Roster information

Today on Twitter, UVM men's basketball tweeted a season preview from collegesportsmadness.com where they picked Vermont #112 in the country and #2 in the America East. A fair assessment on both counts. Nothing to post about. However as part of the preview there was a rundown of the newcomers to the Catamounts roster. On the list of newcomers was Finn Sullivan, a 6-4 senior guard transferring from the University of San Diego. It was a name I recognized because early on after Sullivan had entered the portal, I read that Vermont had been in contact. Since that point there is Zero (and I mean ZERO) information online about the rest of Sullivan's transfer process. Now here is a the funny part of the story. I was at the Five Guys on Shelburne Road about a month ago and I saw new Catamount Kameron Gibson grabbing some lunch with another guy. I was racking my brain but didn't know who it was at the time. All of a sudden while revisiting information on Sullivan today, I realized that is who Gibson was with. So with the preview and my fast food encounter, I feel that despite the lack of info, Sullivan has indeed joined the team. This is a great under the radar addition to the Vermont program. Sullivan is a versatile guard with good size and length. He dealt with injuries during his sophomore season and last season as a junior his season (like everyone elses) was disrupted by COVID. He is an intense player who wants to win and one of his goals in the portal was to find a winning program. Sullivan has shown flashes of potential but has struggled to find consistency. Over the course of his 74 career games he has averaged 6 ppg. His numbers have steadily improved each year and he shot 37% from deep last season while averaging a career high 2.7 assists. His shooting efficiency is an area of weakness but one that should improve with the system at Vermont. This is the type of player that Vermont has shown the ability to maximize their effectiveness by deploying them in short bursts and mixing and matching lineups where they will be most effective. Filling a 3 and D role off the bench with the added bonus of being a good passer will really help Vermont fill in some of the gaps in their rotation. This year's team is going to be a team where they function more as a collective unit 1-10 rather than relying on a few superstars. Another good piece for Vermont. Just one more reason why Five Guys is great. 

Some random thoughts and NIL stuff

Hello all! I am sure like me you are clamouring for some Catamount related information. It has been a incredibly quiet offseason thus far. With no basketball camps the program is quietly going about getting ready for the upcoming season. On the recruiting front the lack of information is somewhat due to how the extra COVID year  of eligibility is affecting roster construction. Next year's roster (including walk-ons) is at 18 players. 14 or 15 of those players are on scholarship. That leaves no wiggle room to offer scholarships for recruits in the 2022 class. After this COVID year teams will have to go back to only 16 total players and 13 scholarship players. So this year's recruiting trail is going to be pretty quiet. Also recruiting has fundamentally changed with the one time transfer rule. The April-May transfer period is going to be equally as significant for roster construction with players moving freely between teams. All in all there is probably not going to be a lot of news. 

The big news right now is how the new Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) guidelines will affect college athletics. It is an absolutely a welcome and necessary change that has been a long time coming in college athletics. The amateurism model has been archaic for some time and it is about time it was modernised. This discussion around NIL gets very lopsided as attention gets focused on big deals for the most famous and high profile athletes and there will certainly be some big time money thrown around. However many of the students that are going to benefit from this are the ones with YouTube channels, big followings on Tik Tok or Instagram, and other tech/social media savvy athletes. Also sports like track where product endorsement is big, will greatly benefit athletes. For Vermont athletes specifically there will be ample opportunities to partner with local business as there will be no competition from pro sports or other colleges. It will be a very interesting part of being a fan this year as there will be many interesting stories of the creative and different was on which athletes choose to make money. 

That is all for. Enjoy the Summer!