Freshman starters Ashley Brownlee of Portland and Kara Borelli of Westbrook helped the Merrimack College women’s basketball team advance to the NCAA Div. II national semifinals Wednesday afternoon with a 79-78 victory over St. Cloud State (Minn.) in Hot Springs, Ark.

Merrimack (Mass.) will face Seattle Pacific at 6 p.m. tonight. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU, which can be seen on DirecTV channel 609. The winner will advance to the national championship game.

Brownlee, a third-team All-Mainer last year, had seven points, four rebounds, three assists, three steals and one turnover in 30 minutes as a starting forward for the 29-5 Warriors.

She hit a 3-pointer with less than 30 seconds left in the game to give Merrimack its first lead of the second half and then blocked a shot with 3.5 seconds left to preserve the win.

Borelli, a first-team All-Maine honoree, had only two points and played just seven minutes because of foul trouble. She was a Miss Maine Basketball finalist last year.

Merrimack beat Bridgeport, American International, and Bentley to gain the berth against St. Cloud State in the national quarterfinals.

Snyder, Palmer shine

Two Bangor natives competed at top-level swimming competitions recently.

Lindsey Snyder, a 2004 Bangor High graduate, was named Rookie of the Meet at the 2005 Northeast Conference Swimming and Diving Championships after leading Central Connecticut State to a second-place finish.

And Bangor’s Eric Palmer, a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, participated in the Canadian Interuniversity Swimming Championships, a competition that featured several of Canada’s Olympic swimmers and the top Canadian collegiate swimmers.

Snyder finished first in the 200-yard backstroke with a personal-best time of 2 minutes, 3.81 seconds and also won the 100 back in a personal-best and team-record time of 57.97.

She took fifth in the 200 individual medley, also in a personal-best time of 2:09.44. She also swam on the Blue Devils’ first-place 200 medley relay team that set a meet and team record with a time of 1:46.41. She did the same on the 400 medley relay, this time finishing in 3:49.99, which was a U.S. Nationals qualifying time.

Snyder also competed on the 800 freestyle relay that finished fourth (7:46.45). CCSU was the runnerup out of 13 teams.

Meanwhile, Palmer, a former Bangor High swimming standout, finished 11th in the 200-meter breaststroke with a time of 2:23.61 and was 19th in the 100 breaststroke with a personal-best time of 1:06.35 – not bad for Palmer, who isn’t a sprinter. He was 20th in the 400 IM (4:49.43) and had a personal best in the 50 breaststroke with a 31.41 for 27th place.

Dalhousie finished sixth out of 24 teams.