By PAUL GOTHAM
BURLINGTON, VT. — Tournament Most Outstanding Player Anthony Lamb (Greece Athena) netted a game-high 28 points to lead the University of Vermont Catamounts past University of Maryland – Baltimore County (UMBC), 66-49 in the America East Championship game.
The title was the second in three years for Vermont and secured an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Lamb connected on 8-of-16 shots from the floor including 3-of-6 behind the arc in Vermont’s sixth straight win. The junior forward converted 9 of 12 free throws.
“The reality of the situation is the biggest games on the biggest stages when your best player plays like ours did today it’s why we won,” Vermont head coach said of Lamb.
Lamb grabbed a team-high nine rebounds to go along with two assists, one block and a steal as the Catamounts avenged a 65-62 loss in last year’s AE Final.
“It was pretty bad after the championship last year,” Lamb said recalling the defeat. “You could say people were pretty sad, but it’s a new group of guys that came in with new determination. We had some veterans coming back, but the other guys really hadn’t played as much. So to show us the path Coach Becker does a great job of getting the new guys together and making sure that were a unit and tight over the summer, so that when we get into the year we can stick it out through the hard times.”
Lamb also earned MOP in 2017.
Lamb averages 21.4 points and 7.8 rebounds.
Vermont (27-6) awaits the NCAA Tournament Selection announcement to find out the details of its next game.
“It’s an incredible journey to be up here as conference champions and know that we’re going to the NCAA Tournament,” Becker said during the post-game press conference. “Really just an incredible journey this group has been on – a lot of young guys, new leadership. I just couldn’t be more impressed. How we handled ourselves all year, and we’re able to find our best basketball at the end of the year.”
Lamb joins fellow former Section V student-athletes Dontay Caruthers (East), Cierra Dillard (Gates-Chili) and Jeenathan Williams (UPrep) who have already have helped their schools punch tickets to the NCAA Tournament. Caruthers and Williams helped the University at Buffalo men to the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship and automatic bid. Dillard led the UB women to the MAC title.
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