ORONO – As he paced in front of his bench waiting for Sunday’s basketball game to start, Norfolk State coach Wil Jones greeted one University of Maine player like he was a long-lost friend, figuring out the ploy might pay off later on.

“I tried to distract that ‘ol guy named Huggy. … I told him before the game, ‘Come here, Hug. … He said, ‘Where do I know you from?'” Jones recounted.

“And I said, ‘I’ll tell you when the game’s over,” Jones said. “I was trying to distract him. I didn’t know him from a gypsy.”

UMaine guard Huggy Dye knew that, of course. He took care of the formalities shortly after the game began, introducing himself by scoring 16 first-half points to help lead the Bears to a 71-62 win in front of 1,844 fans at Alfond Arena.

“He tried,” Dye said with a shy grin and a shrug when reminded of Jones’ plot.

Dye finished with 22 points, Julian Dunkley added 18 and Carvell Ammons bounced back from a foul-plagued first half to stifle the Spartans’ inside game after intermission in the win.

Ammons played just six minutes and picked up two fouls in the first half but played 15 minutes of the second and finished with 11 rebounds while disrupting the Norfolk State low-post attack.

“As soon as he got in the game, they didn’t score inside,” UMaine coach John Giannini said. “In fact, they had a hard time getting the ball inside at all. I thought Carvell played a tremendous game, especially in the second half.”

Dye said the specter of Tuesday night’s second-half collapse against Boston University gave the Bears all the incentive they’d need after taking a five-point lead to the locker room for the second game in a row.

“We didn’t really want to let that happen and understood that the first five minutes of the second half was very important,” Dye said.

The Bears took that five minutes very seriously, scoring the first seven points of the period. When Dye converted a Derrick Jackson feed into a fast-break layup at the 16:43 mark, UMaine held a 45-33 lead and the Spartans were reeling.

And after the Spartans answered with a 7-2 run of their own to make it 47-40, the Bears pulled out to another lead on the strength of some of the afternoon’s more entertaining plays.

Rickey White provided two of those, both dunks off feeds from Tory Cavalieri.

The first, an alley-oop effort at the 13:40 mark, ended the Norfolk State comeback. Ammons followed that hoop by finally finishing off a hoop for the Bears after three different players crashed the boards and took tips at a rebound of Dye’s shot.

That play seemed to energize the Bears, who rode that wave of energy to another 13-4 run. White capped that one by gathering in a Cavalieri pass and throwing down a thunderous dunk that made it 60-44 with 9:55 to go.

The Black Bears led for the final 30 minutes of the game, but weren’t ever able to enjoy a comfortable cushion.

A steady string of turnovers (UM committed 28 to the Spartans’ 25) kept them from blowing things open.

Giannini praised the perimeter defense, said he was satisfied with a 43-38 rebounding edge, and even understood a 2-for-17 effort from behind the 3-point arc. The turnovers, however, were a different story.

“Our problem was the 28 turnovers,” Giannini said. “And if you look they’re not spread out very evenly. We just had a few guys have bad games and throw the ball to the other team a lot.”

Two of those were point guards Errick Greene (nine points, six turnovers) and Cavalieri (seven turnovers and four assists). Colin Haynes also had six turnovers to go with his nine rebounds.

Terrance Winston scored 12 for the Spartans while Cordell Maxwell had 11 and Darrell Neal contributed 10 points and eight rebounds.

Black Bears 71, Spartans 62

Norfolk State (2-5) 62 Maine (6-3) 71

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG F AF TP

Winston 5 15 0 0 12 Dunkley 5 9 8 8 18

Dove 2 3 2 2 6 Greene 4 7 1 5 9

Roberts 3 14 3 5 9 Jackson 1 7 0 1 2

Neal 3 8 4 7 10 Dye 8 18 4 5 22

Abney 0 1 1 4 1 Ammons 3 6 1 3 7

Byrd 0 0 0 0 0 Cavalieri 1 3 2 2 4

Mills 2 5 0 0 4 Haynes 0 2 1 2 1

Smith 0 0 0 0 0 Brown 1 1 0 0 2

Whittle 0 0 0 0 0 White 3 4 0 0 6

Maxwell 5 8 0 2 11

Seward 0 1 2 2 2

Boyd 3 4 1 1 7

Quick 0 0 0 0 0

Totals 23 59 13 23 62 Totals 26 57 17 26 71

Norfolk State 33 62

Maine 38 71

3-pt. goals: Norfolk State (3-17): Winston 2-9, Dove 0-1, Roberts 0-2, Maxwell 1-4, Boyd 0-1; Maine (2-17): Dunkley 0-4, Greene 0-1, Jackson 0-2, Dye 2-7, Cavalieri 0-2, Haynes 0-1

Attendance: 1,844