Heading into Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t feeling too great about my beloved America East Conference.
Through the first full week of action, the entire league had just one win against a Division-I opponent. Shockingly, NJIT beat Fordham on the road, although the Highlanders shot 12 for 22 (55%) from 3 while the Rams shot 4 for 24 (17%), so there was some luck involved.
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NJIT followed that performance with a 21-point home loss to Fairfield, ending with hot-headed punches thrown.
Other MAAC losses included Binghamton’s eight-point home loss to Niagara and Bryant’s 16-point road loss to Siena.
Maine is 0-2 with double-digit road losses to George Washington and Stony Brook — although the defense looks decent, the predictably poor offense mustered up 47 points in Game 1 and 60 in Game 2.
Albany lost by 27 to Marquette and 21 to UMass — although neither performance was embarrassing, and the Danes’ half-court defense looks pretty good.
But speaking of embarrassing performances, UMass Lowell pieced together arguably the worst effort by any D-I basketball team in the past decade.
Heading into Sunday, the single best performance by any AmEast team in the season’s opening week was UMBC taking Dayton to the wire in a six-point road loss. Luckily, this is ideal for my agendas, as is the Jose Roberto Tanchyn breakout (16 points, six boards in that one).
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On Sunday, New Hampshire stormed off to a 20-point first-half lead against Harvard, before losing the second half 54-27 en route to an all-too-familiar double-digit defeat.
After Vermont played a lifeless first half against Brown, mustering only 24 points behind a motionless, spaceless offensive performance that looked far too much like last year, I was ready to waive the white flag.
But the Catamounts turned around and showed us their enticing upside, battling back with 41 second-half points before downing Brown 89-84 in a double-overtime instant classic.
As mentioned, the first 20 minutes reminded me too much of last year. The starting five of Lucas Mari, TJ Hurley, TJ Long, Noah Barnett, and Ben Michaels immediately built an 0-6 hole. Inserting Sean Blake for Michaels and moving Mari to the four didn’t help much, as the Cats sank into an 8-20 hole.
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There wasn’t enough spacing or ball movement on the court, and the offense too often devolved into Hurley creating, taking, and making tough shots — he scored 10 of the Catamounts’ first 13.
Of course, bad luck didn’t help. Brown shot 6-for-14 (43%) from deep in the first half, while the Cats shot 2-for-13 (15%).
For what it’s worth, things started to get going toward the end of the first half. Mari began to flash his elite cross-court passing vision and zip, but nobody was hitting open shots — Vermont shot 3 for 15 on unguarded catch-and-shoot opportunities.
But, as is typically the case in basketball, positive regression came in droves.
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For me, the game really flipped when John Becker started getting Ben Johnson involved with the TJs. The Cats love this floppy play, and it began to get the players moving off the ball much better — Vermont scored eight points on four off-ball screening sets.
Of course, the more obvious switch-flip is when Long took over.
He was super impactful in the first half, especially on the defensive end, where he was dominant on the glass while forcing tons of deflections — he ended the game with 13 rebounds and three steals.
But at his core, Long is a sharpshooting microwave scorer with a knack for clutch moments. He’s been a thorn in the Ivy during his career, hitting this ridiculous shot to beat Yale two seasons ago.
His season-ending injury last year was brutal, and the Catamounts’ broken offense severely missed his floor spacing and shooting.
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He showed us all why on Sunday.
As the offense started flowing and the guys started moving, Long hit five consecutive 3s in a six-minute second-half stretch, taking the Catamounts from down three to up 10. The sequence included:
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Transition off-the-dribble 3
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BLOB off-ball screen and-one 3
At the same time, Vermont started giving Long more on-ball opportunities via DHOs and downhill drives.
This crunch-time and-one gave Long 40 points, far and away a career high.
It was the best all-around game I’ve seen Long play. He was perfect in nearly every area of the game, especially across the final 30 minutes. It was an “I’m back” moment, and it reminded me just how much the Catamount offense missed him.
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Behind Long, Vermont made eight of its final 19 triples, a much more Catamount-like 42%. The regression train always comes, even if only sometimes on time.
It wasn’t all pretty. Although Brown shot the lights out, Vermont’s individual and team defense wasn’t great. The Cats started by playing some two-big drop coverage before switching one-through-five for the remainder of the game, and they were roasted in those one-on-one matchups (Brown scored 10 points on nine post-up sets, 1.11 PPP) while often losing track of their man (Brown scored nine points on seven cuts, 1.29 PPP).
They also haven’t shaken the late-game execution issues that have haunted them over the past few seasons, blowing a 12-point lead with four minutes to play.
But games often come down to which players make the most plays, and having the two TJs back on the court together paid significant dividends at the end of the first overtime period, when Becker and Co. drew up the perfect play to tie the game.
Ultimately, I think Vermont’s season will come down to lineup construction. Becker went with Hurley-Long-Johnson-Mari-Barnett for both overtime periods — until Barnett fouled out after piecing together an impactful 10-point, six-rebound performance. In my eyes, this was the Catamounts’ best offensive lineup, as the ball and players started to flow much better in a four-around-one system. Meanwhile, Barnett crashed the offensive glass and provided solid two-way interior play, and Mari seems to look better guarding fours than ones.
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Like the rest of this heretofore pathetic conference, Vermont has plenty of work to do. But Long, Hurley, Mari, and the Catamounts reminded us of who they are on Sunday night, giving the 2025-26 America East Conference its second Division-I win in the process.
