America East Basketball News & Notes: Vermont Clinches Spot

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There are three weeks left in the America East Conference basketball season. One of the top four seeds has been clinched by the Vermont Catamounts. It should be noted that they have never been lower than a four-seed since 2006. Vermont had a 2-0 week and now has a two-game lead on Bryant and a two and a half game lead on UMass Lowell. The Catamounts have a game left with both of those teams. Those games will take place in Burlington, VT. Another team making a late-season push is UMBC who also won both of their games last week to move into sixth place in the league standings. Let’s take a look at what’s ahead for the league.

In the Small Conference Top 25 poll, Vermont is at #7, UMass Lowell is at #11 and Bryant is at #19. In the Mid-Major Top 25 poll, Vermont is at #17. In the Net Ranking, Vermont is at #104, UMass Lowell is at #139, and Bryant is at #158. These three teams will meet each other one more time in the coming weeks. Bryant (17-10, 9-3) will head to Burlington, VT this Saturday for their only game of the week vs Vermont (21-6, 11-1). The River Hawks (17-7, 8-3) will get their last chance against the Catamounts on March 2 in Burlington.

Vermont has been a model of consistency since arriving in America East. With their two wins last week over New Hampshire and Maine, Vermont now has 15 straight seasons with 20 wins. Thursday night’s 70-54 victory over the Wildcats (14-10, 6-5) was the 300th win of head coach John Becker’s career at Vermont. The 15th straight campaign of 20 wins makes them the third program in the country that can make that claim. The other two are Gonzaga and Kansas. The Catamounts have Thursday night off before their showdown with the Bulldogs. The first meeting took place in Smithfield, RI. Vermont was the winner by a 67-57 score. In that game, Vermont had 35 points off the bench, 27 of them came from Aaron Deloney (12) and Nick Forillo with 15. That would offset the duo of Earl Timberlake who had 16 and Sherif Gross-Bullock who had a double-double of 12 and 10.

Bryant had a chance to create some separation for themselves on Saturday afternoon when they hosted the River Hawks. The 86-77 loss to UMass Lowell means they are tied in the loss column heading into this week’s games. Guard play was the difference in this one. The River Hawks got a combined 60 points from Yuri Covington (27) who was this week’s AE Player of the Week, Ayinde Hikim (21), and Brayden O’Connor (12). It would be better than the 42 points combined from Timberlake (22) and Gross-Bullock (20). Both of these players played the full 40 minutes as each team played only seven guys. The win by the River Hawks was their tenth on the road this season. That’s the most in all of Division I basketball. On Thursday night, they can inch closer to the Bulldogs as they begin a three-game home stand vs Binghamton (12-13, 4-8).

UMBC (9-18, 4-8) has gotten hot at the right time and they are being led by the conference’s leading scorer, Dion Brown who is averaging 21.5 points per game. They are also getting help from this week’s AE Rookie of the Week Franck Emmou. He averaged nine points, 4.5 boards, and two assists in last week’s wins. In the victory over the Bearcats, Emmou had 16 points and six rebounds. Against UAlbany on Saturday, he had six points, three rebounds, and three assists in the 80-75 win. UMBC now hits the road for two more big games vs Maine on Thursday then UNH on Saturday.

The battle to stay out of last place in the league right now is between NJIT (7-17, 3-9) and the Maine Black Bears (11-15, 4-8). Maine got off to such a good start back in November and December. However, they have fallen on hard times since the conference season took over. On Saturday, these two will meet in Orono, ME. in another big game. The first time they met was back on January 20, with the Black Bears getting the win 70-64.

Next week we’ll look at the next to last week of the regular season in the America East Conference.