Women’s basketball splits home series

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Mark W. Lipczynski.

Maine senior Kizzy Lopez was joined by her mother, Fatime Lopez Radke in a pre-game ceremony marking Lopez's last home game. Lopez is the only senior on the women's basketball team.

Mark W. Lipczynski.

Maine's Melissa Heon lunges for the loose ball while Northeastern's Aisha Williams trails behind her in the first half of Saturday's matchup. Maine won 61-51.

The Maine women’s basketball team went 1-1 this weekend in a two-game home stand, falling to Boston University on Thursday night 61-54 and defeating Northeastern 61-51 on Saturday afternoon.

The BU Terriers came to Alfond Arena in ninth place, and left with an unexpected win over the fifth place Black Bears.

“I hope this one hurts, it hurts me, I hope it hurts them,” Maine head coach Sharon Versyp said.

While the Black Bears put up their second-worst shooting performance of the season, making only 30 percent, Anna James stepped up against the Terriers and put up career-high 16 points and five rebounds.

According to BU head coach Margaret McKeon, the Terriers defeated the Black Bears because of the defending and rebounding that they executed.

“I’ve been stressing defense, and it’s hard to sell it. I thought my kids did a good job in the second half in defensive rebounding,” McKeon said.

The Black Bears were up by seven points with eight and a half minutes left in the game, but BU turned the lead around by going on an 8-0 run, taking a one point lead with just six minutes left to play. The Terriers grabbed a hold of the lead in the final minutes by capitalizing on a Maine turnover and several fouls.

“I think they did a nice job defending us,” Black Bear Heather Ernest said. “People just didn’t do a good job adjusting to what they were doing. It just doesn’t make sense to do the same things and make the same mistakes.”

After Thursday’s disappointing game, Saturday afternoon the Black Bears were out for revenge as the faced the Northeastern Huskies.

UMaine came out full force on Saturday, defeating the Huskies 61-51.

“Today’s game was exactly what I had anticipated,” Versyp said. “Northeastern is a fine ball club, they play very tough defense.”

While the Black Bears came away with the win, Northeastern outrebounded the Bears 42-41 on the game.

Northeastern head coach Willette White expected more from her team. “They did not do well offensively at all,” Willette said. “We’re not shooting the ball very well as a basketball team right now, and we’re not executing offensively.”

“They play with a lot of heart, I have a lot of respect for what Sharon has done,” Willette added.

The game stayed relatively close throughout with the Huskies pulling ahead of the Black bears with 15:30 left in the second half. The Black Bears answered by going on an 11-0 run, led by Heather Ernest with six quick points. Ernest only logged eight points and four rebounds, due to spending most of the first half on the bench with foul trouble.

Point guard Ellen Geraghty had a big night with a game-high 15 points and four rebounds. Julie Veilleux followed up with 14 points and six rebounds.

“Ellen and Julie just played phenomenally in practice, and that’s why I put them in immediately and they really did a great job for their team today,” Versyp said.

UMaine is now 12-14 over all and 9-8 in America East.

The Black Bears have one more game before the America East tournament. The Black Bears will play March 1 at Hartford in their last tune up before the conference tournament.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2001, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.