ORONO – When you’ve traveled 15,000 miles in the past month and have been living and breathing basketball ever since the first day of classes, there is nothing more welcome than having a few days off.

The members of the University of Maine women’s basketball team, fresh off Sunday’s victory over Rider at Alfond Arena, are hoping to recharge their batteries by heading home to spend Christmas with their families.

Coach Sharon Versyp, who will spend three days with her sister’s family in Indiana, knows her players can use a break as they prepare for the start of their America East Conference season next month.

Senior co-captain Heather Ernest of Temple, who had a fairly convenient drive home to western Maine, said the break is very much needed.

“I think everybody’s excited to go home and get away and enjoy other things besides Maine women’s basketball for a few days,” Ernest said. “This break is really good for us, for each individual person and the coaches, to go off and do their family thing, do the Christmas holiday thing, and then we kind of come back maybe refreshed and ready to go.”

Senior Julie Veilleux of Augusta said the respite is important for the Black Bears at this point in the season.

“We bank on this time, basically,” Veilleux said. “We can just rest and enjoy our families. It gets us up for the next part of our season, which is huge, to play in the conference.”

Pending the outcome of Sunday’s home game against Southern Methodist, the Bears should be able to look back on the first part of the season with a sense of accomplishment. UMaine is 5-3, including tough road wins over Hawaii, Wisconsin-Green Bay and Drake.

“I think we’ve done a wonderful job,” Veilleux said. “We’re happy with where we’re at, and we’re not content, but looking forward to the future.”

UMaine next practices on Friday to get ready for SMU. Because of the Hawaii trip last month, the Bears will have only the single game after Christmas rather than heading off to a holiday tournament.

UMaine plays at Wichita State on Jan. 2 before opening its America East schedule with a Jan. 7 home game against Binghamton.

Home away from home court

Why would a team make a four-hour, round-trip drive to play a home game?

Well, if you’re a member of the University of Maine men’s basketball team, you do something that’s not necessarily beneficial to your team in the short term in order to provide a long-term benefit to your school.

“Everything we do with our schedule is for a purpose,” said Maine men’s coach John Giannini. “Our schedule is orchestrated to give us certain benefits.”

“The biggest benefit from a trip like this is to our department and our university.”

A “home” game at Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland helps UMaine in terms of exposure, visibility, recruiting and fundraising.

“The Portland area has the largest alumni base in the state and has a lot of supporters and potential supporters,” Giannini said. “It’s a key recruiting area, too, so I think every time one of our athletic teams go down there, it has benefits for our institution.”

The trip also served as a homecoming for Maine junior guard Chris Markwood, who played his first game for the Black Bears after transferring from Notre Dame.

“Having a player from Portland like Chris Markwood definitely makes it more special for him and more exciting for the fans and our whole team,” said Giannini.

Markwood had what was likely an entirely forgettable game for him as he played 15 minutes and fouled out after going 0-for-2 from the field.

“I was really happy for him to have the experience. I’ve seen this happen to other players. It’s a big game and it’s his first game. You get in foul trouble and things don’t go your way,” Giannini said. “Obviously today wasn’t a great day for him, but he got out on the court, got his feet wet, and he can go from here.”

Markwood did provide some valuable rest time for guards Eric Dobson and Kevin Reed.

“Coach wants us to go hard the whole time we’re in, so even with Chris’ foul trouble, we were still fresher than we normally would be,” Dobson said.

The “away” home game was ultimately a success as Maine drove back with a 69-63 victory over Morgan State University.