University of Vermont (7-4, 0-0)
College of Charleston (7-4, 1-0)
Patrick Gymnasium, VT
Tipoff Saturday at 2pm on uvmathletics.com
Hope everyone out there had a happy holidays! After a week long layoff the Cougars are squeezing in two road games up in New England before we ring in 2013. They will take on Vermont tomorrow afternoon and then travel down to Poughkeepsie for a New Years Eve matchup against Marist.
The game tomorrow is the long anticipated rematch of the 2011 Bracketbuster game in Charleston between these two teams. That was the game in which Andrew Goudelock suddenly turned into a point guard and Willis Hall scored a career-high 22 points en route to a dominant Cougar victory on ESPNU.
Both teams are very different now. Only Willis, Trent Wiedeman and Andrew Lawrence had any minutes against this team two years ago and the Catamounts have unfortunately graduated their mustachioed forward.
The Cougars have played a lot better on the road this season but it's hard to predict what kind of performance we're going to have following Christmas break. Coach Wojcik expressed optimism that Trent will play on this trip and that may or may not be a good idea given how Vermont has been playing. Like the Cougars, the Catamounts have been a very up-and-down squad this year. The only opponent the two teams have shared this season was Towson, who beat the Cats 68-64 in Towson. But Vermont also has some quality wins over Harvard and Quinnipiac.
From what I've been hearing about Vermont, their problems stem from giving up too many turnovers against bigger teams playing a man-to-man defense. I know that has some of you salivating. The Cougars certainly fall into the bigger and man-to-man D categories but the Catamounts are capable of playing very disciplined and efficiently on offense. The scoring is pretty balanced between all five starters and the team runs a lot of sets to get their wing players cutting to the basket. The front court of Apfeld (6'7) and freshman Ethan O'Day (6'9) is about equivalent size-wise to teams we'll face in the SoCon so it'll be interesting to see how CofC's inside-out offense takes advantage.
The Cougars have better rebounding numbers than the Cats but we do turn it over more (that statement won't change for a while). We're 7-0 all time against the America East Conference and we'll learn a lot about the tops of the AE and SoCon after this one. Vermont was picked in the preseason to once again represent their conference in the NCAA Tournament. Should be a good one. Go Cougars!
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