Black Bears ready, rested for a tough tourney tear UMaine women feature more depth and experience

This is the most important week of the entire season for the University of Maine women’s basketball team.

That’s why the Black Bears spent Sunday and Monday doing something critical to their success – resting.

Coach Sharon Versyp knows her team must win three games on consecutive days to claim the America East championship and earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament. For that reason, her aim the last week or 10 days has been to make sure her regulars are as rested as possible heading into the conference tournament.

Top-seeded UMaine (22-6) renews its quest in earnest today with a 6 p.m. quarterfinal contest against the winner of Wednesday’s 9 p.m. first-round game between No. 8 New Hampshire (10-17) and No. 9 Stony Brook (7-20).

The Bears, coming off road victories last week at Stony Brook and Hartford, took it easy earlier this week in the hope of regrouping before the tournament.

“The biggest thing is being fresh and everyone on the team contributing the way that they have been, because three games in a row is tough,” Versyp said. “I think it’s going to come down to numbers, if you have some depth, and I think we have that this year.”

Last season, UMaine’s quest for the America East championship ended in a title game loss to Boston University. While some theorized the pressure of the Bears’ school-record 21-game win streak finally caught up to them, Versyp believes fatigue was the culprit.

“I don’t think it had anything to do with tightness,” Versyp said. “Everybody was worn down.”

Senior Melissa Heon admitted the Bears ran out of gas in last year’s championship game.

“We let the fatigue hit us and it seemed like it hit us all in that one game last year,” Heon said.

Keys for UMaine will include establishing a comfortable early lead, if possible, and getting strong contributions from its bench in order to let the regulars save their legs.

“We’re going to need [the younger players] in the tournament,” Heon said. “The starters can’t play three games back to back and play 36 minutes a game. You can’t do it and win.”

The Bears also haven’t given their Feb. 28 loss to Vermont, which snapped their 15-game winning streak, a second thought. The fact there is no streak means UMaine goes into this year’s tourney with a different mentality.

“We all know what happened last year and people put that in our face a lot,” Heon said. “It’s different this year, we did lose [during the regular season], so now it’s like the curse is off and we’re just going to keep going.”

Bears starters Heon and Heather Ernest average better than 32 minutes per game, while starters Kim Corbitt (28.1 mpg) and Julie Veilleux (25.8) and key substitute Monica Peterson (27.2) also log significant minutes.

UMaine hopes to get more out of players like center Abby Schrader (13.4 mpg), shooting guard Ashley Underwood (10.6), small forward Bracey Barker (7.3) and power forward Lindsey Hugstad-Vaa (5.9).

The Bears also have been dealing with the uncertainty of who they would play, which wasn’t determined until Wednesday night. However, UMaine has beaten both teams twice and knows their tendencies.

“It comes down to passing, catching, not making mistakes, knocking down shots, staying out of foul trouble, limiting your turnovers, running in transition,” Versyp said. “All the things that we normally do well, we need to continue to do well.”