One-Bid Wonders

Caption: St. James’s Serman Harris (11) defends as Dre Wills of Mercersburg Academy drives to the basket on Tuesday, December 4, 2012. (Public Opinion/Ryan Blackwell)

(Burlington, VT) – It was a very happy birthday indeed for Vermont head coach John Becker last Wednesday. On the day he turned 45, Becker received the best gift a coach could ask for: a verbal commitment from Harry “Dre: Wills – a player with the skill set to turn every one of the Catamounts’ weaknesses into strengths.

Vermont fans may have to go all the way back to high-flying Tobe Carberry (’00) to find a Catamount guard with a similar skill-set to Wills. An extremely athletic, incredibly tough and very physical 6’1” combo-guard, Wills’ is a bit rough around the edges and a suspect shooter from behind the arc, but he is an elite-level defender, an elbows-above-the rim-athlete and a big-time play maker capable of blowing by his man off the bounce, slashing into the paint and finishing at – and well above – the rim.

Wills comes to Vermont from Indiana by way of a post-graduate year at Mercersburg Academy, a prep-school in Pennsylvania and had significant interest from, among others, Butler, Loyola-Chicago, Siena and Wisconsin-Green Bay and was also recruited by the likes of Xavier and Michigan before committing to the Catamounts. (more…)

The Great Danes rushed the court in hostile Patrick Gymnasium to celebrate their shocking 53-49 upset of the Vermont Catamounts to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament (Photo by Sam Perkins).

(Burlington, VT) – A tidal wave of purple cascaded down over the wooden the bleachers of Patrick Gymnasium, burst through the green and gold floodgates and crashed onto the hardwood floor.

Amidst the sea of purple and gold chaos, first-year Albany assistant coach Jon Iati –who had helped lead the Great Danes to their first two NCAA Tournaments as a player – assistant coach Jeremy Friel – who had first competed against Iati at rival New Hampshire before coaching him as a member of the staff at Albany – and associate head coach Chad O’Donnell bear-hugged at center court; leaping and shouting in celebration – grown men turned kids again by the magic of the moment.

Iati’s younger brother Jacob, a fifth-year senior shooting guard who followed his brother to Albany initially as a walk-on transfer, fought frantically through the fray, searching for his teammate and best friend Mike Black. The diminutive-duo had stood tall as pillars of the program over the grind of the season, and in the biggest game of their lives Saturday, the pint-sized playmakers towered over the court, combining for 22 points.

When Iati finally found his back-court mate, tears were pouring from Black’s eyes and streaming down his face. Now, amidst the uproar, they shared an embrace.

Great Danes head coach Will Brown, wearing a sedated smile, quietly ducked out of the spotlight to find his family: kissing his wife Jamie and embracing his son Jackson.

The final buzzer had sounded. The clock read “0:00,” but it still hadn’t struck midnight on the Great Danes and their fairytale season.

Albany had run the gauntlet through the America East Tournament, exorcising demons and slaying dragons every step of the way. And now, the scoreboard read “Albany 53, Vermont 49” and the Great Danes were the America East Champions. (more…)

Trey Blue’s long and winding basketball odyssey has been a long and winding road, wrought with obstacles and tragedy, but he has finally found peace as a fifth-year senior at Vermont (Photo by Sam Perkins).

Special Submission to One Bid Wonders

By: Kyle Barry

If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going.
- Winston Churchill

It wasn’t the senior day he had imagined (or could have ever predicted), but there he was, standing at center court, holding his framed Vermont jersey in one hand and his infant son in the other, posing for pictures while the Patrick Gym crowd gave him a standing ovation. The crowd was the usual greying bunch—members of the Burlington community who, while undyingly supportive, are rarely raucous, and who usually prefer to sit on Patrick Gym’s unforgiving wooden roll-out bleachers rather than stand and cheer for any length of time. But this was UVM’s annual celebration of its senior class, and, before tip-off against visiting Hartford, it was Trey Blue’s turn to be honored.

It was a long time coming.

For basketball purposes, Horace “Trey” Blue III is a one-year transfer and fifth-year senior, though technically he’s neither—he isn’t a “senior,” he’s a graduate student, and he didn’t “transfer,” he graduated from Illinois State and then enrolled, this past fall, at UVM. Trey took a rather unorthodox route to campus, first spending a year at Fordham University in the Bronx before transferring to Illinois State, where, after paying his own tuition during his transfer year, he played for two seasons and obtained his undergraduate degree. He also has an extraordinary basketball pedigree, having come of age within the City of Chicago’s ocean-deep talent pool of future NBA draft picks and college superstars. (By the time he was twelve-years-old, Trey was traveling around the country playing AAU basketball alongside future NBA Most Valuable Player Derrick Rose. For four years, Trey and Rose played in the same backcourt, with Rose drawing defenders and feeding Trey for open jump shots, and Trey lobbing alley-oop passes to Rose.)

