uvm4life20

Our other guards are doing worse besides Sandro of course. Blue 0-2 2 to's. Rusin 0-1 2 fouls in 7 minutes. Guard play is not very good right now.

Blakely4Prez

The 1-3-1 is awful today...seen them give up atleast 5 wide open threes where they are scurrying to cover. That last three before half pretty much sums it up.

Vermonster

Every time we had momentum it seemed there was an offensive foul call.

UVM Hoop Cat

Well, looks like I did not miss much by not attending the game or watching online.

URI is a better team than their record indicates having played a tough OOC schedule. They clearly have some good young talent that Hurley has brought in. URI has a bright future ahead under Hurley.

Fine with not winning but disappointed we weren't more competitive- although it looks like we were able to finally start making some shots at the end.

+12 rebounding margin but 17 turnovers....doesn't read like a particularly good defensive night and even less offense. Getting only 3 points- thank you Brendan Kilpatrick- from the SG position for the bulk of the game (looks like Rusin caught fire at the end) is not going to cut it most nights.

Oh well, not going to win them all- not a bad loss to a team that will steal some wins this season in A10. On to the next one- which I believe is Towson at home. CANNOT lose to them and Coach Pat Sketchy at home.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

THE802

didnt see it but my guess is tired legs ...they just didn't close out on the URI shooters and offensivly just short on thier shots and slow to thier spots on the floor. They did play bad and URI is good enough to take that advantage for the win

jtmac

Didn't get a chance to tune in to the game. One thing from the stat that sticks out is Voelkel only played 16 minutes. That must of had something do to with the first half performance and the overall score. Any thoughts?

lbvterp

I went to the game. Voelkel had foul trouble. Got mixed up in a double foul in the first half. It limited UVM's rebounding for much of the game.

Frankly, URI is just more athletic than the Cats and controlled the game. They were out rebounded much of the game. The Cats have to shoot well to hang around against the teams from higher profile conferences. That did not happen today. I didn't see Elbaum as the problem as someone else noted. Besides Rugg, no one else stepped up inside. Needed a good game from O'Day. Blue was also ineffective, as was Rusin until late. The last 6 minutes of the 1st half decided the game. A game similar to Harvard was needed to win this one.

Beautiful facility though. I like the Ryan Center.

littlemanwithpants

I listened to the game on the radio and the thing that stood out to me was the pace... It was frenetic. Not Catamount basketball at all... Unless we're on, we just can't try to play up to teams like that... Everything about it seemed a bit bit rushed and desperate. From the play all the way to the substitutions... Big eyes after Harvard maybe?....

The other thing I wanted to bring up is that I believe Harvard is the only team we've beat that hasn't been beaten by another AE team.. And they're in a down year.. I think we're good but we definitely aren't going to breeze through the tournament.....

RF1

Hard to believe that it just hit its 10th anniversary. The first official game was played there in November, 2002.

UVM Hoop Cat

Nothing new here. If we are fortunate enough to make it through the AE Tournament again, we'll have to grind it out. Probably a lot like last year.

I haven't felt like we'd breeze through the tournament since 2004-05.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

littlemanwithpants

It absolutely is new as we try to gauge this teams abilities and how it stacks up against other AE teams.... And as far as "breezing through" this was more tongue and cheek and not meant to be literal...

UVM04

I'm a little late in replying, but I attended the game so I thought I'd share my in-person observations.

I think the bottom is this: UVM was seriously outclassed in both size and athleticism and could not overcome that disparity. The game was illustrative of the basic difference between A-10 caliber players and America East players. You simply do not see that kind of length and quickness, along with bulk on the interior, in the America East, at least not on a regular basis and certainly not all on the same team. Frankly, UVM seemed overwhelmed by it, even when the game was close.

Obviously, UVM has outplayed the athleticism deficit in the past, but I think it's wrong to expect this particular Vermont team to do so on a regular basis. Winning such games requires someone able to score in variety of ways through ingenuity (e.g., Four McGlynn), and versatile players who can play multiple positions and defend on both the perimeter and interior (e.g., Matt Glass). This team doesn't have such players. Rusin and Blue are solid shooters, but struggle to create their own shots, particularly against quick guards. Against URI, just getting the ball across half-court in a controlled manner was a bit of high-wire act for anyone other than Sandro (including Elbaum).

