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BOSTON – For 20 minutes on Friday night, the University of Maine put on an inside exhibition that makes big men drool.
Carvell Ammons ran wild, scoring 18 points. The Black Bears pounded the boards to the tune of a 27-15 advantage. Every one of UMaine’s 38 points came from either in the paint, or on the free throw line. And Northeastern had no answers.
At halftime, coach Rudy Keeling found the answer:
Let Maine fling it from outside.
“We played a lot more zone and we changed defenses,” Keeling said after his Huskies had scored 56 second-half points and upset the Black Bears 91-85 at Cabot Gym’s Solomon Court.
“It’s why [Julian] Dunkley scored so many more in the second half, but he scored from the perimeter,” said Keeling a former Maine coach. “We just thought if we could keep ’em out on the perimeter and they shoot the normal percentage from out there, we had a chance to get rebounds.”
Dunkley did score 20 of his 28 after intermission. And the Huskies did rebound evenly in the second half. But there was another key, as Keeling knew.
“We shot it very well on the other end,” Keeling said softly.
They sure did.
Northeastern connected on 56.3 percent of their field goal attempts in the half – including a deadly 6-for-10 effort from behind the 3-point stripe – in knocking off the Bears.
Maine dropped to 17-9, 10-7 in America East play, and fell out of contention for third place in the league entering the playoffs, which begin on Friday. The Bears will enter the tourney seeded fourth. Northeastern, which is fighting for the No. 5 seed, improves to 8-18, 7-10.
Junior guard Jean Bain was a big catalyst for the Huskies, as he hit three of four 3-point goals in the second half and finished with 20 points in what Keeling called his best shooting night in two years.
“Coming off screens I shoot the ball pretty well, and I was coming off some ball screens today, looking for my shot, and felt pretty good,” Bain said.
Marcus Blossom scored 26 points to pace the Huskies while Jean Bain added 20.
Dunkley and Ammons scored 28 points apiece for the Bears. Ammons had 14 rebounds while Dunkley grabbed eight. Errick Greene scored 20 more.
The Huskies took control of the game midway through the second half by simply outshooting the Bears from the perimeter.
Northeastern made 10 of their first 19 shots in the half, including six 3-pointers, and completed three more conventional 3-point plays during that span to turn a three-point halftime deficit into a 76-66 lead at the 7:52 mark.
Maine, meanwhile, was shooting pretty well – the Bears made 15 of their first 31 shots – and still losing ground.
The Black Bears rallied in the late-going, trimming what had been a 76-66 deficit with 7:52 to play to three points.
But after Greene made one of two free throws to make it 84-81 with 1:04 to play, the Huskies iced it from the free throw line, hitting five of six down the stretch to preserve the win.
“Offensively I thought we were pretty good, in spite of shooting the ball from the perimeter very poorly,” UMaine coach John Giannini said, referring to a 4-for-22 effort from behind the 3-point line.
“It was an offensive performance that would have allowed us to win, and if we’d made a couple of shots [from outside] it would have been a great offensive performance. But our defense just wouldn’t allow us to win this game.”
Ammons was disappointed that the Bears settled for shots from outside despite the defensive changes that Northeastern employed.
“We gotta keep on going with what’s working,” Ammons said. “They changed defenses, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing what’s been working. In something like that, you’ve got to be patient.”
Dunkley said that regardless of what the Bears did on offense, the defense was the big key.
“We just played terribly. We didn’t play with the intensity on defense that we need to beat teams in their own gym,” Dunkley said. “… Defensively we gave up 91 points, and that says it right there. We can’t give up 91 points and expect to win.”
In the first half, the Black Bears had great success when they got the ball down low, but they were never able to sustain a solid enough defensive effort to hold the Huskies in check.
As a result, UMaine held a slim 38-35 lead over Northeastern at the break.
Huskies 91, Black Bears 85
Maine (17-9) Northeastern (8-18)
Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG F AF TP
Dunkley 9 17 7 8 28 Bain 7 11 2 20
Greene 6 12 8 10 20 Cranford 5 14 1 13
Jackson 0 4 0 0 0 Blossom 9 19 6 26
Dye 1 12 0 0 2 Hammick 3 8 2 8
Ammons 13 18 2 2 28 Aygar 3 5 1 7
Cavalieri 1 4 2 2 5 Morris 0 0 0
Haynes 0 1 0 1 0 Francois 1 6 2 4
White 1 1 0 0 2 Barnes 5 8 1 13
Totals 31 69 19 23 85 33 71 15 18 91
Maine 38 85
Northeastern 35 91
3-pt. goals: Maine (4-22): Dunkley 3-8, Cavalieri 1-4, Haynes 0-1, Jackson 0-2, Dye 0-7; Northeastern (10-19): Bain 4-5, Barnes 2-3, Cranford 2-5, Blossom 2-6
Attendance: 511
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