 5 fouls).

Koul was playing on a gimpy ankle, but Jarvis didn't use that as an excuse. The 7-foot-1 center from Belarus simply brings out the best in Ketner.

"His eyes light up against Alexander Koul," Flint said. "The thing is, he can play like that against everyone."

Ketner admitted that he prefers the physical types like Koul over the 6-9 guys who try to beat him with quickness.

The Minutemen led 40-25 at the half, then ballooned the advantage to 32 points following a 13-0 run midway through the second half. GW cut the lead to 13 early in the second half, but they couldn't get any closer.

Everyone got in on the victory. Mike Babul, who always draws the other team's big scorer, held Yegor Mescheriakov to just 11 points. Mescheriakov is the guy who scored 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds when GW knocked UMass out of the A-10 playoffs last year.

Chris Kirkland came off the bench to score four points, including a jumper from the corner in the second half that Flint pointed to as the back breaker.

Little-used Ross Burns saw time, scoring his first three points of the season.

With the Minutemen comfortably ahead, the crowd starting calling for Burns with seven minutes left. Flint finally let them have their man.

Injuries have left Flint with just nine players, so he can't really do much in one-sided games like yesterday's. Jarvis found he couldn't do much either except watch the Minutemen roll over his team. "UMass played the best I've seen them play all year," he said.

MHERST, Mass., Jan. 10-An eight-game winning streak came to a grinding halt for George Washington today when the Colonials were outshot, outrebounded, outhustled and outscored, 79-48, by Massachusetts at Mullins Center.

The Minutemen recorded their biggest home win in three seasons before a sellout crowd of 9,493. They improved their record to 9-5 overall and 3-0 in the Atlantic 10 while handing GW (13-3, 2-1) its worst loss of the season.

"U-Mass. played the best I've seen them play all year," Colonials Coach Mike Jarvis said. "I don't know how much we had to do with that, but we didn't do what we had to do -- establish an inside game."

Center Alexander Koul, who sprained his ankle in Wednesday's 90-68 victory over Duquesne, was able to start, but that was the end of anything positive for the Colonials. Koul lost the opening tip, then GW shot a season-low 29 percent. And after recording a season-high 28 assists against Duquesne, the Colonials had five today, none in the first half. They trailed by 15 at halftime and never cut the lead to single digits in the second half.

Koul had six points, one rebound, five turnovers and four fouls, which limited him to 15 minutes of play. "It wasn't because of his ankle," Jarvis said. "He got outplayed tonight."

Point guard Shawnta Rogers hit 3 of 14 shots and recorded one assist. "Shawnta Rogers took way too many shots in the first half," Jarvis said. "It's a mistake a young guy makes, trying to do too much for his team."

Momentum in the rivalry between U-Mass. and GW swung in the Minutemen's favor as they notched the most lopsided victory in the series, which began in 1971. Going into the game, the Colonials had won the past two meetings at Mullins Center.

"Since I've been here GW beat us here at Mullins Center," said senior Massachusetts forward Tyrone Weeks, who had a game-high 14 rebounds, 11 points and a career-high 5 blocks. "This is my last year. I didn't want them to beat us."

The Minutemen are 50-6 at their arena, something Coach Bruiser Flint reminded his Minutemen about before the game.

"He really wanted to beat them," said center Lari Ketner, whose 21 points led all scorers and tied a career high. "He stressed to us it was a statement game."

And the Minutemen made their statement early, hitting their first four shots for an 11-4 lead 2 minutes 8 seconds into the contest. GW narrowed the lead to 11-8, but U-Mass. steadily pulled away after that. The Minutemen's outside shooting burned GW's zone defense, with first-year guard Monty Mack hitting 4 of 5 three-pointers and scoring 14 points in the half. The Minutemen led by 20 at one point, but the outcome may have been decided by the time they built a 22-12 advantage at the 11-minute mark: U-Mass. has won 76 straight games in which it has held a lead of at least 10 points.

