Sports

Women’s basketball rout Husson

By Liam Nee

Posted on Oct. 31, 2010, at 10:20 p.m.

Amy Brooks

Freshman forward Greer Babbe fights her way into the paint for the rebound against a Husson University defender. The Black Bears tore up the Eagles with an 88-44 victory.

The University of Maine women’s basketball team took an early lead against Bangor-area rival Division III Husson University last Sunday afternoon at Alfond Arena and never looked back, doubling the Eagles in points for a 88-44 victory in their first exhibition game of the season.

This is the third-straight year Maine has faced off against the Eagles for a preseason exhibition matchup. The Black Bears previously won both games against Husson from 2008 to 2009. The teams combined score over all three games is now 259-113, clearly showing that Maine is the dominant team.

Maine quickly took hold of the game during the first half, shooting more than 52 percent from the field, and exited to the locker room with a 16-point lead at halftime. Nine different players saw more than 22 minutes, six of which scored in double digits.

Junior forward Samantha Wheeler led the team with 13 points while also recording four steals and two blocks. Sophomore forward Corinne Wellington posted 10 points and completed her double-double by pacing the team in rebounds with eleven. Sophomore guard Katelyn Vanderhoff dished out a team-leading nine assists and added eight points with seven steals. Freshman forward Alison Nalivaika and guard Ashleigh Roberts added 12 and 11 points respectively, from the bench, along with eight points from redshirt freshman guard Amber Smith, who also had eight steals to lead the team. Junior guard Brittany Williams also scored 10 to round out the double-digit scorers. Senior guard Bethany Sevey led the Husson Eagles with 10 points.

The Black Bears started an early preseason in mid-August this year when they embarked on a seven-day foreign tour in Canada, posting a 3-1 record where they averaged 80 points per game.

Nine of 14 players included on Maine’s roster are currently underclassmen.

Fourth-year head coach Cindy Blodgett says the team must to make daily progress and improve every single day.

“Every single day we use as an opportunity to get better,” said Blodgett. “It’s how you prepare and practice everyday which gives direct result in how the game ends, win or loss.”

Blodgett also explained that the team chemistry started off well while on the tour to Canada.

“The chemistry off the court was sort of highlighted, and I think what it does is it makes everything on the court that much easier. If you care about the people you play with, you play for them,” she said.

Improvement is a major piece of concern while working with a young team, but Blodgett has hope.

“We’ve go to defend and we’ve got to rebound. If you take a look at the games we had last year, we had eight to 10 games that game down to two or three possessions. So for us, it’s can we make up those two or three possessions from a year ago, with our added experience that our young players had last year.”

With 13 days remaining until their first game at home against Harvard

University, Maine has one more exhibition game, a home match on Nov. 6 against New Brunswick, the only team to defeat them while on tour in Canada.

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