America East Basketball News & Notes

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The America East conference season is getting closer by the day. The conference is having success against leagues like the Atlantic-10 which the league can boast five wins over. Here is some other good news from the America East.

The Vermont Catamounts, (7-3), are starting to hit their stride as conference season nears. Last week, they extended their win streak to four games with wins over George Mason, and the preseason pick in the Ivy League, Harvard.

The Cats are getting it done on the defensive end allowing only 68.6 points per game. Their margin of victory is a plus 8.2 (they scored at 76.8 a game, give up 68.6). As always, they will be hard to beat in league play.

Junior Anthony Lamb keeps filling it up. If he keeps this up, they will be even more difficult to handle. He is off to a great start for Vermont as he leads the conference in scoring averaging 20.6 a game. He also leads the league in blocks (2.3 per contest). Last week, he was named the #AEHoops player of the week as he scored a career-high 37 on the Crimson last Saturday night. The points came on 14 field goal makes. Earlier in the week, he poured through 19 points and seven rebounds in Vermont’s win over George Mason.

Binghamton is off to a slow start. At three and seven, things need to turn around for this to be a good year. One player doing his best to turn things in the right way is Freshman guard, Sam Sessoms. For the third time this season, Sessoms has been named the Rookie of the week. He averaged 21 points and three assists in two games last week. He shot (15-30) from the field and a ridiculous 8-16 from behind the arc.

The UMass Lowell Riverhawks, at (6-6), are finding their legs early on. One thing for sure is they are already good at distributing the basketball. Heading into their game last Friday night, the Riverhawks were leading the nation in total assists (187) and in the league at 17 a game.

Senior Ryan Jones leads America East in assists with 4.8 per ballgame.

The offense has benefited from the good passing. They lead the league in offense at 82.9 points per game. The Riverhawks also have three of the top four in field goal percentage. Christian Lutete is second at .534 (70-131), Alex Rivers is third at .529 (55- 104), and Obadiah Noel is fourth at .528 (66-125).

The Riverhawks are also getting minutes from Josh Gantz. He is currently ranked second in the nation in total minutes (381.53) this year. Gantz is boasting a new career-high in playing time averaging 34.4 minutes a game.