How Becker and his UVM staff adjusted on the fly to reach the NCAA Tournament

As they waited to speak to media in the minutes after the America East Conference championship triumph, Finn Sullivan and Matt Veretto glanced at the final box score and came to one conclusion: Associate head coach Ryan Schneider was on the money.

The University of Vermont men's basketball team trailed 29-25 at halftime vs. UMass Lowell, but Schneider forecasted a favorable second half as he addressed players during the intermission break.

"We were sitting there saying, 'If we do exactly what we just did defensively, the offense is going to open up and we are going to score in the mid-40s,'" Schneider said. "We were generating good looks."

The Catamounts exploded for a 47-30 advantage in the second stanza for a 72-59 victory, sealing their second of back-to-back America East titles and fourth in five seasons as they booked another spot in the NCAA Tournament.

"That's good coaching," Sullivan said.

Sullivan and Veretto's summary of Saturday's conference final can be applied to the entirety of the 2022-23 Catamounts season.

Welcoming seven newcomers, overcoming injuries and a brutal nonconference schedule that led to their worst start in a decade, the Catamounts (23-10) reworked rotations, introduced new philosophical approaches and made multiple position changes — "We're just throwing stuff up on the wall" — to earn the most rewarding and most unexpected NCAA Tournament berth in head coach John Becker's 12-year tenure.

Becker did not extend his record for America East coach of the year awards to seven; UMass Lowell's Pat Duquette earned that distinction leading the RiverHawks to 26 wins. But this winter might be Becker and his staff's best coaching job to date.

"Certainly this year I've had a lot of people, fans come up to me and say that," said a humbled Becker when asked if this was his best coaching job.

The Catamounts, who earned a 15 seed, will square off against No. 2 Marquette in a first-round contest in Columbus, Ohio. Friday's game time is set for 2:45 p.m. eastern at Nationwide Arena on CBS.

March Madness: Coverage of UVM basketball teams in the 2023 NCAA Tournament

"For them to keep adjusting and adjusting, game after game, is unbelievable. They tried so many different things," senior captain Robin Duncan said of the coaching staff. "It just shows what great coaches they are. They deserve a lot more than they’ve received this year. I’m a little upset they didn’t win (staff) coach of the year because of what they did for us and what the results showed.

"But we got another championship and coach Becker is my coach of the year."

'Trial and error' during nonconference season

The Catamounts entered the season as America East Conference favorites, according to the preseason poll voted on by league coaches.

But the defending league champions saw a veteran group depart, including two-time conference player of the year Ryan Davis and hometown star Ben Shungu. Behind the duo, Vermont was top five in the country in effective field-goal percentage (57.3%) and field-goal percentage (49.6%) and seventh in offensive efficiency.

More:'It's time to get one': UVM men's basketball confident as 15 seed vs. Marquette

The Catamounts brought in seven newcomers, three via the transfer route in Ileri Ayo-Faleye, Dylan Penn and Veretto. All seven players were signed soon after Vermont's 75-71 loss to Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

"It’s been a little surprising to me how people forget how much we lost in basically two players of the year in (Davis) and (Shungu)," said Schneider, who runs Vermont's offense. "It’s just so hard to get everything to click right away when you are introducing so many new faces into the rotation."

To compound matters, injuries slowed Vermont's progress.

Veretto, who hadn't played college basketball in the three years, developed a bout of plantar fasciitis as he worked tirelessly to get into playing shape, and Penn, the ASUN tournament MVP at Bellarmine, missed October with a wrist injury.

More:'Fairy tale ending': Matt Veretto and Dylan Penn lead Vermont to NCAA Tournament

"I was basically learning our guys' games in games and looked to see how they handled coaching," Becker said.

After Aaron Deloney dropped a career-high 32 points in the Catamounts' 80-65 home victory over Brown in the opener, the season quickly went south. And, in hindsight, it was predictable as Vermont played what turned out to be the 34th toughest nonconference schedule in the country, according to KenPom.

Vermont lost five straight games: To St. Mary's, Cal State Fullerton and USC on a California road swing and then blowout defeats to Iona and Yale.

A 1-2 trip in the Bahamas tournament, during which forward Nick Fiorillo suffered a MCL injury that kept him out until late February, sunk Vermont to a 2-7 record at the close of November.

"These are games we won for 12 years and now we’ve lost three of them in the span of three weeks," Schneider of the narrow defeats to Fullerton, USC and UNC Wilmington. "The record looked worse than what it actually was."

Changes, though, were afoot.

"Trying to figure out with (Penn) how to best reintroduce him to the rotation without disrupting everybody was challenging," Schneider said. "A lot of trial and error early with what was going on to allow us to function best on that side of the floor."

Moving Sullivan off-ball unlocks offense

The Cats got a boost of confidence in the road victory at Colgate.

After Toledo dusted them 84-72 at Patrick Gym on Dec. 20, the Catamounts opened their title defense in America East with promise, beating UMBC, last year's title-game runner-up, and Bryant, the conference's threatening newbie, in double-digit margin triumphs.

