UMaine thumps Towson> Unselfishness key for rolling Bears

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ORONO – Pulling no punches after watching the dismantling of his Towson University squad in the closest blowout you’ll see all year, coach Mike Jaskulski had very little good to say about the way the Tigers played Tuesday night.

It didn’t matter if the scoreboard read a respectable 89-80. Jaskulski knew. The 2,017 in attendance at Alfond Arena knew. And the Tigers knew.

This was a beating.

The University of Maine put the Tigers in hole early, thumped them again at the end of the first half, began the second half with yet another six-zip mini-run, and only let Towson creep within 10 points twice after intermission (once on the game’s final play).

And Jaskulski, who served for seven years as an assistant at Maine under Rudy Keeling, knew why.

Part of it was the fact that the unselfish Bears put four players in double figures (Nate Fox and Andy Bedard scored 19 each, Huggy Dye had 15 and Derrick Jackson added 11).

Part of it was the fact that seven different Bears handed out assists (Bedard had six). And part of it was that Maine parlayed that unselfishness into a sizzling 57.4 shooting effort from the floor.

But there was more to it than that.

“I think we played about as ignorantly on the offensive end as we did on the defensive end,” Jaskulski said. “You saw at the end of the ballgame we started taking the ball inside.”

And that wasn’t all.

“We had four post touches in the first half, fellas. We took all of the fool’s gold that they gave us,” he said, referring to his team’s penchant for accepting the first open look at the hoop it got – usually from the perimeter. “We really had terrible shot selection.”

The Black Bears won their sixth straight and improved to 11-3, 3-0 in America East play. The Tigers dropped to 6-5, 2-1.

The Black Bears played 32 minutes of near-perfect basketball, building up a lead that peaked at 20 points with 7:43 to go.

The Bears held the league’s top shooter – forward Brian Barber – to no points in the first half. Barber finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds while Shaun Holtz scored a careeer-high 25.

Maine coach John Giannini, citing every coach’s quest for perfection, chose to focus on the way the game ended instead of the way it started.

“I think everything we did right for the first 32 minutes we didn’t do right for the last eight minutes,” Giannni said.

But as Jaskulski and everyone else who leaned into a microphone pointed out, when the Bears are rolling … things can get scary.

Bedard set the tone in the opening minutes, handing out assists on four of UMaine’s first six trips downcourt.

That unselfishness soon spread, with everyone from Dye to Jackson to forward Julian Dunkley getting into the point-guard act.

The 6-foot-10 Dunkley, who also finished with nine points, eight rebounds and two emphatic dunks, made feeds on three straight Black Bear possessions – two to Fox and one to Dye – as the Bears scored nearly at will against Towson midway through the first half.

“That’s just contagious. When guys are zipping the ball around, we’re creating easy shots for each other,” Bedard said. “I think every team wants to do that.”

Dye was a bit more succinct.

“With us being so good [as a team], if you can be patient, you know something’s bound to happen and you just take it from there,” Dye said.

The Bears used a combination of unselfish play and hot shooting to take a 43-31 lead into the locker room.

Black Bears 89, Tigers 80

Towson (6-5) Maine men (11-3)

Name G AG F AF TP Name G AG F AF TP

Ragin 2 8 6 6 10 Dunkley 3 6 3 6 9

Barber 7 16 4 4 18 Fox 7 9 5 7 19

Holtz 9 19 3 5 25 Bedard 6 9 2 2 19

Davalli 1 6 1 3 4 Jackson 4 6 1 2 11

Cason 4 6 0 0 12 Dye 5 11 2 3 15

Allen 1 2 0 0 3 Waterman 1 1 3 3 5

Wise 0 1 0 0 0 Thibodeau 1 2 0 0 2

de Pablo 0 0 0 0 0 Tibbetts 0 0 0 0 0

Weathersp’n 0 2 2 2 2 Haynes 1 5 0 0 3

Augustus 2 5 0 0 4 Ammons 3 5 0 0 6

Shin 1 3 0 0 2

Totals 27 68 16 20 80 Totals 31 54 16 23 89

Towson 31 80

Maine 43 89

3-pt. goals: Towson (10-22): Ragin 0-2, Holtz 4-10, Davalli 1-2, Cason 4-5, Allen 1-2, Wise 0-1; Maine (11-17): Dunkley 0-2, Bedard 5-6, Jackson 2-2, Dye 3-5, Haynes 1-2

Attendance: 2,017