Women’s basketball at the University of Maine is dead, the whispers from the Alfond Arena rafters tell you. After six straight NCAA bids, the party’s over.

Just ask the league’s coaches. Big Bad Maine? They penciled ’em in for sixth place in America East.

There’s no talent in Orono, you hear. No stars. Heck, new coach Sharon Versyp even had to pick up a softball player to make sure she’d have the bodies to run five-on-five drills.

So, tell me this: Why is everybody smiling?

“It’s a lot more fun,” junior guard Lacey Stone answers emphatically for everyone in Bearville. “It really is.”

Last year, Stone was often on the bench, disappointment and anger etched on her face.

But there was Stone on Monday night, just seconds after Versyp had given her new team 25 minutes worth of high-voltage feedback for a lackluster exhibition win. … smiling?

Ear to ear.

Just like the rest of the Bears.

“It’s different,” Stone says as much with her grin and sparkling eyes as her words. “People are happier.”

Part of the reason for that, Stone and captain Tracy Guerrette admit, is the fact that this year, there are no stars. No one person needs the ball 20 times a game.

“Everybody has to play together,” Guerrette says. “Everybody’sgot to step it up. Everybody’s got to encourage everybody. Everybody’s got to contribute.”

And that, she says, leads to something else that was missing last year.

“It’s more of a positive attitude,” Guerrette says, also smiling. “Everybody’s just encouraged.”

That’s not the way it was last year in Orono. A stagnant Black Bear squad limped through the season, shuffled through the postseason, then succeeded in erasing most of the bad memories by earning an NCAA bid and nearly knocking off North Carolina.

But all along the way, there were questions. What is wrong? Where’s the fire? Who’s to blame?

Now, with former coach Joanne Palombo-McCallie a thousand miles away, safely ensconced in the dream job she courted from the day she arrived in Orono, the truth trickles out … almost.

Players don’t bad-mouth coaches, past or present. But they can tell you what’s changed in the past eight months.

For Stone, it’s this: Now she’s allowed to work hard and fail.

Before leaving for Michigan State, Palombo treated Stone like she treated every shooter she ever coached who wasn’t named Blodgett.

Cindy Blodgett’s light, of course, was always green. For Stone and the rest, it was flashing red. Make a shot, and you’re a hero. Miss? Grab a spot on the end of the bench.

“I feel a lot more comfortable shooting this year,” Stone says, still smiling. “Before, I felt like, you know, if you get the hook, you do.”

Not any more. Now she’s playing with both eyes on the hoop, instead of with one on the basket and one on the scorer’s table, looking for her replacement.

“But this year, it’s different,” Stone says, using the word that has emerged as the catch-phrase of the emerging Versyp era. Different.

“Kids have to be able to play through some mistakes,” says Versyp, knowing how … different … that sounds.

Talk to Versyp and you realize she doesn’t hear the whispers. Basketball isn’t dead. She expects to win. So does her team.

But win or lose, Versyp says one thing has emerged from a series of preseason team-building exercises: The Black Bears will live – or die – as a unit.

“It’s not the players and us,” she says, referring to her coaching staff. “It’s us, collectiely, together.”

That’s got a different ring, too.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter.