Vermont

Vermont basketball’s America East championship hopes halted by Maine in semifinals

Published

1 year ago

March 12, 2025

Vermont basketball’s America East championship hopes halted by Maine in semifinals

Vermont basketball at America East tournament: Quarterfinal interviews

Vermont basketball coach John Becker and players TJ Hurley and Nick Fiorillo discuss America East quarterfinal win on Saturday, March 8, 2025.

Maine’s strong defense suffocated Vermont’s shooters, holding them to a season-low 42 points.
The Catamounts, known for their defense, struggled offensively all season, ranking 319th out of 355 Division I schools in points per game.
The loss marked the end of Nick Fiorillo’s six-year career at Vermont, during which he won four America East championships.

Vermont basketball’s championship four-peat dreams are over. And so is the Catamounts’ long stranglehold over Maine.

Unable to handle Maine’s defensive pressure and suffering through one of its worst shooting performances of the season, second-seeded Vermont trailed from start to finish Tuesday night, falling to the No. 3 Black Bears, 57-42, in an America East tournament semifinal in front of 2,071 at Patrick Gym.

The Catamounts entered the conference playoffs in search of their fourth straight league championship and seventh NCAA Tournament berth in John Becker’s 14-year tenure. Instead, Vermont struggled from the opening tip and couldn’t close the deficit to under seven points in the second half.

“Tough loss and a tough way to end the season,” Vermont coach John Becker said. “It hurts that we just didn’t have it (Tuesday) and a lot of that credit needs to go to Maine.”

Kellen Tynes (13 points, 13 rebounds, 3 steals, 3 blocks) and A.J. Lopez (12 points) led the Black Bears, who ended a 30-game losing skid to Vermont that dates back to 2013. The Black Bears will play at No. 1 Bryant in Saturday’s America East title game. Game time is 11 a.m. on ESPN2. The winner earns the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

“That’s a great team. It’s hard to beat them, especially at their place,” said Tynes of playing Vermont.

Ileri Ayo-Faleye’s 14 points and six rebounds and Sam Alamutu’s eight points and 21 rebounds paced Vermont, which shot 14 of 54 from the floor, including 4 of 26 from beyond the arc.

Vermont also committed 17 turnovers, leading to 21 Maine points. The Catamounts (21-12) also saw its 10-game winning streak halted.

Maine’s defense suffocates Vermont basketball’s shooters

Maine jumped out to a 6-0 lead on a series of mid-range jumpers. Vermont, meanwhile, committed two early turnovers and looked uncomfortable against Maine’s man-to-man defense from the jump.

Even Jace Roquemore’s one-handed, high-flying dunk over a Maine defender couldn’t spark the Catamounts. The slam, with 9:14 left in the first half, brought the hosts to within 13-10, but Maine proceeded to uncork a 10-0 spurt highlighted by Jaden Clayton’s 3-pointer and Burns’ transition layup off a Catamount turnover.

Maine took a 27-19 margin into the break and quickly built a double-digit lead as Vermont racked up turnovers and missed field-goal attempts.

Vermont did close to 38-31 with 10:35 to go, but Lopez tossed in a heave inside the paint for two to ignite a 7-2 spurt to return the margin to double digits.

“We just stuck to the grind defensively,” said Maine coach Chris Markwood, a former assistant coach under Becker from 2011-2014. “Fortunately we were able to do that and proud of that effort and execution the guys showed.”

TJ Hurley, Vermont’s leading scorer this season, went 1 of 15 from the floor (0 of 7 on 3s). Ayo-Faleye also misfired from deep, hitting just two of his 10 3-point attempts.

The 42 points were a season low.

“They just were really physical and they were just closing out to everyone and forcing us inside the 3-point line,” Becker said of Maine’s defense. In the spirit of trying to make a play and do something positive for the team, we didn’t make good decisions and we were trying to score and we kind of got away from what had been really working for us in the last month.”

Injuries, poor offense finally catches up to Vermont basketball

Senior guard Shamir Bogues, a first-team all-league selection along with Hurley, missed his third straight game Tuesday with a lower-body injury suffered on March 1. Bogues’ absence was felt, but it also summed up the Catamounts’ unfortunate injury luck that plagued them since the spring.

