Vermont Sticks to Script and Keeps Winning

If you've ever watched a sports movie -- in other words, if you are reading this -- then you know the time-honored formula employed by the genre:

Step one; a rag-tag team starts off with little hope of success and stumbles out of the gate.

Step two; the team has an inciting moment that propels them toward the once unfathomable success. This part is followed by a three minute montage of the team putting it together while some song like Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" bangs in the background.

Step three; the team hits a rut, and things feel like maybe they were never meant to be.

Step four; the team rallies around a player, one who always had a special amount of attention paid to him (or her, in some movies, maybe?), and wins it all -- whatever "it all" might be, and even if there are games afterword that nobody cares about. (For movies where the climactic game isn't the championship, or equivalent, see: Major League, For Love of the Game, Fast Break, Any Given Sunday, the 2005 Vermont Catamounts remake of Hoosiers... wait, that's not an actual movie? Seriously? I've watched it, I don't know what you're talking about.)

Buster explains what in the world he is getting at after the jump.

Some of the keys to this four-step, fool-proof methodology and how they apply to Vermont's 2011-2012 season:

-Step one has to be really, really ugly. Like losing-a-bunch-of-games-in-a-row ugly. Like this-may-never-ever-stop ugly, even though you know they'll come back. Vermont example: This is actually a tough one. The obvious choice would be the five game losing streak back in December, but there's a problem with that which I will get to later. Basically, it happened too early in the season and Vermont did not exactly go on cruise control after that. I think my pick would be the loss on the road to UNH. Not only did it jump start the team, Vermont fell to 9-10, and 3-2 in conference, and it would mean a similarly low point that would be keyed on right before the UNH rock-bottom-loss is the Stony Brook loss in the first game of conference play. This would initially feel like the low point until the UNH game happened.

-There has to be a charismatic, oddly-named player -- described in step four -- who carries the team at some points. Vermont example: I mean... Four!

-There has to be a foe with which you become familiar with throughout the movie, like a bad-guy team that the chosen team plays during steps 1-3. Usually this team is part of the vicious assault during step one. Vermont example: Stony Brook. Or perhaps BU if it should happen to unfold like that. But the Stony Brook example is better because the first game of conference play would have introduced us to the evil, grind-it-out basketball that Stony Brook played. Dallis Joyner and Tommy Brenton would be portrayed as enormous behemoths programed to win basketball games. Brian Dougher would be the cocky, I-can-make-any-shot type of player. All of this, to go along with the team that beat up on them last year in the tournament, which would be mentioned heavily, of course. AND they're called the "Seawolves". It's perfect.

-The most important part: the climax must be a victory, or an extremely heart-wrenching loss that you kind of see coming (see: Friday Night Lights, Coach Carter, or, my favorite example of this, Tin Cup). Vermont example: This will of course occur if, and when Vermont makes it to the AE championship. For an example of a victory, think Coppenrath coming back from the injury and dropping 43 on Maine. For on example of the latter, think Trimboli loses the ball... actually, we don't need to go there, do we?

The Vermont Catamounts find themselves firmly embedded in step two: an Iggy Pop montage of a nine game win streak, complete with Four McGlynn and Sandro Carissimo tickling the twine, Matt Glass and Luke Apfeld throwing down dunks, Brian Voelkel yanking down rebounds, Brendan Bald scrapping steals away from the other team, and John Becker drawing x's and o's on a white board. ("Lust for life!) Occasionally, you hear the melodic voice of Chris Villani saying things like, "Four, wants three... ITS GOOD!" ("Lust for life!")

But this part of the Disney script happened a year ago, no Catamount fan will have forgotten that. They went on an 10 game win streak to wrap up the regular season crown. Even non-sports enthusiasts would fall for that as an accomplishment; "wait, they clinched the America East regular season championship? Is that even a big deal?". No, surely you would not make a movie out of last season and cut out the postseason tournament. It wouldn't feel special. You might, however, make a movie out of Vermont's 2010 season: Marqus Blakely put Vermont on his shoulders and led them to the promised land. It didn't matter that they got shellacked by Syracuse, that was step five -- it wouldn't have to be in the movie!

So to complete this formula, Vermont needs to first pick up wins against UMBC and Binghamton. (I, for one, think BracketBusters is a joke and don't really care about the game against Niagara). Then they need to do what they could not last year: win the America East tournament, which they would have a chance to do on their home floor.

That, my friends, would be a hollywood ending.