That said, I agree with those who have expressed concern over how the game played out. UVM failed miserably in responding to URI's first-half run. As URI continued to score and force turnovers, our defense became undisciplined and porous, and the offense completely devolved into rushed shots and individuals trying to do too much (at one point, and probably based partly on a bit of over-confidence from his Harvard performance, Sandro launched a fade-away three off the dribble with plenty of time on the shot clock that fell about four feet short of the rim). If this team is to have any chance against athletically superior teams, it has to play solid team defense, and score within the offense.

Finally, I note how much better our offense operates against a zone (harvard and northeastern) than man-to-man (every other team, I think). I think this goes directly to our lack of good one-on-one players, and is very concerning. We can move the ball, and we can make shots when open, but no one seems able (at least consistently) to break down individual defenders and hit contested perimeter shots. And this has been true since the St. Mikes/Concordia games. It will likely be a problem during conference play and may be our downfall in the conf. tournament.

UVM Hoop Cat

+1

Great post. Excellent observations


I agree especially with the point about lacking players this year that lack offensive ingenuity. Against tough, athletic man-to-man defense and when our offensive system breaks down we lack someone that can create offense and get us going. Four and to a lesser extent Glass (who was a match up problem in AE b/c of ability to play inside/out) were the players really capable of that last season. Four's offense was the catalyst in so many key games for us last year- South Florida, BU home and away, SBU home, and Hartford AE tourney most people remember Sandro's key shot but Four scored 13pts in a row for us in that game- I do not see any player on this roster capable of putting points on the board in that way. Hopefully we don't need it- but if we do I do not believe we have it.


Talent wise and depth-wise we have as much as any team in the conference, but when we're not controlling things on offense and getting what we want to get, we can be beaten by any team in the league- I think last season was a great example of that as we lost to a winless Binghamton team but were able to beat Stony Brook at their place in the AE championship game. Just two complete polar opposites- and I don't see this year being much different.

The saving grace is..we will not see teams with URI's athleticism/length in AE. There are a few teams that play tough man, but only a few.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005

Jim Patrick

I pretty much agree with what the 2 previous posts said. URI was more athletic, but I feel that the problem we have had, pretty much since Lonergan took over is that the style we play does not allow us to come back from being down 20 points. We are a patient, ball control, good rebounding and good defending team that is happy to trade baskets knowing that we will go on a couple 4-0 or 6-0 runs and win by 10. We rarely press because that is not the tempo we want to dictate. URI was able to take us out of our game and we did not play well. You can say we shot bad, foul trouble, guards played bad but it was URI that made these things happen. That being said, 1 game is not the end of the season, this is still a very good team and our style of play has shown that it can be effective. On to the next game............on another note, does anyone feel Sandro should look to score more? It seems he can get to the rim no matter who is guarding him and that opens up his 14ft pull up. It seems like sometimes he is to content running the offense and gets "lost" for stretches....maybe he could turn into our go-to scorer?

UVM Hoop Cat

I think Sandro is doing a terrific job picking his spots, and he's the one guy I can think of that's the guy that can "get us going" when we need to find some offense.

So I don't think he should necessarily be looking to do more- he's doing a lot as it is right now. I'd like to see some other guys stepping up and being more consistent.

I'm not alarmed losing to URI in the least and it's unrealistic to think we'll win every game. If someone would have told me we'd be 4-2 to start the year with only losses to UConn and URI I'd be pumped. We look better than we did to start last season.

I do think we need to see some guys start shooting the ball better- both Clancy and Luke are sub 40%- they are both better than that. Rusin is 33% from 3, that should improve. Clancy is 0-12 from 3- hopefully he starts hitting some because teams will continue to give him that shot.

__________________
"Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here"
- Hoosiers,
& UVM mens basketball NCAA's 2005