Now that the regular season is over, the University of Maine Black Bears will now set their sights on their best-of-three Hockey East quarterfinal series against the University of Massachusetts.

The series begins Thursday night at Alfond Arena in Orono.

The third-seeded Bears are 24-7-5 overall and 14-6-4 in Hockey East while the sixth-seeded Minutemen are 17-16-1 and 10-14 in league play.

The 10 Hockey East wins are a school record for UMass, which is in its ninth season in the league. The No. 6 seed is also a school-best.

The Minutemen’s previous high was eight league wins (8-14-2) and a No. 7 seed in 1998-99.

UMass will be looking for its first-ever wins at Alfond Arena. The Minutemen are 0-18 in Orono and have been outscored 116-32 dating back to Jan. 26, 1979.

But several streaks have been snapped this season, including Maine’s 28-game home unbeaten streak and its 24-game home unbeaten skein against Providence (23-0-1) dating back to 1989.

And Maine’s home win over UMass this season was an evenly played 1-0 affair on Nov. 9.

The teams split in Amherst two weeks ago, UMass winning in impressive fashion 4-2 and Maine posting an equally thorough 4-0 triumph the next night.

“They’re very tough,” said Maine senior center Marty Kariya. “Hockey East has been tough the last three years. And it seems, more than ever this year, that the bottom teams are little buggers to play against. They’re going to be an awfully hard team and we’ve got to come prepared.”

“It’s going to be a tough series,” said Bear senior left wing Lucas Lawson. “They like to bottle you up. We’ve got to be ready.”

Maine coach Tim Whitehead said, “They’ll play real aggressively and try to muck it up with us like they did the first night down there. We had an answer for that the second night. Our challenge will be to meet their intensity in the first period Thursday night. We have to send a message the first night that we’re ready to go.”

The other three quarterfinal series are intriguing because top seed New Hampshire and No. 8 UMass-Lowell battled to a 4-4 tie on Feb. 21; No. 7 Merrimack beat No. 2 Boston College 6-1 on Feb. 15 after a 3-2 overtime loss the previous night; and No. 4 Providence College and No. 5 Boston University played three overtime games.

UMaine baseball 12th in East

The UMaine baseball team, which opens its season with a Saturday doubleheader at Coppin State (Md.), has been ranked 12th in the inaugural CollegeBaseballInsider.com Preseason Eastern Coaches poll released Tuesday.

Coach Paul Kostacopoulos’ Black Bears, who went 40-17 last season including an America East championship and a spot in the NCAA Los Angeles Regional.

Notre Dame was No. 1 in the poll, which includes 76 teams from eight conferences including America East, Atlantic 10, Big East, Colonial, Ivy, Metro Atlantic, Northeast and Patriot.

St. Joseph’s men in NCAAs

The Saint Joseph’s College men’s basketball team received its first-ever NCAA men’s basketball tournament bid on Sunday night and will play that first-round game at Salem State (Mass.) Thursday at 7 p.m.

St. Joe’s has spent the paste 23 years as a dual member of the NCAA and NAIA. This is its first year as an independent in NCAA Division III and the team finished with the best winning percentage (20-4, .833) of an Division III independent in the country.

The winner of the St. Joe’s-Salem State game advances to a second-round game at Williams (Mass.) on Saturday.