Both the women’s and men’s basketball teams at the University of Vermont are headed to the NCAA tournament — and are slated to face top-seeded competition this week.
The women’s team qualified for the tournament for the first time in more than a decade with a win over the University at Albany on Friday. The 38-36 victory also delivered the team the 2023 championship for its regional athletic conference, America East.
The men’s team, meanwhile, qualified for the national tournament and won the America East title for the second year in a row, beating the University of Massachusetts Lowell 72-59 on Saturday. This year is just the second in UVM history that the women’s and men’s basketball teams have made the national tournament in the same season.
In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the UVM women — who are seeded 15th — have been paired with the No. 2-seeded team, the University of Connecticut. The latter is a college basketball powerhouse, having won the national tournament 11 times.
The game is scheduled for Saturday at 3 p.m. in Storrs, Connecticut.
Speaking after Friday’s game, Alisa Kresge, the women’s team’s head coach, said her confidence in the UVM squad’s defensive abilities has grown over the course of the season. Albany made fewer field goals in the game against UVM — 14 — than any other team in the history of America East championships, according to UVM Athletics.
“It’s sometimes pretty, sometimes not,” Kresge said of her team’s performance. “But they wanted it so bad, and they believed in themselves.”
The UVM men are also seeded 15th in the NCAA tournament and slated to face the No. 2 seed in the first round — Marquette University, which is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The game is scheduled for Friday at 2:45 p.m. in Columbus, Ohio.
The men’s team has qualified for the national tournament eight times before, though they made it to the second round only once, in 2005. Last year, the team lost to the No. 4 seed, the University of Arkansas, 75-71.
Both of the UVM squads are also heading into the tournament with strong records.
The women’s team is on a 17-game winning streak and has a record of 25 wins and six losses so far across all competitions this season.
The men’s team, meanwhile, comes into the tournament with a 23-10 overall record. It’s won 15 games in a row — the second-longest continuous streak among all men’s teams in the NCAA.
John Becker, the men’s team head coach, said after Saturday’s game that a strong second-half performance — including a string of nine points in about two minutes from graduate student forward Matt Veretteo — was key to the team’s win.
“We delivered — and I couldn’t be more proud of this group,” Becker told reporters.
The UVM men’s game will be available to watch on CBS, and the women’s game will be on ESPN3, according to the NCAA.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story included the wrong date for the men’s basketball game.