With AE title up for grabs, men like tourney chances

loading...

With yet another America East men’s basketball tournament looming, and with yet another shot at what has been an elusive target – the league’s automatic bid in the NCAA tourney – in the offing, the University of Maine men’s squad is … again … thinking optimistically.

And while it may seem like yet another example of blind faith has overtaken the blue and white, at least one contending coach lends credibility to the popular theory making its way around the league:

This is anyone’s tourney to win … or lose.

“There’s just so much pressure,” Vermont’s Tom Brennan said after his team lost to the Black Bears on Feb. 17. “Vermont has never won, never won a championship. There’s an amazing amount of pressure on them.

“This has certainly gotten to us, and anybody who says it isn’t just isn’t watching the same team I’m watching,” Brennan said.

That, in case you don’t know, is a front-runner talking. Brennan’s Catamounts are poised on the brink of a historic season. And even he isn’t sure he’s coaching a team that can put three wins together when it matters most.

And that’s what this mini-season consists of. Three games. Three wins. Earn those, and you’re heading into the NCAA tourney field. Maybe you’ll be fed to Duke. Or perhaps your seeding will be better than that.

Lose one? You’re done.

And in the new-look America East, everyone, including Maine, thinks they’ve got what it takes to go on a season-ending three-win streak.

The tournament’s first two rounds are set for Saturday and Sunday at Matthews Arena on the Northeastern University campus in Boston. The championship game will be played at the home venue of the higher remaining seed on March 9 at 11:30 a.m.

“There’s no team in this conference that can’t be beaten on any given night,” Maine senior captain Errick Greene said. “But I do feel, however, that if all the teams were playing their best ball, we’re the best team out of anybody.”

Heady words for a team that enters the tourney as the No. 5 seed, and with a 7-9 conference record (10-17 overall).

Greene’s fellow senior and captain Jamar Croom, who rarely plays but is a fifth-year locker-room leader, agrees.

“We’ve taken some losses and had some adversity during this season, but I feel like with the talent that we have on this team, we’re gonna win this league,” Croom said.

“That’s a big statement to make, but that’s what I see as being true,” he said.

UMaine coach John Giannini may not be willing to make bold predictions, but he said his team could contend … if everything works in its favor.

“All of our games are 50-50 games,” Giannini said. “We could win those first two games and be in the championship game, or we could lose the first game. And our players know that.

“I think that’s a healthy perspective, knowing that if you play well and do the right things, you can win against anybody, and if you don’t play at your best and have a lot of people contribute, you could lose to anyone.”

The Bears have proven that: They played UMass tough earlier in the year, lost to league power Boston University by two in Orono, and knocked off Vermont (also a league contender), also in Orono. They also lost to Stony Brook, which had won only three games at the time.

But even with a week remaining in the season, Giannini saw some potentially intriguing matchups for the tournament.

“I think a lot of what will happen in the tournament depends on the seedings,” Giannini said. “There are certain teams that stylistically match up better or worse with other teams.”

Among the potential first-round matchups that Giannini circled: Boston University against Northeastern, Albany vs. Vermont, and Stony Brook vs. Hartford.

“I think one of the more intriguing matchups would be Northeastern against BU, because Northeastern does have an athletic edge in that game, and it’s a bitter rivalry,” he said. “They’ve already played an overtime game. I think, of the lower seeds, Northeastern has the best chance to beat BU.”

In addition, Albany handled Vermont late in the season, and Stony Brook has taken Hartford to overtime.

“I don’t know if the matchups will work out that way, but any of those matchups have potential upset written all over them,” Giannini said.

Those matchups, in fact, came to pass, along with Maine at New Hampshire.

In order for UMaine to fare well in the tournament, Giannini admits, they’ve got very little margin of error.

“We’ll have to play excellent defense with Errick, Derrick [Jackson], Rickey [White], and Justin [Rowe]. I think those four will have to be on the floor a lot, because they are our best defenders, and it’s also one of our top rebounding lineups.”

And on the offensive end, Giannini said he’ll need production from several players … although two in particular can’t afford to play poorly.

“Offensively, we’re really going to need Justin to assert himself and be good. We’re really going to need Errick to have a tournament-MVP type run. That’s just the way the team is made up,” he said.

In addition, he said guard Freddy Petkus and forwards Clayton Brown, Todd Tibbetts, and Bangor’s Joe Campbell have to hit open shots when they get them.

But even if those four play extremely well, he said, the onus is going to remain on his top four players.

“[Production from role players] still just gets you in the ballpark,” Giannini said. “What gets you over the hump is going to have to be our stud defenders being stud defenders and our tough matchups taking advantage of things offensively.”

The tough matchups: Greene, who will likely be a first-team all-conference pick, and Rowe, Maine’s first 7-footer ever and the single-season blocked-shot leader.

The rugged, 6-3 Greene likes to take small guards down low and punish them. If teams choose to guard him with a big man, he uses his quickness to get to the hole.

And Rowe’s long frame allows the Bears to throw lobs to him in places only he can reach.

The danger, though, is that Maine has been susceptible to two different defensive ploys as the season has progressed.

“I think the toughest thing is when people pack it in [in a zone defense] and really make it hard for Errick and Justin to get good shots, and force us to make jump shots,” Giannini said. “Then the game pretty much comes down to whether they go in, or they don’t go in.”

There is a second way to attack UMaine, however. And Giannini knows it.

“The other thing that has had some effectiveness against us is the opposite extreme: The real dramatic pressure that kind of exploits our lack of ballhand-ling,” Giannini said.

After a season in which two top guards left the team before play started, three starters (Greene, Brown, and Jackson) were injured in a car accident, and White missed time due to a knee injury, at least one Bear figures that some good luck must be around the corner.

“Everybody’s back now, and it’s that time of the season where all you can do is make a run,” Greene said. “With the bumpy season that we had, we just know something good, something positive, is gonna come out of this.”