Bucknell at Vermont 11/25/18

Bucknell 69 Vermont 61

The Cats came out flat in the second half and fell to Bucknell. After an impressive performance against Yale on Wednesday this was a pendulum swing in the other direction. This Vermont team is going to have wild swings to both extremes of effectiveness due to their youth and inexperience. Bucknell did a great job making second half adjustments and Becker really struggled to find the right combination of players. There were several times in the second half where Vermont's offense was stalling and it was partially due to some strange on court combinations and guys not really knowing their role. The team looked hesitant and back on their heels for most of the second half while Bucknell made all the right plays to win the game. Bucknell is another very well coached program with players who are accustomed to winning. They were the team that was able to execute down the stretch. After the best game of his career Anthony Lamb came crashing back down to earth. Lamb struggled mightily in this one shooting 2-14 from the field including not making a field goal in the second half. Combine that with Stef Smith shooting 3-10 and it is not hard to see how Vermont finished the game shooting only 32% from the field including 25% from three. The game was very physical and choppy and Vermont really struggled to get any sort of offensive flow. Ernie Duncan was the lone bright spot as we was able to hit the 20 point mark for the first time this season on 6-9 shooting from the field. With this group relying more on a few scorers rather than the balanced scoring of years past, games where the team leaders are struggling are harder to overcome. Vermont's bench play is a major work in progress and because of the inexperience, Becker is experimenting quite a bit to try and find out which players are going to be most effective in which situations. Now the Cats are on the road for the next three games. You learn a lot more about a team after a loss than you do after a win so it will be interesting to see how this group responds during this road trip.