The University of Maine’s baseball team will play six America East games against the University of Vermont as the result of the league’s unbalanced schedule.

But this could very well be the last year of the unbalanced schedule according to Mike Hirschman, the league’s assistant director of communications.

There are currently nine teams in the league, four in the northern division and five in the south, but the University of New Hampshire is dropping baseball after this season.

“The likelihood is that each team will play everybody else four times for a 28-game schedule next year. The athletic directors will probably decide on the schedule at their June meeting,” said Hirschman.

Hirschman added that the 28-game schedule could help the league’s RPI [Ratings Percentage Index] and enable it to avoid a play-in series which it must deal with this season.

The current schedule has each northern division school playing two other northern division teams four times each and the other one six times. They play the five southern division teams twice each. Each southern division school plays four games against the other southern division teams along with the two games each against the northern schools.

Each America East team has 24 league games and must play 20 to qualify for the tourney.

Maine is joined in the north by Northeastern, Vermont and New Hampshire while the south is comprised of Delaware, Drexel, Towson State, Hofstra and Hartford. Hartford was moved from the north to the south to prevent the southern division schools from having to play another divisional opponent six times two years in a row, according to Hirschman.

The six-team, double-elimination America East Tournament will be held on May 8-11 at Frawley Stadium in Wilmington, Del., home of the Class A Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Carolina League.

The tourney champ will host the winner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference in a best-of-three series the following weekend for inclusion into the NCAA Tournament.

The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference includes institutions like Morgan State, Coppin State, Florida A&M and Howard.

University of Maine catcher Nick Caiazzo credited his good start to becoming a more selective and patient hitter.

Caiazzo is .283 with four homers and 15 runs batted in entering Saturday’s doubleheader at Drexel. He had six homers all of last season and drove in 28 runs.

“I think three of my four homers have come after I had fallen behind 0-2 in the count. I like to see what the pitcher has,” said Caiazzo who has been able to foul off pitches until he got a pitch he was able to drive.

Caiazzo came into this season averaging one strikeout per every five at-bats but he had just six strikeouts in his first 46 at-bats.

Former University of Maine-Fort Kent and Westbrook College men’s basketball coach Jim Graffam has been named an assistant coach for the Portland Wave of the United States Basketball League.

In his first season at UMFK this past winter, Graffam led the Bengals to a 21-11 record and a berth in the National Small College Athletic Association’s national tournament.

Previously, he had compiled a 132-55 record in six years at Westbrook, a program he founded.

Graffam will assist head coach Rick Simonds.