Vermont at Stony Brook, a recap

This picture was not from tonight’s game, I should point out, but I do want to provide a frame of reference every time I mention Evan Fjeld. He is the guy that either played bass in Cream, or perhaps drives a windowless van. I don’t want to go through a blow by blow of the game, because there are several game summaries out there, but I’ll just drop some thoughts on you.
– It started with Stony Brook running out ahead early, because they hit a lot of open looks. They definitely had energy, and the tiny arena seemed very loud, with a lot of good, interested fans in attendance. They wanted to run, and they did just that early, but you could tell that as the game went on, Vermont slowed things down, and the game started to move to their pace. They couldn’t hit anything, so it took a while for them to come back. Fortunately, they held the Seawolves to 20% shooting in the second half as well as they tried to come back. Vermont ended up winning 55-49.
– Before the game, my friend Anthony put the line at Vermont -6. I just wanted to give him props.
– Could these teams make noise in the tournament? Well, I don’t know that I expect either to make the tournament, but if they got there, these are the type of teams that do it. Stony Brook, especially Marcus Rouse, was successful when they were hitting from downtown, the greatest of giant killers in the tournament. Vermont is technically and fundamentally sound. They should have won this game by about 20, but struggled to hit open jumpers. They definitely don’t have the athletes to run with a bigger school in the dance if they get that far (I mean, John Oates up there is the best player on the team) or the shooting to get lucky, but if they run into a young team that makes mistakes, Vermont is sound enough to take advantage.
– I was really impressed by the overall sportsmanship. I heard nothing overly critical of the officials, even after hard fouls, I saw players going out of their way wo make sure things were still cool. The two teams exited at the same time down the same hallway towards the lockers, and there were no issues at the end of the game, It’s something that you don’t see much, and I definitely wanted to compliment the teams and the fans.
– There was no commentary on my feed, but they had the game audio piped in. There was the PA. guy, but I couldn’t make out what he said. Instead, I heard the Stony Brook coach Steve Pikiell shouting instructions at his team, especially Anthony Mayo. Also, you could hear the Stony Brook AV club shouting back and forth and scorekeepers keeping score. It was an interesting perspective.
– The other guy, besides Fjeld and Rouse, that stood out for me was Dave Coley. He looked a lot like Stevie Wonder. not many black guys named Dave. Speaking of black guys, not many black guys playing for Vermont.
– The real reason I didn’t notice anyone else out there was because the feed was so grainy, and there was no zoom on anyone. It was really hard to tell anyone apart, except the players who were lighting things up, and Coley with his hair. I should point out that Brian Voelkel for Vermont had a double-double, but I couldn’t tell. Just another white guy in a green jersey.

It was a well contested match that I wish I could have made it to, if only for a close up look at Evan Fjeld’s mustache, as well as a chance to enjoy the atmosphere in that small gym on Long Island.