AMHERST — For the early portion of the first half, anxious murmurs spread through the Mullins Center as the UMass men’s basketball team racked up as many turnovers (6) as points nearly 10 minutes into the game. The 2,772 fans that showed up were wondering if the Minutemen would too. But as he did on Sunday against La Salle, Minutemen sophomore Jaylen Curry changed the trajectory of Wednesday night’s contest with George Washington.

Curry scored 11 of 13 UMass points in a four-minute stretch that fueled the Minutemen in turning their nine-point deficit to a four-point lead, one they wouldn’t surrender the rest of the way. Nineteen points and a team-high six assists from Curry led UMass to a 74-61 win – its fourth in the last five games and third straight – over the Revolutionaries.

“I kept telling the guys, I said, ‘Keep defending, keep defending, keep defending,’” UMass head coach Frank Martin said when asked what he told the team during its sluggish start. “And we kept going. I know we got down 20-12 somewhere in there, but we were still defending. [GW] has good players. They’re going to score. But we continued to defend, and eventually, when the ball started going in, the fact that we [defended] gave us the courage to make more shots.”

George Washington’s 61 points are over 16 points below its season average (77.7, third in the Atlantic 10), as UMass’ defense made it tough on the visitors to create any easy looks (GW was 12-for-32 on layups) each half-court trip down the floor. The Revolutionaries had five different stretches where they went three minutes or more without a made field goal.

Gerald Drumgoole shot 2-for-12, Darren Buchanan shot 1-for-7, Trey Autry went 2-for-10 and Jacoi Hutchinson missed all five of his attempts for George Washington, speaking to how the length and athleticism of the Minutemen affected its shots.

“Any good coach will tell you that if you want to win, not win a game, but compete for championships, you better be good defensively,” Martin said. “We’re starting to defend better. I don’t think a single league tea, has shot 40 percent from the field against us. What we’ve done is cleaned up our fouls… Again, guys are buying in.”

Between the rugged defense and UMass making its last eight shots of the first half, the Minutemen took control and made George Washington play the Minutemen’s brand of basketball.

“That definitely gave us momentum, especially after the slow start,” sophomore guard Jayden Ndjigue said. “It gave us a confidence boost, and the confidence we needed to remind us that we’re here  and we can play with these teams – and take control of the game and win it. And that’s what we did.”

The second half featured more of the same, and how UMass ended the first 20 minutes translated to the start of the second 20. George Washington cut its deficit to one (40-39) four minutes in, but a 10-2 spurt from the Minutemen – six of the points coming from Rahsool Diggins – was capped off by an acrobatic Jaylen Curry layup that catapulted UMass back in front 50-41.

Diggins used that sequence to find his rhythm the rest of the night, ripping off 17 of his 19 points in the second half on 6-for-9 shooting (4-for-5 from 3). It was Curry who got the party started, and Diggins who shut it down late.

“We’re taking good 3s,” Martin said. “I thought we made a season-high in 3s when the game ended, because we made like four of them in the last five minutes of the game.”

Daniel Hankins-Sanford put up 10 points and grabbed seven rebounds and Malek Abdelgowad tossed in six points and worked for 11 rebounds in his second consecutive strong outing.

Nothing about Wednesday’s win was particularly pretty, but UMass got the job done – giving the Minutemen their third straight triumph for the first time this season.

UMass (9-11, 4-3 A-10) has a week off before traveling south to Rhode Island next Wednesday night at 7 p.m.