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ORONO – Home court is one of basketball’s great apparent advantages. Play in your own gym, some people say, and your shots start rattling into the hoop unexplainably. Good things happen. Wins result.
That didn’t happen for the University of Maine men on Thursday night.
And though they did play defense like a bunch of Bears who’d been rudely awakened from their midwinter slumber, and did make every possession count, in the end, it just didn’t matter: Hartford won 50-47.
UMaine coach John Giannini wouldn’t make excuses or blame specific players for the outcome, but said he did understand the loss.
“It’s sad to say, but I saw some of this coming,” Giannini said. “We need players to fill their roles. … We need everyone on the court on a given night to contribute. And I think the stat sheet’s pretty obvious, that we had some guys play a lot of minutes and basically not contribute the way that they’re capable of.”
Maine dropped to 5-11, 2-3 in America East play, while Hartford improved to 5-12, 3-2.
The teams battled through a series of fits and starts, each struggling to put the ball in the hoop … and each failing to put its opponent away.
Maine led by as many as six points, while Hartford enjoyed a five-point bulge of its own. But both of those leads were in the first half. After intermission, the game was even closer than that, with eight ties and four lead changes.
UMaine star Errick Greene, who finished with 15 points, six rebounds, and two steals, said he’ll shoulder some of the blame.
“[The loss] was on me,” Greene said. “In a game like that, your best player’s got to make the plays. I didn’t get the job done. I missed a free throw [with 1:06 to play and Maine trailing 48-44] and my man scored. So I take the blame on me.”
One Bear who did struggle was Clayton Brown, who scored two points, grabbed four rebounds, and turned the ball over six times in 29 minutes of action.
Brown also committed a foul near midcourt with 31 seconds on the game clock, 23 seconds on the shot clock, and the Bears trailing by one at 48-47.
“For the second time this year we made a really foolish foul in the last minute, that I thought was a real dagger in our hearts in terms of our chances of us winning the game,” Giannini said. “In that situation, we were gonna have a chance to win the game. We were going to get the ball back to win the game. And when we fouled, mysteriously, intentionally, we were forced to foul another five or six times just to get the ball back.”
The foul was Maine’s fourth team foul of the half, took the shot clock out of play, and made them scramble to put Hartford in the bonus after that.
Junior Amous hit two free throws with 19 seconds to go to push the lead to three, then UMaine missed on a shot and at least three tip-in attempts on the ensuing possession.
Giannini said his goal was to score a hoop quickly, then foul again.
Deon Saunders led the Hawks with 16 points while Amous grabbed 10 rebounds.
Justin Rowe scored 13, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked five shots for the Bears. Joe Campbell of Bangor played 32 minutes and made seven steals – one shy of the UMaine single-game record.
“The things we’ve been good at all year … we’ve been able to rebound, and for the most part we’ve been able to defend,” Hartford coach Larry Harrison said.
“And in the second half I think we did a good job of offensive rebounding and getting some defensive stops.”
HAWKS 50, BLACK BEARS 47
Hartford (5-12) Maine (5-11)
Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP
Ford 1 5 0 0 3 Greene 6 14 3 15
Saunders 6 9 4 6 16 Campbell 1 3
Stys 2 6 0 0 5 Jackson 1 6 5 8
Amous 3 7 2 2 8 Brown 0 6 2
Johnson 2 4 3 6 7 Rowe 6 12 13
Storpirstis 1 5 0 0 3 Petkus 1 5 6
McClinton 0 0 0 0 0 Flavin 0 0 0
Goode 0 0 0 0 0
Swan 0 1 0 0 0
Odugbela 4 9 0 0 8
Jones 0 0 0 0 0
Totals 19 46 9 14 50 15 46 14 21 47
Hartford 21 50
Maine 23 47
3-pt. goals: Hartford (3-9): Ford 1-2, Stys 1-2, Storpirstis 1-5; Maine (3-15): Campbell 1-3, Jackson 1-3, Brown 0-4, Petkus 1-5
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