UMaine a surprise to be in league final Attitude, depth have lifted Black Bears

The University of Maine is ranked No. 153 among the 326 NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams in the country.

If the Black Bears beat Vermont in Saturday’s America East conference championship game, they’ll suddenly be one of the top 65.

One victory will essentially vault the Bears up at least 87 spots in the NCAA’s rating percentage index rankings, which reflect a team’s strength of schedule, and land them in the midst of the NCAA Tournament’s successful 64.

This is almost uncharted territory for the Maine men’s program, so maybe that’s why no one said anything about a possible NCAA Tourney bid in the hours following Maine’s America East semifinal win over Stony Brook last Sunday.

The 20-9 Bears’ focus was right where it should be: on their next game, which will tip off on the floor of Patrick Gymnasium in Burlington, Vt., at 11:30 a.m. today against the 125th-ranked Catamounts.

“Never in my life did I think I would be playing on ESPN, so I’m going to have a lot of fun and at the same time play my heart out,” said sophomore guard Kevin Reed.

Yes, ESPN will be there as March Madness switches into a higher gear four days before the NCAA Tournament’s opening round begins. So will 3,228 raving lunatics, the majority of whom will be wearing yellow-and-green as Catamount fans.

It isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill event for residents of the Green Mountain State. The last time Burlington hosted a nationally televised event was in 1976, when the U.S. Olympic boxing trials were held there.

It’s ironic this Maine team, which few had high expectations for, is in the final, just a little over a year after the season ended for the Maine squad many fans expected to be there.

Many still consider last year’s team to be more talented, but talent doesn’t always triumph intangibles.

“It’s been such a good team all the way though,” said head coach John Giannini, who became Maine’s all-time winningest coach this season, percentage-wise, with a 125-110 career record (53.1 percent) and No. 2 coach in career wins with 125. “These guys have been really wonderful. To get 13 guys to all want the same thing, think the same thing, and do the same thing for eight months is difficult in anything in life and we’ve had that. That’s special.”

The Bears went from a team with one of the best, if not the best, frontcourts in the conference to one with hardly any frontcourt. So Giannini utilized the strength of his team: A deep, talented guard corps. He knew he still needed a go-to guy inside, so he built his four-guard lineup around one. That started out as a tandem with 6-foot-9 junior David Dubois starting and 6-10 senior Mark Flavin spelling him off the bench, but as Flavin began improving by leaps and rebounds game after game, the two reversed roles.

Flavin went from a guy who averaged fewer than 10 minutes per game in seven games last year to a second team all-conference selection this year.

“This is a team that wasn’t supposed to be as good as they were, and then all of a sudden Flavin developed, they became a good team, and they got a lot of confidence,” said Stony Brook coach Nick Macarchuk.

The fact two other Maine players – Reed and senior point guard Eric Dobson – were AE second-teamers shows this team is not without talent, but where last year’s team had an edge there, this year’s has one in experience, consistency, attitude, and depth.

Dobson is AE’s top assist man; Reed is the top 3-point shooter for the second straight year, the top man in steals, the top defensive rebounder, and among the top seven in three other categories; Flavin is No. 2 in blocks and among the top 10 in two rebounding categories; and junior guard Chris Markwood plus junior swingman Joe Campbell are among AE’s top 15 in four categories.