The Cinderella Story during March Madness is one of the best things in all of sports every year. Small schools getting their moment to shine on the big stage while everyone is watching. People often forget the actual story of Cinderella before the ball she attended though. All the hard work and troubling times she had with her step sisters and step mom. This is where we are at in the basketball season for potential Cinderella schools. Few games into conference play after playing tough non-conference schedules. Time for them to get hot enough to win their conference title and make a splash in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament as a double digit seed. Weekly, I will discuss games of potential Cinderella teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

This week we will be going to an American East Conference team, the Vermont Catamounts

First, the best part of doing this is finding out the awesome nicknames some of these schools have. Vermont does not stop short of that with having Catamount as their nickname. A Catamount is a North American medium-sized or large wild cat, especially a cougar (Thank you Google). Now back to why I believe Vermont can be the next big Cinderella story. Vermont is currently in first place of the AEC with a record of 15-5 and has the RPI of 60. They are riding a 7 game winning streak after losing to 13th ranked Butler 81-69 in a well-played game. Vermont lost in the American East Conference championship game last year which cost them a trip to the NCAA tourney. Vermont did return almost all their starting 5 from last year’s squad though, including the leading scorer Trae Bell-Haynes. Trae is currently their Junior PG that is leading his team in points and assists. That is huge in today’s point guard driven game. He is also very efficient by shooting 53% from the field and having almost 4 assists per game. Another reason I like this Catamount team is their shooting guard, Ernie Duncan. First, how can you not love someone named Ernie? Second, he is shooting 42% from the 3 point line after shooting 44% last year for Vermont. Vermont’s coach, John Becker, is in his 6th season as the head coach and has led the team to a 20 win season every year and a post season tournament every year. They have not made the NCAA Tournament since Becker’s first year as a head coach, so they are due to make a run this year. This year’s Vermont team has the pieces to make a splash in the NCAA Tournament this year if they are able to get out of the American East Conference. Vermont has played the Cinderella role before also, in 2005 13 seeded Vermont upset 4 seeded Syracuse with this deep deep 3 pointer in OT.

Next few games for Vermont are today, January 19th against UMass Lowell and Wednesday 25th against Albany on ESPN3