America East Basketball News and Notes: Conference Slate's Final Month

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Here we go. The final month of the America East conference season is on. At the moment, three teams look to be in pretty good shape to host first-round games when the conference tournament gets started. The fourth, which at this time is Albany, has a two-game lead in the loss column over both New Hampshire and UMass Lowell. The fourth spot looks like it will be a tight race down to the end. Here are more goings-on in the league.

On Saturday night, Vermont once again took care of business on the road. The 86-75 win was the Catamounts seventh win in a row and was paced by Mr. Everything, Anthony Lamb. He went off for 34 points on 10-of-17 shooting from the field and a perfect 10-for-10 from the foul line. Lamb was one of three players in double-figures on the night for Vermont as the team shot 50% from the floor in the win. Helping the cause for the Catamounts was 20 assists on 31 made baskets to go along with four blocked shots and six steals. It’s starting to look like Vermont is beginning to make their move toward home court throughout the America East Tournament.

As for Mr. Lamb, he is the America East Player of the Week. In two road wins last week, Lamb averaged 26.5 points and four rebounds in games against the Great Danes and the Wildcats. Against UNH, Lamb went for 20 points in a 56-43 victory. He is now fifth in the conference scoring race averaging 16 points per game and is third in blocked shots with one and a half a game. He is second in defensive rebounding getting almost six per ballgame. This is Anthony’s second weekly honor of the season and the ninth of his career.

The Rookie of the Week is Moses Flowers of Hartford. in a 2-0 week for the Hawks, Flowers averaged 15 points and six rebounds. He scored 15 in both wins over Binghamton and Maine. For Flowers, this is his third weekly honor of the season. He had one each in the months of December and January.

Stony Brook has been leading the league in blocked shots for most of the season. They have been averaging five a game through their first 22 ballgames. Nationally, they are 18th in block percentage at 14.5%. They are 13th in total blocks with 110, and 21 in blocked shots per game at 5.2. The Seawolves have the top two shot blockers in the conference in Mo Gueye with 49, and Jeff Otchere with 40. In their win over Albany back on January 18, Elijah Olaniyi became the 27th member of the program to record 1,000 points for his career.

The UNH Wildcats are quite a rebounding machine this season. Heading into their game with the River Hawks last Saturday, the Wildcats were number two in the nation in both total rebounds per game (42.65), and in defensive rebounds per game (30.95). Jayden Martinez leads the team in both scoring and rebounding and has six double-doubles to his credit. The six double-doubles have him tied with two other players for most on the team. As you might expect, the Wildcats lead the league in all of the rebounding stats.

Though it has been a tough stretch for the UMass Lowell River Hawks, there are some good things going on with them that are worth noting. The team is ranked 32nd in the country in total assists (332) and Christian Lutete is ranked 12th in total points with 457. The team leads the league in assists averaging 15.9 a game and is second in steals with seven a night. They have the best assists/turnovers ratio at 1.10 (332 assists to 312 turnovers) and have the best field goal percentage at 45%. The River Hawks have shot better than 45% eleven times so far this season and when leading at halftime, they are 7-1.

On the women’s side of the league, the rematch of last Wednesday night’s game between Stony Brook and Lowell will take this Wednesday night at Tsongas Center in Lowell. Last week, it was all Stony Brook as they took over first place in the league with a 60-41 win at home. The Seawolves, in the process, earned votes in the Women AP Top-25 for the second straight week. They will bring an 18-game winning streak to Lowell on Wednesday night (21-1,9-0) while the River Hawks will be looking to grab a piece of first place back with a win on home court. The River Hawks are 12-10 overall and 8-1 in league play.

That’s it for this week. Stay tuned next week for more from America East.