Win ranks among school’s biggest

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We can all cross another “Maine can’t …” off the list today courtesy of Our State University’s women’s basketball team.

This particular piece of passe pessimism went, “Maine women can’t play college basketball at the very highest level of national competition. They’re too small. Too slow. Too unsure, especially when the pressure is on.”

Today we can say with some authority, “wrong, wrong, and wrong.”

In one of those three or four games in a lifetime that winds up a bookmark in the lives of all who saw it, unranked and nationally unknown Maine beat 10th-ranked Alabama 75-73 at Alfond Arena in Orono Thursday night.

You want to know why colleges go through all that NCAA rigamarole that has plagued UMaine for the past year? For moments like this.

The ticket takers said an on-campus basketball record 4,059 witnesses were in attendance. Ten years from now 40,000 will say they saw it.

Where to rank this one in the big scrapbook?

Certainly it is the greatest win in the history of the Maine women’s basketball program. No previous UM team had ever beaten a team ranked this high.

Now we’re into all-time UM wins.

OK, it belongs somewhere below the hockey team’s win over Lake Superior for the ’93 NCAA title. Slip it in there with one of Maine hockey’s wins in the program’s formative years, like the shocker over Providence in ’84 or the stunner at Wisconsin back in ’88. Shawn Walsh won’t argue. He was courtside, smiling, as the UM women hugged and jumped after the final buzzer.

Baseball? Excepting the wins at the College World Series, it’s got to be right up there with the 3-2 upset of Miami at Miami back in ’85. Then again, Maine baseball was pretty established by then, so this was probably bigger.

Men’s hoop? Only the win over Michigan State at the Bangor A Men’s hoop? Only the win over Michigan State at the Bangor Auditorium in ’86 comes close, but MSU was unranked that year.

Football? The comeback over Youngstown State in ’65…. The first win over Delaware, 10-7, in ’85.

Yeah. It belongs with all of those.

What makes it so delicious is there was always the suspicion this was coming, wasn’t there? This women’s hoop program has been knocking at the door of possibility almost since its inception. Other UM programs never seemed to have a chance. Not enough money. Too tough to recruit. Plenty of excuses.

But Maine women could always shoot the basketball. Maine women have always been tough. Maine women always played the game hard. And the best Maine women always seemed to want to play in Orono.

Why not beat an Alabama or a Tennessee? We wondered this while watching Emily Ellis, Liz Coffin, Lauree Gott, Cathy Iaconeta, and Rachel Bouchard star over the years. Now comes this phenomenon Cindy Blodgett. How far could UMaine be from those big-time programs with this Lawrence High-bred hero from Clinton?

Now we know. Not that far.

Ask Blodgett, who ripped the Tide for a game-high 30 points, outplaying ‘Bama senior All-American and national Player of the Year candidate Niesa Johnson, who was held to 16 points.

“I think we gained some respect…. I think we proved to ourselves we can play with these teams,” said Blodgett, still sweating from her 36 minutes of unrelenting brilliance.

“They’d probably stack up pretty good if they play everybody here,” is how Alabama coach Rick Moody assessed Maine, perhaps a bit acidly in the aftermath of the loss. But even he admitted upon reflection that a team that could stay with and beat his squad, which boasted four starters returning from a Final Four berth last year, is ready to break the confines of the North Atlantic Conference.

“Teams like Maine and teams like us are going to start separating themselves from the pack, especially since I think they’ll be the best team in their conference,” said Moody.

Team. Yes. This is quite a team. Don’t give all the credit to Blodgett. It was junior guard Stacia Rustad’s nerveless 17-footer with one second on the shot clock and 9.9 seconds left in the game that provided the winning points. And it was Rustad who tied up ‘Bama’s Johnson with 4.2 seconds left, stopping her drive to the basket.

It was 6-foot-4 sophomore center Stacey Porrini’s rebounding down the stretch…. Senior guard Seana Dionne’s three foul shots…. Junior forward Catherine Gallant’s back-to-back inside buckets that turned a 62-61 lead into a 66-61 edge, providing breathing room….

“What was great to see was different people stepping up,” said UM coach Joanne Palombo-McCallie, so cool in victory in this, her third year as a head coach.

What does all this mean, the coach was asked?

“This is a nice starting point, is how I’d like to look at it,” Palombo answered.

A nice starting point. The basketball nation just got a lot smaller for these women from Maine. And our sporting future just got brighter.