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Alfond Arena was where streaks — both hot and cold — went to die Saturday afternoon, as the University of Maine men’s basketball team fell to the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers 56-55. The game put an end to both the Black Bears six-game winning streak and UMBC’s 11-game skid.
Not many people expected UMBC (2-20 overall, 1-8 America East), whose lone win on the season had come more than a month before on Dec. 20, to put up much of a fight against the first place Black Bears, but UMaine coach Ted Woodward did not seem surprised.
“Everyone is good in Division I basketball,” he said. “Everyone belongs. And two years ago the tables were turned, and we went down and beat UMBC on their home court. We know that these things can happen all the time.”
The Retrievers’ win came at the last second, after a lay-in by seven-foot center Robbie Jackson gave his team a 56-55 lead with 1.4 seconds remaining.
UMaine, which falls to 14-7 overall and 6-2 in conference play, did not take the lead they eventually surrendered until senior guard Junior Bernal intercepted a pass and took it the length of the floor for a lay-up to put his team up 55-54. He was fouled on the play, but failed to convert on the free throw — the first of three critical misses that doomed the seemingly resurgent Black Bears.
With 38 seconds remaining, junior forward Sean McNally came up with a big block on the defensive end that forced UMBC to foul sophomore guard Andrew Rogers. Rogers came into the game to spell Bernal and shore up UMaine’s free-throw shooting. The move backfired as Rogers missed both. Rogers (.500 free throw percentage) has a lower percentage from the foul line than Bernal (.519).
Rogers’ failure to convert may have cost the Black Bears a win, or at least a shot at overtime, but Woodward defended the substitution.
“He was a great foul shooter in high school, and he’s a guy that we bring in in those situations, and I trust he’s going to make them. But those things happen, and it’s not all about one play in a game.”
If that play did not lose the game for the Black Bears, the next one certainly did.
After the second missed free throw was corralled by the Retrievers, they went to work with 29 seconds remaining and the shot clock off. UMaine’s defense keyed on the UMBC’s leading scorers Chauncey Gilliam and Chris De La Rosa. When McNally went to cut off their penetration, he left his man, Jackson, with a lane to the basket, and he converted.
“I know my big guy’s not a shooter so I went to stop the ball, because I figured it would be either Gilliam or De La Rosa going to the rim. So I tried to cut them off, and I got caught not looking, didn’t find my man, and he happened to be open on the baseline,” McNally said.
He admitted in hindsight perhaps he should have fouled the big man, forcing him to make consecutive free throws to take the lead, but it was such a “bang bang play” he didn’t even think to at the time.
UMaine did get the ball back with 1.4 seconds on the clock looking for a miracle, but Troy Barnies’ (13 points, game-high nine rebounds) floor length pass intended for McNally ended up in the arms of a UMBC player.
When all was said and done in America East play, UMaine had ceded the top spot in the conference to the Stony Brook Seawolves, who knocked off preseason conference favorite Boston University later in the day. UMaine also secured a win against BU earlier in the week, and they may have been suffering an excitement hangover heading into their Saturday match up.
“We can’t get ahead of ourselves,” Barnies said. “We had a win streak going and we didn’t want to come into this game and be cocky and we kind of did that at first and we fell short because of it.”
McNally agreed the Black Bears did not bring a winning mentality into the game.
“It took us a while to realize, ‘Wow they’re here to play,’ and then we tried to turn our energy up in the last six or seven minutes of the game, we just couldn’t do it. That has to be there right from the start,” he said. “They played with a lot more heart and intensity than we did for 40 minutes today and that’s why they came away with a victory.”
UMaine never established a rhythm, at least on the offensive end, shooting just under 33 percent from the field. Sophomore guard Gerald McLemore led all scorers, but he shot an uncharacteristically poor 4-for-15 from three-point range. McNally was held to 5 points on 1-of-4 shooting from the field, and Murphy Burnatowski, who had a career-high 14 against BU, recorded just one field goal for three points.
“I just thought we were out of sync on the offensive end and we couldn’t ever get into a crisp flow,” Woodward said. “Look at all the guys on our team and nobody shot the ball well today. It was a team effort across the board.”
Woodward acknowledged that the loss was a bit of a let down for his squad, but kept perspective regarding the week’s games.
“I said our last game was a great win for us, but it’s one game and this one is a disappointing one for us, but it’s also one game and we know that to get where we want to go, it’s going to take incredible consistency from start to finish.”
He added, “I don’t think we look at ourselves as a first place basketball team, we just look at ourselves as a team that’s trying to continue to get better and unfortunately today we didn’t take another step.”
Woodward’s team hopes to start moving forward again next week when they hit the road for a rematch with the University of Vermont, who handed the Black Bears their only other conference loss. Game time is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
