Hard work on the basketball court and in the classroom at the University of Maine garnered Cindy Blodgett plenty of All-America honors, but it didn’t leave her much spare time to explore the night life in downtown Orono, save the occasional foray to Pat’s Pizza on Mill Street.

Considering the challenges Blodgett is facing as the new head coach of the UMaine women’s basketball team, it seems more likely she’ll be eating her pizza while watching video of Black Bear games of the past season.

But that’s OK. The former Black Bear star player and all-time fan favorite could order in her pizza, something she did occasionally while she was helping to build her legend as a Black Bear from 1994 to 1998, an era that saw the program achieve unparalleled popularity and success.

Blodgett was busy early Friday morning in her office at Brown University, wrapping up her two-year stint as an assistant coach at the Providence, R.I., school as she makes the transition back to Orono.

“I’m slowly getting in touch with the [UMaine] kids. I still have a few calls to make today,” she said in a phone interview. “I’m trying to call the kids from Brown today and tie things up here. There certainly isn’t enough time in the day here. But I will certainly make contact with everyone in the next day or so.”

Blodgett faces the immediate pressure of packing up her life and moving to Maine, but it’s what lies ahead that will provide the biggest challenge for the first-year head coach.

She’s ready for it.

“I just think it’s a really exciting time,” said Blodgett, who was hired Tuesday and introduced Wednesday night in Orono. “Of course, there’s going to be stumbles. But you know what, I really believe that competitive people want challenges. They don’t run from them. It’s here. This is certainly a challenge. Now we’ll see how many competitors we have.”

Breaking down the Bears

The first order of business for the 31-year-old Clinton native may be to catch up on the Bears’ previous season under coach Ann McInerney, who resigned April 11, and determine what kind of players she’ll have for the upcoming year.

Blodgett had scouted Maine to prepare for a Nov. 24 game against Brown, but how much of that research Blodgett can apply to the upcoming season remains to be seen. Three of the starters from that game, including Benton’s Ashley Underwood and Bar Harbor’s Bracey Barker, have graduated along with a key backup player. Underwood and Barker were both 1,000-point scorers during their Maine careers.

The remaining group of Black Bears includes players who got a lot of on-court experience but proved to be inconsistent overall in a 13-15 season.

“The team’s going to be very, very different,” Blodgett said. “You take two 1,000-point scorers off any team and your team drastically changes. But what’s exciting about it is it’s going to allow other players to step up and have a larger role than they had this year. We’ll have to see how it shakes out.”

Ted Woodward knows Blodgett will work hard to get the program back on track. The UMaine men’s coach witnessed her work ethic firsthand when he arrived at the school in 1996 as an assistant coach.

“She was in the gym every morning when we’d come in,” Woodward said. “We’d wish it was our guys, but it was always her. She had tremendous passion for the game and for the University of Maine.”

Blodgett, who led Lawrence of Fairfield to four Class A state championships from 1991 to 1994, is familiar with three of the four high school players who will join the team next year. Biddeford guard Emily Rousseau made an unofficial visit to Brown last year, and Blodgett saw both Hampden Academy forward Tanna Ross and Timberland High School (N.H.) guard-forward Magdala Johnson at AAU tournaments last summer.

Blodgett said she’s not as familiar with Mt. Blue of Farmington center Christina Mosher.

Match style to personnel

Based on what she knows about her personnel at this early point, Blodgett sees the Bears playing more of a running game and focusing on defense, but that could change when the whole team gets together for its first practices next fall.

“There’s a certain style I would like to play, but I have to make sure I have the players to do that,” she said. “And if that’s not the case, we’re going to have to alter the style. That’s really what coaching is, is being able to adjust and build, and see the pieces and the parts we need and try to fill those as well.”

Blodgett’s ability to fill those parts via recruiting will be critical to the success of the program, according to one longtime Maine basketball observer.

“You just have to be a great salesperson,” said Old Town resident Stu Haskell, a former UMaine athletic director and America East Conference commissioner who served on the search committee to find McInerney’s replacement.

“You have to be someone who can convince people to see things your way, convince young ladies what a great thing it would be to wear the Maine uniform and represent the state,” he added. “The key is going to be the recruiting. It’s no secret, you can’t win without the horses.”

Blodgett honed her recruiting style at Brown.

“For me, I’m really honest with kids and with parents,” she said. “I don’t tell players that I want them unless I really do. If you stay true to yourself and believe in the opportunity you’re willing to give the student-athlete, it becomes easy in that sense.”

Blodgett’s recruiting goal is to retain the top Maine players while attracting players in New England and looking nationally. She believes the strong fan base is a big draw.

“We have something here that’s very different from the rest of the Northeast,” she said. “Outside of Connecticut, they’re going to have the chance to play in front of more fans than any other school in the New England area, and I think that’s a huge draw for players.”

Fan base will help attract players

While UMaine’s attendance numbers for Alfond Arena have traditionally been higher than the national average, those numbers have dropped since Blodgett and her teammates graduated. Maine was 13th among 300 NCAA Division I programs in attendance during the 1996-97 season and averaged 4,846 fans per game the following winter.

In the 2006-07 season the Black Bears averaged 1,755 fans with a high of 2,180 for a Feb. 13 game against Vermont. The Nov. 24 game in which Blodgett returned with her Brown squad had 1,762 fans, the sixth-highest crowd for the season.

The national average for NCAA Division I women’s home games was 1,586.

Maine may see a spike in attendance at first – less than 48 hours after Blodgett was introduced as the new coach the school had sold five to 10 season ticket packages, according to spokesman Brent Williamson, about two months before the school traditionally begins its ticket push – but Blodgett knows her presence alone won’t be enough to keep fans coming back.

“I don’t care how they get there,” she said. “As long as they’re watching my players play, I’m thrilled. They’re going to realize, I’m not walking through the door with a uniform on. I think we’re going to put a product out there that people can be proud of and that will make people come back, not to see me but to see them.”

Potential assistants abound

In hiring assistant coaches, another critical task she will begin as soon as she can, Blodgett could assemble a star-studded group of her former UMaine teammates who have spent time as Division I assistants.

She declined Friday to comment about she will hire a staff, but Blodgett could look to Jamie Cassidy (IUPUI) and Stephanie Guidi (Missouri State, the former Southwest Missouri State), and Stacia Rustad (St. Bonaventure; community college head coach in California).

Regardless of who guides the Black Bears, Blodgett said, fans will return to Alfond Arena as long as the team is winning. After all, that was what the Bears did during Blodgett’s days when Maine went to four straight NCAA tournaments.

And that, she’s hoping, will come from changing the team’s mind set.

“I have no idea how much they talk about that, how much they aspire to go to an NCAA tournament, that kind of stuff,” Blodgett said. “That’s something we will talk about a lot. Because if you don’t think it, you don’t dream it, you don’t see it or chase it, you’re never going to get there. Once I’m exposed to [the players] and they’re exposed to me, I’ll be able to get a much better feel of where they are. We’re going to change the culture a little bit.”

“She had tremendous passion for the game and for the University of Maine.”

UMAINE MEN’S BASKETBALL

COACH TED WOODWARD

“You have to be someone who can convince people to see things your way.”

FORMER AMERICA EAST

COMMISSIONER STU HASKELL