Defending America East Men's Basketball Champion Vermont has been selected to the pool of teams to participate in the third annual Bracket Buster Saturday event, a one-day men’s college basketball extravaganza pitting potential NCAA tournament hopefuls against each other on February 19. The Bracket Buster will feature 11 nationally televised games on ESPN or ESPN2 selected from an expanded pool of 64 teams representing 13 conferences.
A back-to-back participant in the NCAA Championship (2003 and 2004), Vermont is 64-29 and has won the America East regular-season or tournament title the last three campaigns.
Senior forward Taylor Coppenrath (24.1 ppg, 7.2 rpg in 2003-04) is the fourth player in the 25-year history of the America East Conference to be named Player of the Year more than once (2002-03 and 2003-04), joining the late Reggie Lewis (1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87), the San Antonio Spurs' Malik Rose (1994-95, 1995-96) and the Golden State Warriors' Speedy Claxton (1997-98, 1999-2000). The America East Rookie of the Year in 2001-02, Coppenrath (1,665 career points) ranks second to Notre Dame’s Chris Thomas (1,783) among active NCAA Division I scoring leaders.
Senior point guard T.J. Sorrentine (14.8 ppg, 4.58 apg) was the America East Player of the Year in 2001-02 and ranks eighth (1,432) among active NCAA Division I scoring leaders.