Frank Martin added his son Brandon to the Minuteman roster for the 2022-23 season. The results raised some questions.
By Michael Fetterer, UMassHoops.com Owner/Administrator, 10/7/2023

Preface: Obviously, I'm a big UMass basketball fan. I've been on this fan train since my freshman year in 1991-92 and never stepped off.

When we win, being positive is easy. When we're losing, I'll try not to be too negative. But when bad shots are taken or bad decisions are made, I won't always be a homer. Criticism is fair when it's warranted. Keep it respectful and you have yourself a fair debate.

This is one of those situations when it seems reasonable to bring up a little criticism…

It's a nice story when a father can coach his son. We've seen it with some of familiar names: Brad Calipari walked on to play for John at Kentucky, Phil Martelli Jr walked on for his father's teams at Saint Joseph's. It's a great story when the son is a solid contributor, like when we saw Jimmy Baron put up 17.4 points per game and shot 45% from 3 for Rhode Island and his father Jim in 2008-09.¹⁾

As difficult as it is to write this, Brandon playing for Frank at UMass was not that kind of story.

2022-23 wasn't the first time Frank brought Brandon onto his team. In 2021-22, Brandon joined his dad at South Carolina, but played as a walk-on.²⁾ Prior to the Gamecocks, Brandon's first three seasons were at USC Upstate in the Big South, a conference that finished near the bottom of the national rankings.³⁾ According to 24/7 Sports, Upstate was the only school to offer Brandon a scholarship.⁴⁾

Brandon appeared in 57 games at Upstate, but only got the start twice. He averaged 13.4 minutes per game in his Upstate career, putting up 5.3 points and 2.4 rebounds, but shot a respectable .502 from the floor.⁵⁾

On paper, it's an incredible leap for a player with such numbers to move up to an SEC school. But as a walk-on, that flies a little more under the radar. Also helps that the coach is your father. At South Carolina, Brandon joined the team as a walk-on, averaged 11.8 minutes, took nearly half as many shots per game, but still shot a decent .446 from the field. He averaged 2.4 points and 2.5 rebounds, but started just once.

Fast forward to the end of the 2022-23 season: lots of things didn't go right for the UMass Minutemen. Lots of decisions, by both players and coaches, could have been, and were, questioned by the fanbase, some fairly, some uninformed and/or unfairly. But one pattern continued as the season progressed: why Brandon kept starting (each of the first 25 games) and getting a significant (17.9 minutes per game) amount of playing time?

UMass had some good fortune with players who had no other scholarship offers. We got a little lucky with Carl Pierre in 2017-18, who shot 47% from three, and 44% overall. With Brandon Martin in 2022-23, however, shooting percentages were not on his side. After seven games, Brandon was at a rough .143 (4-28) from the floor. At the end of non-conference play, not significantly better at .214. Still, he kept his starting role.

Brandon finished the season shooting .311 overall and .306 from two-point territory. Lowest in his college career, by far. You might have expected the numbers from his SEC season, against tougher competition, to be the low mark, but that was not the case. The .311 with UM was a 36% drop-off from the previous season in the SEC.

Only one other player in the Atlantic 10 played that many minutes and shot that low a percentage from the floor: Saint Joe's freshman Christian Winborne (.306 FG overall). He was a sub though, only starting in three of the 30 games he appeared in.

When it came to efficiency, Sports-Reference.com has a Player Efficiency Rating (PER) metric. They measured Brandon's PER at 6.5. No other player in the Atlantic 10 in 2022-23 had a lower PER while playing over 500 minutes in the season.⁶⁾ Brandon logged 518 minutes.

Looking at the +/- metric:

• On the season, UM's total points scored was 2163, against 2214 allowed, or -51 as the +/- would indicate.
• In the two games Brandon didn't appear, UM was a combined +22, so in games where he did appear, the collective number was -73.
• Brandon's individual total +/- across his 29 games was -125.
• There were seven games in which Brandon's +/- was the worst on the team, and one more where his was tied for worst.
• In another two games, his +/- was second-worst on the team, and one more where his was tied for second-worst.

Was he kept on the floor for his rebounding? Maybe, but the case there isn't overwhelming. Per 40 minutes, Brandon registered with 8.2 rebounds per game, but only sixth-best on the team, well behind Dyondre Dominguez who had 9.1 rpg/40.⁷⁾ Yet, Dyondre only got one start on the season, versus Brandon's 26.

Dominguez, meanwhile, was vastly more productive. Dyondre's PER was 19.4, best among the Minutemen's scholarship players, and more than 3x better than Brandon's.

Besides how Brandon was consistently starting in front of Dominguez, there was also chatter about how few minutes 4-star recruit Tafara Gapare was getting. While Brandon got 17.9 minutes per game, that was 44% more than Gapare's 12.4. Gapare was certainly raw and had a lot to learn, but was it worth keeping his potential bottled up on the bench? Gapare transferred out of UMass after the season.

Frank Martin is a huge family guy, he'll do just about anything for them. But if Brandon wasn't Frank's son, is Brandon getting 26 starts for an Atlantic 10 team? Is he getting 18 minutes per game when there's a 4-star recruit languishing on the bench? Is he allowed to drag his team down as an offensive liability?

I mean no ill will to Brandon. I wish him well in his future. And while he was here, he did his best. He tried. He put in the work. But the numbers are the numbers. The results just weren't there.

Frank has been coaching all of his professional life, and he has forgotten more about coaching than I will ever know, so who am I to criticize? I'm nobody. Just a dude with an opinion and a website. Still, you don't necessarily need to be in the profession to see the numbers and ask why? Was there something intangible that we just didn't see? Because the numbers on the stat sheets didn't justifying the starts and/or playing time.

It would have been an interesting alternate universe where Frank's coaching judgement wasn't clouded by having his son on the roster. He's getting paid $8.5 million over five years to coach at UMass, and to win, not to spend more quality time with his family.

Further reading: Father coaching son instances in college basketball