"We know what it takes to win, the coaches know what it takes to win and we were doing all the right stuff and eventually things were going to turn around," Sullivan said.

Yet more tinkering was necessary.

The team's point guard during last winter's 28-win campaign, Sullivan struggled to start the 2022-23 season. Sullivan's responsibilities also included guarding the opponent's point guard, and the workload began to wear on the senior.

More:Vermont's Finn Sullivan named America East player of the year

But, schematically, the team's spacing didn't quite work with Sullivan at point and Duncan and Penn playing off the ball in an offense that lacked its traditional big man to run plays through.

Vermont fully committed to Sullivan playing off ball following back-to-back losses to New Hampshire and Lowell in which Sullivan missed the second game due to an illness. Schneider called the results a "72-hour debacle," but UVM had an eight-day layoff to make key decisions.

"We needed (Sullivan) to be player of the year or a first-team all-league guard and he was having a decent season, but the not season we needed him to have. And it just unlocked him," Schneider said about moving Sullivan off the ball. "And it unlocked (Penn). It just very clearly defined roles for everybody. It just took a little bit longer to figure out with this team."

Offensive numbers spike for Catamounts

Since that 80-65 defeat to Lowell, Vermont has ripped off 15 straight victories, the nation's second-longest active streak entering March Madness.

The much-improved offense is a big reason why. Vermont is fifth in the country in turnovers per game (9.3), 17th in assist-to-turnover ratio, 21st in effective field-goal percentage (55.2%) and 31st in field-goal percentage (47.5%).

Vermont also is 16th in the nation in two-point field-goal percentage, one year after the Davis-led Catamounts were third in that category. And this winter, Cats were the fourth-most efficiency post-up team in the country, according to Schneider — without a dominant big like Davis.

Vermont ran a post-up play on 7% of its offensive actions this season; last year it was 8%, Schneider said.

"It just took us some time to figure out how we can use (Penn) and (Duncan's) strengths as back to the basket guys," Schneider said.

More:Robin Duncan cements brothers' decade-long legacy with Vermont basketball

Playing through the post with dribble-downs also allowed Duncan and Penn to be playmakers for shooters or cutters. In the title game, for example, Duncan fed Veretto for a second-half 3-pointer on a mid-post skip pass to the corner to beat the shot clock.

Penn paces the team in scoring at 13.5 points a game and picked up the America East tournament's most outstanding player award. Sullivan caught fire in his new position, scoring in double digits in 10 out of 15 games down the stretch, and was named the conference's player of the year. And Duncan led the conference in assists as the leader and heart of the team.

Defensively, Vermont also shored up some weaknesses, aided by Ayo-Faleye's emergence as "an elite defender" at the four and Sullivan being one of Becker's best on-ball defenders in his tenure. Vermont is 70th in the country in poiints allowed per game at 66.6.

"It sounds simple now, but when you are in it and going through it, it’s not easy," Schneider said. "(Becker's) always been so good with this: You have to stay the course. In a lot of years past, we had a lot of experience to lean on when we had adversity. And this year, we didn’t.

"Credit to the guys to be willing to adjust the way they did and stay with us and stay together."

Coaching staff's cohesion keeps Vermont composed

Becker, in his 12th season as Catamount bench boss, gave a lot of praise to his assistant coaches for Vermont's turnaround.

"One thing I can say, I've always had incredible staffs," Becker said. "The camaraderie with this staff is incredible and we are connected and efficient. We just kept working and trying things."

More:John Becker's biggest wins of record tenure with UVM men's basketball

Schneider's in his 10th season in Burlington, and second as associate head coach and offensive mastermind. Second-year assistant coach Bryson Johnson, a former star at George Mason, is a top recruiter and relationship-builder.

Chris Santo, who also arrived prior to last season, has professional basketball coaching experience with the New York Knicks, bringing NBA terminology and concepts to UVM's playbook. And director of basketball operations Derryk O’Grady, a Milton native, has been with the program for a decade and serves as Becker's "right-hand man."

"We all work so well together. No egos in the room," Becker said. "It’s a very collaborative environment."

Duncan, the fifth-year Catamount, said the trust between players and coaches remained intact as the team fought through changes and the uncharacteristic play through nonconference season.

"They could’ve easily quit on us and said, 'Let's just prepare for the next year,'" Duncan said. "But they remained positive and didn’t put their heads down. They continued to push us and let us know it was a long season.

"They said we are built for March."

Free Press Staff Writer Alex Abrami is in Ohio for UVM's NCAA Tournament appearance. Follow his coverage of the Catamounts at burlingtonfreepress.com. Contact Abrami or aabrami@freepressmedia.com and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aabrami5.

TV, radio, stream information

Teams: (15) Vermont vs. (2) Marquette

Site: Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio

Date: Friday, March 17

Tip-off: 2:45 p.m. eastern (approx.)

TV: CBS (commentators Andrew Catalon and Steve Lappa, sideline reporter Jamie Erdahl)

Stream: March Madness Live (sign-in with TV provider or app)

Radio: The Game (97.1 FM, 960 AM)

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont basketball at NCAA Tournament: Becker's best coaching job