Vermont will have time to gain experience in August while they bring in a roster filled with six freshmen.
Head coach John Becker said that the school will be taking a foreign trip to Canada prior to the 2014-15 school year. Per NCAA rules, foreign trips are allowed once every four years and allow for a school to have 10 extra practices prior to taking the trip.
“That will really give us an opportunity to put the guys through the paces and see how they react in games,” Becker said. “It should really put us in a position where we get back in the fall to really know what we got and what we need to get better at.”
The Catamounts will be in Canada from August 9 to 13, playing a total of five games. They will play two games in Montreal, followed by one game in Quebec City and finish off with two games in Ottawa.
One of their final two games in Ottawa will include a game against Carleton University, who beat Wisconsin last season on their exhibition tour and have won 10 national championships. Vermont will face Carleton on August 12 and is one of four schools to face them this summer. Indiana, Illinois-Chicago and Memphis are the three other teams touring Canada that will face Carleton.
This season Vermont welcomes two of their seven new players from the country, guard Trae Bell-Haynes and forward Drew Urquhart. Urquhart competed on the Canadian Under-18 national team in Colorado where they finished second in the FIBA Americas Championship. He averaged five points per game in five contests in June.
Vermont returns one starter from a team that won the America East regular season championship by two games last season and reached their sixth straight national postseason appearance.
Ryan Restivo covers the America East conference, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and Hofstra for Big Apple Buckets. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ryanarestivo or contact Ryan at rrestivo[at]nycbuckets.com.
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