Vermont brought in transfer Shy Odom from Howard to help its frontcourt presence. Odom played a total of 19 minutes this winter. Last year’s leading scorer, TJ Long played in just eight games, and none since December.

And while he made 28 starts, Bogues had surgery in the fall to remove bone spurs and didn’t look 100% until later in the season — when he started to play at high level on both ends of the floor — before suffering another injury that ended up being a season-ender.

“For him not to be able to end his career at least on the floor — your heart breaks for that kid,” Becker said of Bogues. “He would’ve done anything to be on the court with his teammates.”

Not being full healthy and a lack of a bench hurt Vermont’s offense. And while its defense remained true to its core and tradition — top-ranked in America East and 15th in the country in scoring — Vermont was 319th out of 355 Division I schools in points per game.

“It’s been a grind all year offensively. It’s no secret it’s been our worst offensive team and there are a bunch of reasons for that and it reared its ugly head (Tuesday),” Becker said.

Becker said he expects Long will get an NCAA waiver and return to Vermont next season.

Fiorillo closes out sixth-year Vermont basketball career

After six years in Burlington, Nick Fiorillo played his last game for the Catamounts on Tuesday night. A member of four America East championship teams and three NCAA Tournament squads, Fiorillo earned a spot on all-league third team this winter after averaging career highs in points (10.4) and rebounds (5.0) per game and starts (28).

In Tuesday’s news conference, Fiorillo expressed the impact Vermont had on him as a player and person. Fiorillo went from walk-on to scholarship player.

“I’ve spent a quarter of my life here at this program. Teams can always say it’s a family and stuff, but this program it really is,” Fiorillo said. “Those aren’t coaches, those aren’t teammates — that’s family.

“These have been the best years of my life. I came in as a skinny kid who didn’t really know high-level basketball until I got here.”

Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @aabrami5.

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Vermont

Vermont’s first-in-nation climate law faces legal challenge

Published

9 hours ago

March 31, 2026

Press Room

Vermont’s first-in-nation climate law faces legal challenge

Vermont and the federal government faced off Monday over the state’s first-in-the nation law aimed at forcing polluters to pay for the effects of climate change with the Trump administration warning it would spur “the type of chaos that the Constitution is designed to prevent.”

The hearing before Judge Mary Kay Lanthier of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont comes as the administration has unleashed a broad assault on state-based climate efforts, including suing to invalidate the Vermont law establishing a “climate superfund” to recoup money from the oil and gas industry.

The Biden appointee did not tip her hand, pressing attorneys for the state and the federal government over whether the state is within its rights or stepping on federal authority. The administration is challenging a similar law in New York, and a ruling against Vermont would likely jeopardize that law and chill efforts in other states to adopt climate superfunds.

Vermont argued the law — “a modest action” — was passed by state lawmakers in 2024 to help raise money to deal with climate change.

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Vermont

Vermont defends climate superfund law in federal court

Published

21 hours ago

March 30, 2026

Press Room

Vermont defends climate superfund law in federal court

RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Attorneys defended Vermont’s landmark climate superfund law on Monday, as it faces a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.

Vermont lawmakers passed the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 after devastating flooding in 2023 and other extreme weather events.

The law requires certain large fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate-related damage linked to their emissions between 1995 and 2024.

It is being challenged by the federal government, along with the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attorneys general from 24 Republican-led states.

They argue Vermont is overstepping and that climate policy should be handled at the federal level.

Attorneys for Vermont and environmental groups asked a federal judge in Rutland to dismiss those challenges, arguing the state has the right to hold companies accountable.

“It was an intense and technical day of legal arguments over whether the Climate Superfund Act passes muster under federal law, and whether it is appropriate under our Constitution and other doctrines, and is going to survive this series of lawsuits that have been filed against it,” said Christophe Courchesne of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Vermont was the first state to pass a law like this. New York followed, and more than 10 other states are considering similar measures.

This case could help decide whether those laws move forward.

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Vermont

Star bartender raised in VT hunts the ‘big shebang’ of a James Beard

Published

1 day ago

March 30, 2026

Press Room

Star bartender raised in VT hunts the ‘big shebang’ of a James Beard

Ivy Mix knew only small-town life growing up in Vermont. In 2003, she decided that needed to change.

