Vermont at Harvard 12/21/13

Harvard 74 Vermont 68

Finally. The team that I know and love made an appearance. Vermont was unable to get the win but finally looked like the championship team of the last few years. Harvard is a very good team and will be a force come March. There were several aspects of this game that reinvigorated my belief in this team. Building off the UMass Lowell second half, the Cats defense was much improved. Many of 74 points that were given up were largely due to fouling for the last two minutes of the game. Chambers shot the lights out for Harvard but outside of letting him loose, Vermont looked like their old selves on defense. Brian Voelkel shut down Wesley Saunders, who is Harvard's top scorer. Vermont also out rebounded Harvard and forced them into some crucial turnovers. This is the kind of game that this team is able to put together on any given night. There were still some crucial mistakes, bad free throw misses, a scoring drought, and a partridge in a pear tree (Merry Xmas). However, that has always been the nature of this team and until the beginning of this season they had always overcome those challenges. I was especially impressed by the fact that even though Vermont once again came out flat, they were able to turn up the heat before the second half. In my last post I mentioned Vermont competing at Harvard and using it as a building block to finish the rest of the non conference with a flourish. The Cats completed the first part of that mission and now will hopefully be able to push through and finish strong. This is still a team capable of winning the conference title and they have their best basketball ahead of them. Voelkel was able to pull down his 1,000 career rebound and this accomplishment should not be taken lightly. That makes him only the 3rd UVM player and the 9th player in America East history to reach that milestone. The 1,000 rebound club is much smaller than the 1,000 point club and is a very difficult accomplishment. Hats off to Brian. Individually however, this game was all about Sandro Carissimo. He scored a career high 30 points and hit big shot after big shot. Carissimo does not always assert himself in games but is a very crafty and capable scorer. I love the way he plays and am really going to miss his grit when he graduates. The funny thing is his two highest scoring games are now both at Harvard's gym. Makes me happy we got him because clearly he would have averaged 20 points per game if he had played at Harvard (.......crickets). Anyway, now Vermont has an lengthy holiday layoff before returning to play Lyndon State at home. A game that will be a good time to see some of the inured players get some reps and see Voelkel get the assists he needs to move into second place all time at UVM. Heck, maybe he will finally get that elusive triple double. I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my blog thus far because it sure has been fun.