In his single season at Vermont, Trey has been a crucial offensive threat on a team that has twenty-one victories and is one win away from the NCAA Tournament. He’s played in all thirty-one games, scoring 8.5 points per contest, answering every call – either as energy off the bench, a glue guy holding the team together, or a shooter in the starting lineup.

In the last ten games (including two in the conference tournament), Trey started while shooting guard Candon Rusin played reduced minutes with a toe injury. During that stretch, Trey increased his scoring output to over ten points a game, and emerged as a more versatile and aggressive combo-guard—a player who will not only hit open shots but who can dependably handle the ball and attack the rim. In a non-conference game against Canisius, for example, he scored seventeen points on 6-9 shooting (2-4 from three), and picked up four assists working adroitly with freshman forward Ethan O’Day on the pick-and-roll. And late in the regular season finale against Hartford, Trey asserted himself in crunch time, getting to the rim off a quick crossover dribble and setting up a tip-in that tied the game with thirty-four seconds to play (the Cats would lose on a buzzer beater).

For the fans at Patrick Gym, it was this single season of achievement for which they stood and applauded on senior day. But for Trey the moment was about much more; it was the culmination of all he had been through, both good and bad, on his long journey from feted, sure-thing recruit to father and impact college player—and it could hardly have come at a more symbolically significant time.

One week earlier, Trey’s son Carter had turned one year-old. Two weeks before that, and after years of delay, the man who brutally murdered Carter’s aunt and baby cousin was convicted, finally, of two counts of first degree murder.
These milestones, inextricably intertwined with Trey’s trajectory as a college basketball player, reminded Trey of how fragile youthful hoop dreams can be (pedigree be damned), and how grateful he was to be there, in that moment, standing between those roll-out bleachers and waving to the standing Vermont crowd. (more…)

Vermont forwards Clancy Rugg (31) and Ethan O’Day (32) impede New Hampshire forward Ferg Myrick’s path to the hoop in the Catamounts 61-42 win in the America East Tournament quarterfinals (Photo by Sam Perkins

(Albany, New York) – In basketball, as in life, at some point, everyone and every team gets knocked down – It’s what happens after the fall that counts.

The Vermont Catamounts have tripped, slipped and been flat-out floored several times this season.

Multiple times, the Catamounts have been knocked down for an eight count: There were the back-to-back December losses – on the road to a bad Rhode Island team and at home to Towson; a season-sweep on a pair of lackluster performances to arch-rival BU; a beat-down at the hands of first-place Stony Brook on the heels of their second loss to the Terriers; and an inexplicable no-show on their home court in their season finale against Hartford (a team with which they share no love-loss).

But every time Vermont has fallen, the Catamounts have picked themselves back up off the mat and come back fighting harder than before.

And that’s why, when the dust of the America East Tournament settled and top-seeded Stony Brook – the regular season runaway champion – and three-seed Hartford – the Tournament “dark horse” in the eyes of many – had been felled, the Catamounts were still standing. (more…)

Vermont head coach John Becker (standing) may be quick to duck out of the limelight and deflect praise, but over his two years at the helm, he’s emerged as the league’s top coach (Photo by Sam Perkins).

(Albany, New York) — It is said that teams often embody their coach. After back-to-back comebacks in the America East Tournament – a turning on the second-half jets quarterfinal win over New Hampshire, and a do-or-die 85-72 win over UMBC in the semifinals – and a punched ticket to the title game, nowhere is that more true than with the down-but-never-out Vermont Catamounts and second-year head coach John Becker,

Neither flashy nor fancy, Becker is not a hype man, self-promoter or mouthpiece – and is decidedly not a “rah-rah” guy. A soft-spoken players coach, he is a lunch-pail and hard-hat gamer, a blue-collar grinder who gets his hands dirty.

In the era of sideline theatrics where outspoken coaches pander to the camera, Becker has deflected credit during press conferences, praising his players while downplaying his own accomplishments.

But his accomplishments speak at a far more deafening decibel level than boisterous boasting ever could: He is the hard-working, hardwood embodiment of Teddy Roosevelt’s proclamation to “speak softly, and carry a big stick.”

