Things couldn’t have set up much better for Vermont as it came off the first NCAA tournament appearance in school history.

It had its top nine scorers back, plus a strong faceoff man. Only one starter — a freshman defenseman — left from last year’s 9-5 team. And in an America East lacking an obvious top-10 team nationally, the Catamounts, ranked No. 19 in the Nike/USA Lacrosse Division I Men’s Preseason Top 20, figured to have an excellent shot at winning the conference’s regular season.

It’s on the verge of happening, only in an extremely roundabout way. Vermont (7-6, 4-0) has won five in a row and coach Chris Feifs’ team can clinch hosting rights for the America East tournament for the first time in program history with a victory over Binghamton on Saturday.

That’s a long way from a 2-6 start punctuated by road losses to Dartmouth, Providence and Massachusetts in a nine-day span last month.

“On paper, it seems like, ‘Hey, you have this team that should be poised for another really easy run,’ but this has been the hardest year since I’ve been here in terms of getting these guys to play to their full potential,” Feifs said. “Not because they aren’t invested, but because as coaches we’ve had to find the best way to get them to that point again, to reboot. I’ve been happy with how we’ve been playing lately.”

As the northernmost Division I program, Vermont has always faced some inherent challenges. The Catamounts only have so many days to work outside during the winter months, and they spent much of the first month of the season indoors this year. Nonconference scheduling —  particularly the matter of getting teams to visit Burlington — is a chore as well.

Feifs’ response this year with a loaded roster was to take Vermont on the road, visiting Duke, Penn State (which the Catamounts routed 16-10) and Brown before the end of February.

In a five-game span between Feb. 26 and March 16, the Catamounts lost a pair of one-goal games and two more by two goals. There wasn’t much practice time, either, before Vermont found itself in its usual routine during league play.

“What you saw with those close losses that we had was really a direct indicator of us working out the kinks,” Feifs said. “We have guys who are very invested and they worked incredibly hard this offseason to come in and be ready to go and ready to repeat and sacrificed a lot to come back for another year. All the things you saw — whether it be a slow start, or an off quarter, or a one-goal loss where we didn’t clear the ball, some simple thing that cost us against some tough competition —  we had to learn those tough lessons the hard way.”

The Catamounts have put them to use in America East play, tripling up their conference foes by a 63-21 margin. Thomas McConvey shares the league lead in goals with 32, while David Closterman’s 21 assists also are tied for tops in the America East.

Goalie Ryan Cornell leads the conference in save percentage (58.2), and his 8.24 goals against average leads the country. Tommy Burke (61.6 percent) is the best faceoff man in the America East and ranks eighth nationally.

It’s positioned Vermont to lock up the top seed in the league with a week to spare, and it has the chance to do it against a Binghamton team that surprised the Catamounts last season. A conference regular-season title would be the latest feat for a program that has progressively improved throughout Feifs’ six-year tenure.

“It’d be an honor and really, really cool to be a representative of this program and achieve a new milestone,” Feifs said. “I think our guys would be really proud of that. But having lost to Binghamton last year, I think they’re really, really hungry to show that they are capable and that they’re not going to fall into the same traps that maybe they fell into in a shortened season last year.”