Big One in Boston: A Battle For Second Place

The Vermont Catamounts will trek down south to take on the Boston Terriers on Wednesday night, in a TV game that will decide second place, outright, in America East. The game could have other ramifications in regard to conference tournament seeding, and, ultimately, home court advantage in the conference championship. I am getting way ahead of myself, but the bottom line is that this is a big game for both teams.

The two teams sit tied in second place at 7-2. Of course, Vermont pummeled BU on January 5th, 83-69. This will provide Vermont some confidence, but it will always provide BU with some extra incentive: payback. More importantly, it also means that if Vermont wins this game, they will own the tiebreaker over BU when it comes tournament time. If BU wins, they would still have a chance at grabbing a higher seed should the two teams hold the same record when conference play ends. Again, I digress.

Preview after the jump!

After the first game these two teams played, I said that BU has the pieces but no chemistry. That was true when I saw them in early January. They were on a seven game losing streak, DJ Irving was just coming back from an injury, Darryl Partin was shooting like Butch Cassidy, and they looked like a team that had never practiced together. Now, it is a different story. BU is trying to bounce back from their only loss since then, a 9-point road loss to first-place Stony Brook. In between the two games, they won seven straight, averaging 68 points while giving up just 53 points per game. BU has turned itself around in a couple of ways: they have recommitted themselves to defense, DJ Irving has regained his pre-injury form (and then some), and Darryl Partin has been lighting it up... while taking a whopping 33.0% of BU's shots (4th in the country). He is on the floor 85% of the time, ranking 101st in the country. Partin is going to take his shots, whether they are good ones or not, and Brendan Bald is going to have to try and make sure they are not. Sandro Carissimo is going to have to do a heck of a job guarding Irving, which he did last game, but now Irving is healthy and ready to take it at him. And Dom Morris and Patrick Hazel are a pretty tough matchup for Vermont's bigs, probably the second toughest in the league (after Stony Brook). And I'm not saying their bigs are great, but think about the rest of conference... yeah. Expect to see a healthy dose of Pat Bergmann, Ben Crenca, Luke Apfeld, and Clancy Rugg. The game could hinge on their ability to play defense in the post and control the boards.

On the Vermont side of the ball, what can you say? Hopefully this is the game where Brendan Bald finally takes over and makes us believe he is a marquee player, but I have been saying that for 23 games and it probably won't be. You have to assume Matt Glass will get his 10-15 points, Voelkel will be in between 7-12 rebounds, and Apfeld will have four fouls contribute offensively, on the glass, and defensively. Four McGlynn and Sandro Carissimo could be the x-factors offensively: if they can hit a few threes between the two of them, that would be huge.

All-in-all this should be a great America East matchup between the two premier programs in the conference: Boston University and the University of Vermont. The game will be broadcast on ESPN3. There is good reason for that.