New-look Catamounts won’t go quietly
BURLINGTON, Vt. – Don’t start proclaiming Vermont to be a one-hit wonder just yet.
The Catamounts weren’t a school with much success in basketball prior to the last four years. In over 100 years of basketball, the school never won 20 or more games until the last four seasons, in which they went 89-36 and won at least 21 games each season. The Catamounts won four straight regular season America East titles and the last three conference tournaments, having been upset in the semifinals in 2001-02.
Last season’s senior class, the driving force behind the recent success, is long gone. Taylor Coppenrath and T.J. Sorrentine naturally come to mind first, as the last four America East Player of the Year awards went to one of the two and they are second and third all-time in scoring in the program’s history. Gone also are key role players David Hehn, a defensive ace who also ran the show while Sorrentine redshirted the 2002-03 season with a wrist injury, and Germain Mopa Njila, a steady contributor who had a huge game in their win over Syracuse in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year. So it’s not a stretch to say that the Catamounts lost a tremendous amount from last season’s team.
“I just want people to know that we’re rebuilding and these kids are doing a good job,” new head coach Mike Lonergan said. “We didn’t just lose Coppenrath and Sorrentine – we lost David Hehn, who played over Kyle Cieplicki, and we lost Germain Mopa Njila, and Tim (McCrory) didn’t get off the bench and now Tim’s my first forward off the bench.”
Besides that, most of the holdovers are young and inexperienced. This year’s version of the Catamounts has just no seniors, two juniors, two-year starter Martin Klimes and Rhode Island transfer Chris Holm, and seven freshmen among its personnel. Only two of the sophomores, Josh Duell (out until at least late December with a stress fracture in his lower leg) and Ryan Schneider, played a lot of minutes last year. The 2005-06 Catamounts have talent, but it’s very young talent and the good results aren’t going to come right away.
Thus far, the season has proven that the Catamounts will be no slouch. They had a chance in each of their first three games despite losing, making a good run against Providence and Nevada before falling short in each one after a tough loss in the season opener at Harvard. They got their first victory and the first for Lonergan against Wagner two days after Thanksgiving, then knocked off Holy Cross.
The America East coaches picked Vermont sixth in the preseason poll. In the media teleconference, Lonergan said he was surprised they were picked that high. We may be able to chalk that comment up to modesty; while the Catamounts lost a tremendous amount from last season’s team, there’s no reason to think that they’ll go from first to worst in a conference that clearly looks to be down from last year. If the conference were to get three teams in postseason play this year, as happened last year, it would be quite a surprise.
Thus far, Lonergan likes where the team is going. He knew what he was getting into when he took the job – he would be succeeding a legend in Tom Brennan, the head coach for the last 19 years before retiring at the end of last season, and he knew what he was inheriting in terms of personnel. But he also had a good sense of the program, with its history of bringing in solid young men and having great support in the community.
“It’s been a great experience – it’s actually been just like I thought,” Lonergan said of his first few months on the job after he was an assistant at Maryland last season. “The fans have been great, Coach Brennan has been very supportive and he’s been great to me. Our kids are a joy to coach.”
The fan support is still there for this young and exciting team. The game against Nevada, a return game from last season’s matchup of the two teams in the Bracket Buster, was a sellout, extending their streak of consecutive sellouts to an America East-record 16 games. The streak ended in the next game against Wagner, but the crowd still topped 2,600 (Patrick Gym has a capacity of 3,266), and sports information director Bruce Bosley said that sales for most games have been very good, meaning that the fan support is still there for this team and the atmosphere of Patrick Gym is not going away.
Giving those fans reason for future hope are players like Mike Trimboli, who has already garnered America East Rookie of the Week honors in each of his first two weeks. A native of Norwalk, Conn., Trimboli is the latest to be handed the ball as a freshman point guard, though he has a scorer’s mentality. Currently the second-leading scorer in the conference at 18.0 points per game, he’s wasted no time making an impact. But part of the team’s personnel issues is that there is no backup for him at the point, so when he comes out of the game, there is a noticeable difference in the offense.
“It’s tough, because we don’t really have another point guard on our team,” Lonergan said. “We have trouble running our offense in the halfcourt.”
Evidence that the program is still going in the right direction is that help is on the way – next season, that is. Vermont has a commitment from New Jersey point guard Nick Vier, who has played with the Playaz AAU program, one of the top programs in the country. He’ll give the team a battle-tested point guard who can play alongside Trimboli in addition to backing him up.
Lonergan said that things are generally positive on the recruiting trail, aided by last season’s NCAA Tournament win. He also has to battle the notion that last year’s senior class was a once-in-a-lifetime group and that the Catamounts will be one-hit wonders as a result. But the program has selling points that he’s well aware of, and now one of them would appear to be a chance to prove more nay-sayers wrong.
“My fear is that if we don’t have a good record, it’s going to be harder to recruit,” said Lonergan. “We’ve got name recognition, and we’re going to try to make the schedule better to make it attractive.”
