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ORONO – A true team effort and clutch plays from several players down the stretch allowed the University of Maine men to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat Saturday night.
The Black Bears staged a surprising comeback in the last 56 seconds of regulation to tie the basketball game and force overtime before edging the St. Francis College Terriers by a nose, 85-82, at Alfond Arena.
Just about everyone on UMaine’s squad had a hand, foot, or even elbow in this one as four players scored in double digits and no fewer than six made key plays in the final six minutes of play to help the Bears even their record at 2-2.
“I think we learned a lot about ourselves and I think the trust level went up a lot tonight,” said Bears sophomore forward Mark Socoby of Houlton. “When guys got doubled, we passed out of it and looked for our teammates and they made plays. Everyone stepped up and filled their roles and it was a team win in every sense.”
Socoby scored six of his 24 points in the final five minutes after getting his second wind and overcoming some stagnant second-half shooting.
“Anytime you go into a shooting slump, you have to shoot yourself out of it,” said Socoby, who also had a game-high 12 rebounds to go with five steals and five assists. “My teammates stepped up a lot when I was struggling, like Brian Andre in the post and Jay Hight on the perimeter.”
Andre led the Bears with 28 points and also grabbed seven rebounds. Hight, a redshirt junior guard from Westbrook, had 10 points. Both stepped up big to bring the Bears back from the dead.
Andre hit one of two key three-point plays in the final 31 seconds of regulation to knot things up. The 6-foot-9 center from Bingham scored from the low post with 14.6 seconds left, drew a foul, and hit the foul shot to make it 72-71 St. Francis. He also hit two more foul shots with 1:24 left in overtime to again make it a one-point game (82-81 St. Francis).
Hight had hit back-to-back 3-pointers in regulation to shrink a 67-57 St. Francis lead with 4:24 left to 67-63 with 3:30 to go. He and Andre also grabbed the rebound after sophomore guard Junior Bernal missed two foul shots with 3.6 seconds left in regulation. Although neither scored on their put-back attempts, they made possible Socoby’s game-tying hoop off a rebound from the low post with one second to play.
The 1-2 Terriers went up 81-75 midway through overtime, but Bernal (15 points) scored on a lay-in from the right block and Hight followed with a hoop from the same spot on a fast-break pass from Bernal 18 seconds later.
After St. Francis hit one of two foul shots, Andre made both of his. Maine couldn’t score on its next two possessions, but the Terriers fared no better with two straight turnovers. After a Bears timeout, Socoby scored on a one-handed shot from the low post to give Maine an 83-82 lead with 16 seconds left.
An offensive foul call on Terriers forward Robert Hines gave the ball back to Maine. Socoby was fouled with 2.5 seconds left and hit both free throws. Hines’ 3-point attempt from just inside half-court at the buzzer clanged off the backboard.
“We didn’t give up and that was the main thing,” said Bernal, who dished out a game-high nine assists while also having seven rebounds and four steals. “This is a big win mentally for us.”
It was just as big a loss for the Terriers.
“We let this one go. They played hard, but we should have won this game,” said Hines, who did it all for St. Francis with 29 points, six assists, six rebounds and three steals. “We didn’t box out the last few minutes, we missed free throws, and we got careless with the ball. We had 24 turnovers, so that explains it.”
Neither team took particularly good care of the ball. Maine had 19 turnovers. But only seven of them came after the first half, to St. Francis’ 16.
“We were able to make plays when we had to and made some to get us out of trouble, too,” said Maine coach Ted Woodward. “To me, the big key in the second half is we had nine second chance points and they had zero. I think that was huge.”
Jamaal Womack, a 5-8 senior guard, posted big numbers for the Terriers with 30 points on 7-for-14 shooting from 3-point range. He hit for just two of those 3’s and 11 points total in the second half.
“They shot the ball very well in the first half, but two of their guys had 36 of their 41 points, so we decided to make some changes as to who was going to guard Hines and Womack,” Woodward said. “I think putting Junior and Mark on them changed the flow.”
BLACK BEARS 85, TERRIERS 82 (OT)
St. Francis (1-2) Maine (2-2)
Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP
Williams 0 1 0 0 0 McNally 0 3 0
Hines 11 20 6 9 29 Socoby 8 15 24
Yessoufou 2 3 1 2 5 Andre 12 17 28
Womack 11 20 1 2 30 Hanzlik 3 7 6
Cadell 1 1 0 0 3 Bernal 7 18 15
Rickards 1 2 0 2 3 Hight 4 5 10
Campbell 0 0 0 0 0 Costigan 0 0
Willis 0 0 0 0 0 Cook 0 2 0
Pekkola 0 3 0 0 0 Bofia 1 3 2
Burton 0 0 0 0 0
Ayeni 3 7 3 4 12
Gooden 0 3 0 0 0
Rubino 0 2 0 0 0
Totals 29 62 11 19 82 Totals 35 72 14 85
St. Francis 41 73 82
Maine 40 73 85
3-pt. goals – St. Francis (13-29): Womack 7-14, Ayeni 3-5, Cadell 1-1, Rickards 1-2, Hines 1-4, Rubino 0-1, Pekkola 0-2; Maine (6-18): Socoby 4-7, Hight 2-3, McNally 0-1, Costigan 0-1, Tchekane-Bofia 0-1, Bernal 0-2, Hanzlik 0-3,
Attendance: 900 (est.)
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