“I realized the world was a very big place,” she said recently. “I thought I might want to go someplace and see something.”

She left for Guatemala to volunteer and teach photography in an orphanage. She hung out daily in a nearby bar, enjoying the environment at least as much as the imbibements. When she realized she couldn’t pay off the tab she had racked up, Mix started pouring drinks to offset her debts.

A celebrated bartending career began.

The Tunbridge native is a semifinalist in the Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service category of the James Beard Awards, the top honors in the American food-and-drink industry. The nod recognizes her work at Whoopsie Daisy, the bar she co-owns in Brooklyn. The author and five-time nominee hopes this is the moment she can finally call herself a James Beard winner.

The 20 bartenders in her category include Kate Wise, who grew up in Stowe and works at Juniper at Hotel Vermont in Burlington. Wise said she’s stunned she’s in the same category with a woman she saw give a cocktail-making demonstration years ago at Waterworks Food + Drink in Winooski, the sort of event celebrity bartenders do.

“She is so talented,” Wise said of Mix, who has owned two successful bars.

Catching on to the cocktail boom

Mix spoke with the Burlington Free Press while driving from New York City to Tunbridge. She splits her time living in Brooklyn and her hometown.

“Tunbridge when I was growing up was small and really rural,” Mix said. “It’s still rural, but it was before the demise of the dairy industry.”

Mix and her twin sister, Tess, are the daughters of glass blower Robin Mix and Susan Dollenmaier, founder of the Vermont-based textile company Anichini. They lived off a dirt road with only one house nearby. Mix attended a Waldorf school and then Chelsea High School and became obsessed with horseback riding.

“I horseback rode all the time,” she said. “Before I went to college that’s what I thought I was going to do. Olympic riding was my goal.”

She stayed in Vermont to study philosophy and fine art at Bennington College. While in college she spent time in Guatemala, sowing the seeds of her bartending career.

Mix graduated from Bennington in 2008. She sold her horse and thought she’d become a professor. The economic collapse that year changed her plans. She lived in New York, worked for free at art galleries and hated it. Mix began working at cocktail bars just as that trend was catching on.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is cool,’” she said. “The cocktail revolution was really booming.”

Shining a spotlight on female mixologists

The cocktail revolution, though, felt like it had little room for women.

Mix said the speakeasy “meme” was big then, which meant men in moustaches, arm garters and suspenders. She and friend Lynnette Marrero in 2011 started Speed Rack, which as the movement’s website explains has “been able to shine a spotlight on female mixologists thriving behind bars around the country; and while they are at it, raise money for breast cancer research, education and prevention.”

That’s when her career really took off. She was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s most innovative women in 2015 and honored by Wine Enthusiast as Mixologist of the Year in 2016.

The first time she was up for a James Beard Award was two years later. Her bar, Layenda, was up for the Outstanding Bar Program category. (It would also be a semifinalist in 2019 and last year before closing.) She scored a second Beard nod in 2025 as a media-award nominee for her book “A Quick Drink: The Speed Rack Guide to Winning Cocktails for Any Mood.”

She co-owns the Brooklyn wine shop Fiasco! Wine + Spirits and runs Whoopsie Daisy with Piper Kristensen and Conor McKee. Mix said she used to play Little League baseball against Kristensen, who’s from Strafford.

‘I want to go to the big shebang’

Mix said Vermont helped shape her career because of the sense of community it inspires.

“I can make a good cocktail, but if you’re not having a good time and you don’t feel welcome, it’s not going to taste good,” she said.

The small-town tendency to take good care of people “has really infiltrated my sense of hospitality,” Mix said.

She would love to finally win a James Beard Award after her string of nominations. She said she’s been lucky to have “a mountain of accolades” that she’s proud of. But the Beard honors are different.

“Accolades — it’s such a funny world. Do they matter? Yes. Do they dramatically help your business? Absolutely,” Mix said.

“For me to get a medal around my neck, that’s the one I really want to get,” she said of the James Beard Award. “It kind of puts you on a whole different playing field.”

Finalists will be announced March 31. Winners will be revealed June 15 in a ceremony in Chicago.

“I want to go to the big shebang,” Mix said.