GW, which trailed 40-25 at the half, failed to get anything going in the second half. The Minutemen, meanwhile, responded with a strong inside game. Forward Yegor Mescheriakov, who had a team-high 11 points, hit a leaning jumper in the lane with 18:44 left to cut the deficit to 13, but U-Mass. answered with five points and never looked back. With 10 minutes left in the game, the lead was 30.

U-Mass. outrebounded the Colonials 45-33 and outscored them 47-28 in the lane.

Chris Kirkland takes it through the GW defense

"We allowed their big men to push us around, dominate the boards," Jarvis said.

After losing their first real test since last month's victory over then-No. 19 Maryland, the Colonials must regroup for their game Wednesday against No. 19 Xavier. GW had built its winning streak against teams with a combined 30-32 record. By contrast, U-Mass. has lost to only one team (Cincinnati) that was unranked at the time of their game.

The Colonials weren't so ready today, but Jarvis was ready to look ahead.

"This will help us in the long run," he said.

GEO WASHINGTON (48)
                      fg    ft    rb
               min   m-a   m-a   o-t  a pf   tp
Iturbe          28   0-2   1-3   2-3  0  3    1
Mescheriakov    30   4-9   3-4   2-6  0  1   11
Koul            15   2-4   2-4   0-1  0  4    6
Green            7   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
Rogers          30  3-14   3-4   2-4  1  0   10
King            14   2-4   0-0   0-1  1  0    4
Eyal             8   0-0   0-0   0-2  1  2    0
Krivonos         9   1-3   0-0   1-1  0  1    3
De Miranda      18   1-3   2-4   4-7  1  3    4
Brade            9   0-3   0-0   1-1  0  0    0
Ngongba         18   1-3   2-2   0-2  0  3    4
Hazzard          4   0-2   0-0   0-0  1  0    0
Camara           9   1-4   2-2   0-2  0  2    5
Soares           1   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
_______________________________________________
TOTALS         200 15-51 15-23 12-30  5 19   48
_______________________________________________

Percentages: FG-.294, FT-.652. 3-Point Goals:
3-11, .273 (Mescheriakov 0-2, Rogers 1-5,
Krivonos 1-1, Camara 1-3). Team rebounds: 3.
Blocked shots: 2 (Iturbe, De Miranda). Turnovers:
18 (Koul 5, Mescheriakov 3, King 2, Krivonos 2,
Ngongba 2, Rogers 2, De Miranda, Eyal). Steals: 7
(Ngongba 2, Rogers 2, Eyal, Krivonos,
Mescheriakov).

MASSACHUSETTS (79)
                      fg    ft    rb
               min   m-a   m-a   o-t  a pf   tp
Weeks           36   4-9   3-6  6-14  1  1   11
Babul           23   2-3   1-2   1-1  0  4    5
Ketner          31  6-13  9-10   2-9  0  3   21
Clarke          29   3-8   0-0   0-3  5  3    8
Mack            28  6-14   2-2   0-3  3  2   19
Depina          20   0-1   0-0   2-4  3  0    0
Burns            3   0-2   3-5   1-1  0  0    3
Kirkland        19   2-6   0-0   1-2  2  0    4
Basit           11   4-5   0-1   4-6  1  5    8
_______________________________________________
TOTALS         200 27-61 18-26 17-43 15 18   79
_______________________________________________

Percentages: FG-.443, FT-.692. 3-Point Goals:
7-13, .538 (Clarke 2-4, Mack 5-8, Burns 0-1).
Team rebounds: 2. Blocked shots: 8 (Weeks 5,
Mack, Depina, Basit). Turnovers: 16 (Depina 5,
Basit 4, Babul 2, Ketner 2, Clarke, Kirkland,
Weeks). Steals: 6 (Ketner 2, Babul, Basit, Mack,
Weeks).
__________________________________
Geo Washington     25   23  -   48
Massachusetts      40   39  -   79
__________________________________
Technical fouls: Geo Washington 1 (Head Coach 
Jarvis).  A: 9,493.  Officials: Reggie Greenwood, 
Joe Demayo, Mark Distrola.