All he does is win. (more…)

Several America East coaches carried themselves with character, class and grace while doing terrific jobs steering their programs this season. It’s hard not to go with the head coach of the most dominant regular-season team of the past several years. It’s hard not to go with a coach whose team arguably played as hard as any team we’ve seen in America East ever. It’s hard not to go with coaches who we think are making strong early steps to turning struggling programs around, or a coach that overcame a significant offseason talent drain to put together a team that was arguably better than the year before.

But in the end, every America East coach had the benefit of greeting their teams each day with a reminder of the same goal being contested by every other team. Every coach had that same mountaintop to point towards – except for one who did not. (more…)

Nate Sikma watches, along with the capacity crowd at Patrick Gymnasium, as his three-pointer at the buzzer hangs in the air. Sikma’s shot found the bottom of the net, giving the Hawks a 61-58 win (Photo by Sam Perkins).

(Burlington, VT) – The saying goes that numbers don’t lie, but on a cold Sunday in The Green Mountain State, they did just that.

In nearly every statistical category, host Vermont pasted visiting Hartford: The Catamounts out-rebounded the Hawks by a staggering 20 boards, 34-14, while outscoring Hartford 28-10 in the paint and 27-18 off the bench. Vermont outshot Hartford from the floor (50 percent to 43.9 percent), outscored them in second-chance and fast-break points while taking seven more free throws than the Hawks, who were whistled for 10 more fouls.

But when sophomore forward Nate Sikma’s pick-and-pop three from the left corner found the bottom of the net as the final buzzer echoed off of the back wall of Patrick Gymnasium – a shot that survived the ensuing official review – it was Hartford who walked off the court the 61-58 winner.

Toughness, effort and energy – along with dead-eye sharpshooting from behind the arc – proved to be the great equalizer for the Hawks, who snapped a 15 game losing streak against the Catamounts with their first victory over Vermont since 2006.

“They flat out beat us tonight,” said Vermont forward Luke Apfeld, “They just came out and kind of took it to us on our home court.”

“If you have toughness and energy, if you have those two you can win a lot of games,” said third-year Hartford head coach John Gallagher, whose team improved to 17-10 on the season and 10-6 in conference play.

It wasn’t always pretty, but the Hawks simply played harder for longer than the comatose Catamounts, out-hustling Vermont to loose-balls, getting under the Catamounts’ skin in scrums and flustering and frustrating Vermont’s offense with frenetic D: The Catamounts committed 20 turnovers to just seven assists.

“They were tougher than us across the board today and the turnovers were a clear indicator of that,” said Apfeld.

Playing the majority of the game without star forward and go-to scorer Mark Nwakamma, the Hawks buried 12 three’s while shooting a blistering 48 percent from behind the arc (12-of-25).

“We have toughness; we find ways to win,” said Gallagher. “We’re a program now – we’re much more than just one player.” (more…)

Stony Brook forwards Tommy Brenton (24) and Eric McAlister box out Vermont center Ben Crenca in the Seawolves 65-48 win Friday night (Photo by Sam Perkins).

(Stony Brook, NY) – Only time will tell if this was the “Statement Win” that has long eluded Stony Brook Men’s basketball in its quest for America East supremacy, but the Seawolves sure made a statement Friday night, stomping Vermont.

Squaring off against their bitter-rival – and the team that dashed their NCAA tournament dreams a year ago – before a packed house partisan fans, Stony Brook rose to the occasion, crushing the Catamounts 65-48 in a game no where near as close as the final score. In doing so the Seawolves grabbed a stranglehold of first place in the standings, entrenching themselves on the inside track in the race for a regular season title and the coveted top-seed in the conference tournament.

“We played a real good basketball team in Vermont and we played really well,” said Stony Brook head coach Steve Pikiell.

“They out toughed us; they out-played us; they out-shot us; they kicked us all over,” said Vermont head coach John Becker.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and against a Catamount squad that had bested them in three straight games – including last year’s Championship Game – the Seawolves did just that, holding Vermont to an icy 36.7 percent shooting from the floor (18-of-49) and 26.3 percent from behind the arc (5-of-19). Stony Brook forced 13 Catamounts’ turnovers, turning them into 26 points, and held Vermont to a season-low in scoring.

“Defensively they gave up their bodies,” said Pikiell of his team. “We swarmed today, this was the kind of defense we need to play.”

On offense, the Seawolves used a first-half three-point barrage to space the floor and open up a lead in the first half, before bulldozing the Catamounts in the paint after the intermission.

Freshman center Jameel Warney shrugged off double – and many times, triple – teams in the post to notch a double-double, scoring 12 points on a perfect 5-of-5 shooting to go with 10 rebounds. Warney scored all but two of his points after the intermission and poured in eight points in the opening five minutes of the second half to turn a six point lead into a 14 point runaway.

