Vermont Basketball Sets American East History

On March 11th, the Vermont Catamounts made American East Conference history by completing a perfect season against in Conference teams.  Finishing the regular season 16-0 and following that by winning the NCAA Tournament, the Vermont Men’s Basketball team is the greatest team to ever play in the American East Conference.

If you followed the American East standings last year, it might not be a surprise that Vermont has followed that season up with a historic season this year.  Even though Stony Brook won the American East Tournament in 2016, Vermont made a solid regular season run, finishing 3rd in Conference at 11-5, and almost saw a NCAA Tournament appearance before they lost by 6 to Stony Brook in the American East Tournament.  Vermont, however, would go on to compete in the CBI Tournament and would lose in the Semi-Finals to the soon to be CBI Champs, Nevada.

With Vermont’s stronger program and Stony Brook’s weaker roster, it was almost a given that Vermont would represent the American East in the NCAA Tournament this year.  But this undefeated season in Conference play is still both very surprising and impressive.  Even though this Catamounts team is led by the American East Coach of the Year, John Becker, the American East Player of the Year, Trae Bell-Haynes, the American East Defensive Player of the Year, Dre Willis, the American East Rookie of the Year, Anthony Lamb, and the American East Sixth Man of the Year, Darren Payen, it’s still ridiculous that they never lost to a team in their Conference and currently have the longest active win streak in D1 Men’s Basketball at 21 straight wins.  Essentially, this Vermont team is the American East All-Star roster, and it’s the best representation the Conference has ever had in the Tournament.

Tomorrow, Vermont takes on a solid Purdue Boilermakers squad who are seeded 4th.  However, as anyone who is a fan of the NCAA Tournament would know, it’s not necessarily terrible to be seeded as low as #13 and have to face a high ranked team like Purdue.  In 23 of 32 years, including last year’s #13 Hawaii knocking out #4 California, at least one #13 seed has taken our a #4 seed in the first round.  Of course, besides the Big 10 Tournament, Purdue has played great basketball in one of the hardest conferences in the nation and they don’t plan on being knocked out first round again.  Personally, this is one of the hardest picks for me.  My gut tells me that Vermont will surprise the nation and pull off the upset win over Purdue, but I also can’t imagine the Catamounts could stop this strong Boilermakers team, especially after Little Rock got the best of them last year in the first round.  I’ll probably go with Vermont at the end of the day but this game could go either way.  Regardless, by the end of tomorrow we will know who advances on to the Round of 32 and which team’s season will come to an abrupt halt.  I would love to see Vermont’s historic season continue on, but they have one massive roadblock in their way that they’ll have to get over if they want to keep their season alive.

Written by Erik Clark