UMaine heading to W.Va. Bears to play Friday in Women’s NIT

The season isn’t over after all for the University of Maine women’s basketball team.

Coach Sharon Versyp’s Black Bears, who were bounced from the America East Tournament quarterfinals by Boston University last Thursday, have been selected to compete in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.

UMaine (20-9) will travel to Morgantown, W.Va. for a Friday first-round game against the University of West Virginia (17-12).

The pairings were released late Sunday night for the 32-team tournament, which is played at home-court sites.

It is the third appearance in the WNIT for UMaine, which lost to Creighton in 2003 at Orono and went 2-1 while finishing in fifth place in 1990.

Should the Bears advance, they would meet the St. Johns-Delaware winner in the second round.

West Virginia was ranked 79th in the latest unofficial Rating Percent Index while UMaine was No. 86.

In other Women’s NIT matchups, Gonzaga (27-3) will host BYU (19-10) in a first-round game Wednesday, Chattanooga (24-4) will be at home against Villanova (19-11) on Friday and Delaware (25-5) entertains St. John’s (19-10) on Thursday.

Villanova, which tied for fourth in the Big East, was another team that thought it had a good chance of getting into the NCAA tournament. Other NCAA “bubble” teams that ended up in the WNIT included Iowa of the Big Ten, Xavier of the Atlantic 10 and Southwest Missouri State, the regular-season champion in the Missouri Valley.

Gonzaga had seemed to be headed for its first NCAA tournament appearance when it rolled to a 14-0 record in the West Coast Conference and earned the program’s first national ranking. But the ‘Zags were upset by Santa Clara in the finals of the conference tournament and that was enough to keep them out of the NCAAs.

“It took me by surprise,” coach Kelly Graves said. “I knew it was going to be touch-and-go, but this was a season of so many firsts. We dominated the league like no other team in the conference.”