“Give credit to Vermont in the first half for playing tough defense: They wouldn’t let me get the ball. But you start to see chances open up, and we knew we had to attack,” said Warney, who added a blocked shot and altered several more on the defensive end.

While Warney finished off the Catamounts, it was reserve guard Marcus Rouse who started the romp, scoring a team high 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the floor. Rouse took advantage of the defensive attention being paid to Warney in the paint to drill 4-of-5 shots from the perimeter. (more…)

Sponsored by Sunshine Laundry & Dry Clean
Two locations:
124 Intervale Ave, Burlington, VT 05401 and
Rte. 7, Milton, VT 05468
802-893-4300

Vermont forward Luke Apfeld and Hartford forward Mark Nwakamma battle on the low-blocks for positioning Wednesday night (Photo by Sam perkins).

(West Hartford, CT) – When you live by the three you die by it a lot more.

With 11:37 remaining in the second half, the Hartford Hawks had the ball, a 36-32 lead over visiting Vermont, the momentum, and what looked like a straight-line path to a big upset win.

Hartford didn’t relinquish the ball for the next 1:37 of playing time, ripping down six offensive rebounds during that stretch. But the Hawks didn’t put a single point on the board, clanking all seven of their shots from the floor – including five hastily heaved shots from behind the arc – during the stretch.

“You have certain possessions that are key possessions in a game, because it was four at that time, if one of those goes down it’s seven, the momentum comes back to us,” said Hartford head coach John Gallagher.

After Vermont finally wrestling the ball away from the Hawks, forward Clancy Rugg buried a three at the other end. After the Hawks misfired on another salvo from deep, Forward Brian Voelkel converted two free-throws, giving Vermont the lead and the Catamounts never looked back, pulling away for a 49-43 win.

“Feel fortunate to get a win tonight in all honesty. I thought Hartford was the aggressor tonight for most of the game and we were playing on our heels and I give them a lot of credit,” said Vermont head coach John Becker. “We found a way tonight: this was a game, similar to the Boston University and Maine games on the road where we couldn’t find a way [to win] and tonight we did.”

Hartford held the Vermont to 13 points below their season scoring average and nearly 15 points below their average in conference play. But the Hawks squandered a stellar defensive effort by shooting themselves in the foot and out of the game, building a brick house of three-point bombs, shooting just 5-of-29 from downtown.

“For us right now, defense isn’t the issue; it’s offense,” said Gallagher. (more…)

Boston University Terriers D.J. Irving (left) and Malik Thomas (middle) defend Vermont point guard while Boston University head coach Joe Jones looks on. The Terriers swarming defense and intense energy were the difference, as BU paced Vermont 63-53 Tuesday night (photo by Sam Perkins).

(Boston, MA) – They say that an animal is the most dangerous when it is wounded – the adrenaline is flowing and the instinct to survive at all costs is the strongest. The same is true in Basketball: when a team’s back is up against the wall, the chips are down and its season is on the brink, it is usually the most dangerous.

Facing a fight or flight scenario, with its already depleted roster further decimated by injuries and its season likely hanging in the balance, the Boston University Terriers chose to fight – with furious vengeance.

Boston University overcame the loss of two starters to injury, a decided height disadvantage, the shortest bench in the league and an early 10 point deficit to knock off defending America East Champion Vermont 63-53.

“It was a great character win – there’s no doubt,” said Terriers head coach Joe Jones. “You just saw some guys out there just battling and able to use their quickness and their athletic ability to our advantage: That’s what a BU team should look like.”

The out-gunned and out-manned Terriers relied on guts and guile, and flat out played harder than the heavily favored Catamounts – out-hustling and out-working the bigger and deeper Catamounts for 40 minutes, while imposing their will on Vermont’s vaunted offense. Catamount starters Brian Voelkel, Luke Apfeld and Candon Rusin combined to shoot 0-for-18 from the floor, while Voelkel committed an uncharacteristic five turnovers.

“We were just sloppy with the ball and our best players were throwing the ball all over the gym. Instead of trying to make simple plays, they were trying to make great plays,” said Vermont head coach John Becker.

Undersized forward Dom Morris, the Terriers’ lone low-post threat, chopped down the Catamounts’ trees in the low post, scoring 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting while ripping down 10 rebounds. Guard D.J. Irving scored a game-high 20 points, taking Catamounts defenders off the dribble at will, while dishing out four assists.

“We battled today: It felt like this was the first game that we battled for 40 minutes,” said Morris. (more…)