Hartford at Vermont 2/23/14

Vermont 72 Hartford 47

With a dominating second half Vermont cruised to victory against Hartford.  The Cats can now clinch the regular season title with a win against Stony Brook on Thursday night. Candon Rusin scored all 17 of his points in the second half. The most important aspect of his big second half was that he was able to bounce back from a disastrous first half. Rusin missed his first few shots and then played tentative for the rest of the first half. It is a trend that I have seen before. Rusin was mentally out of the game and in the past he would have remained out of the game. In this game he kept pushing and hit big shot after big shot in the second half. It just continues to speak to his new found maturity as a player. Luke Apfeld had his best game of the season with 14 points and 8 rebounds. It was nice to see Apfeld look more like the player from the last few years and he is now 2 points away from 1,000 for his career. He is a near lock to reach that milestone on senior night. Sandro Carissimo took the game over following Rusin's hot streak and was responsible for stretching the Cats lead. Carissimo was decisive and aggressive while hitting tough shots from all over the floor. Hector Harold broke his o'fer streak and finally hit a shot from the field. That has to be a big monkey off his back. It was very evident that Vermont missed Kurt Steidl as he was in street clothes reportedly recovering from the flu. I certainly hope he is ready a raring to go for Stony Brook. Vermont needs his outside shooting to create space for the Bigs to go to work underneath. This was another game where Vermont's defense wore a team down. Hartford shot 24% in the second half including 1-11 from three. That is the formula to beat Hartford and the Cats were able to make adjustments and execute in the second half. I personally cannot wait for the match up against Sony Brook. It should be a great game.

There were three recruits in the stands for today's game. They are all 2014 recruits and I am fairly certain that Vermont only has 1 open scholarship available. The number of recruits is interesting and maybe the coaching staff has a plan to try and land all three but either way I guess it is good exposure for the program. The three recruits were: Willem Brandwijk from the Netherlands by way of the Holderness school in New Hampshire. He is a 6-9 power forward who can shoot and is already physically college ready. Elijah Bryant is a 6-4 shooting guard from Georgia who is an exceptional athlete and a lockdown defender. The last recruit at the game was Jeff Spellman, a 6-1 point guard from Boston who has a great basketball sense and skill set. I don't know how they all fit into Vermont's plans but they were taking in the game today.