Vermont’s maddening OOC season continues with 30-point loss at Dartmouth

By Ray Curren (@currenrr)

HANOVER, N.H. — “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” is the original Shakespeare line from Henry IV, Part 2, but you probably know it as the distorted “heavy is the crown” (also a new Linkin Park song for those so inclined).

But the Vermont men’s basketball team has worn the America East crown without a care in the world for the last eight years, the top postseason tournament seed in each of those seasons, with five NCAA Tournament appearances (the only two tournament blemishes a 2021 loss to Hartford in the COVID season and a 2018 finals loss to UMBC, who decided to make history the next week).

This season, however, that crown suddenly seems to weigh a ton, and it didn’t get any lighter Saturday afternoon with an embarrassing 84-54 beatdown at the hands of Dartmouth, who came in at No. 318 in KenPom off a home loss to Le Moyne on Wednesday. The Catamounts currently are sixth in America East in the computers, 106 spots behind leader UMass Lowell.

What has gone wrong?

“This feels different than other teams that struggled in non-conference for us,” head coach John Becker, now in his 14th season, said. “We’ve had sub-.500 records in non-league play. But I don’t feel like we’re getting better. Those teams, win or lose, we could figure out a rotation and there was some consistency on offense. This year, we’re taking one step forward, one step back. Depending on the day and how the guys feel, we can be good, and then we can lose to anybody. This feels like uncharted territory for my teams at UVM in that it doesn’t feel like we’re playing our best basketball as league play begins.”

The simple answer is Vermont can’t seem to shoot this season. Just three years ago, the Catamounts (6-8) were third nationally in effective field goal percentage, a team that gave Arkansas all it could handle in the NCAA Tournament, led by Ryan Davis and Ben Shungu. That finished a stretch of 10 straight seasons in the top 100 in that stat, with five of those in the top 30. Last season saw a bit of a dropoff, as Vermont fell to 124th in effective field goal percentage (51.6) and 170th in offensive efficiency, even though it went 28-7 (and 18-1 in America East play) thanks to a stifling defense.

As Saturday proved, the defense hasn’t been great in 2024-25, either, currently 132nd after Dartmouth’s 1.25 points per possession. But the offense has been whatever adjective you want to insert: feeble, impotent, bad.

The Catamounts are a stunning 317th in efficiency,  and 302nd in effective field goal percentage (46.7 percent), even more baffling because they returned a lot from last year’s squad, seven of the nine top scorers. Unfortunately for them, the leading scorer—TJ Long—missed the last six games before returning Saturday and reaggravating his leg injury.

That obviously hasn’t helped. Dartmouth zoned Vermont throughout and the Catamounts went 6-for-28 from three, a number padded by a trip of late triples. When UVM did go inside (against a poor interior defense that was torched by conference rival UMass Lowell last weekend), it couldn’t get much going outside of Nick Fiorillo, finishing 15-for-31 on two-point shots. For the season, the Catamounts are only at 47.5 percent from inside the arc, the last time they finished lower than 50 percent was in 2013-14.

“We played really well our last game (a home win over Miami University), moved the ball, found the open guy, made some shots, and got to the free throw line,” Becker said. “We just didn’t do any of that today. Our offense has been a struggle. We’ve got to do a better job coaching that and figuring out the best way to play with this group.”

What do you do when you can’t hit shots? Vermont had been able to lean on TJ Hurley this season, but he had a miserable shooting afternoon Saturday and the team collapsed around him. Center Ileri Ayo-Feleye leads the team at 35.9 percent from three, but has made just two of his last 17 from long distance. Ironically, the Catamounts’ opponent Saturday has traditionally struggled shooting, but has been on fire of late, as freshman Connor Amundsen hit seven of eight 3-pointers as Dartmouth was 13-of-26 from behind the arc.

“We’ve had to ride with him because he’s been the only one that has shot consistently,” Becker said of Hurley. “He struggled for the majority of the game today, but he’s been really good all year and he’s got a lot on his plate as we try to figure out how to find some more people to make shots.”

The only positive for Vermont, of course, is that conference play is yet to begin. The Catamounts play Division III Elms College on Dec. 30 and then open the America East campaign at New Hampshire, currently No. 360 in KenPom, on January 4. From there, things get a little tougher, starting with a trip to current favorite UMass Lowell on January 9.

Even with all the struggles, pronouncing the Catamounts dead before the start of the new year may not be wise. They still have only one loss at home this season (to Brown), and—although it was not on Saturday—their defense has shown it is capable of keeping them in most games even when shots aren’t dropping. Shamir Bogues, a preseason first team all-America East player, is in his fifth season of college basketball, and will surely improve his shooting and scoring at some point.

There is no way a group of veteran Catamounts who have tasted nothing but success in America East is just going to hand over its crown willingly. And coming to take it won’t be easy, no matter how wounded Vermont is at the moment.

“We’ve been really inconsistent this year. We have a million excuses why that is—injuries, whatever—but we have just been really inconsistent game to game, which makes it challenging to know what you have,” Becker said. “I’ve been harping on the guys on that and hopefully we can take a little break here and come back with a renewed sense of purpose and consistency.”