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Vermont Women's Basketball Falls at Maine

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Created on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 04:51

Written by George Commo

Vermont falls to 8-11 and 2-4 in America East after 70-60 Loss

Courtesy Vermont Sports Information

ORONO, Maine – Samantha Baranowski scored a game-high 18 points to lead the Maine Black Bears to a 70-60 victory over visiting Vermont at Alfond Arena.

Maine picks up its first America East win of the year to improve to 1-4 in the league and 4-14 overall, while Vermont falls to 8-11 and 2-4 in the conference.

“I give Maine a lot of credit. They did a good job.  They played with poise and confidence and made their free throws at the end,” said Vermont head coach Lori Gear McBride.

The Catamounts, playing without leading scorer Lauren Buschmann for the first time this season due to injury, took a 6-2 lead to start the game.  Maine answered with a 10-0 run to surge out in front 12-6 with 12:50 remaining in the first half.

Vermont came back to tie up the game, 23-23, on a layup by Shanai Heber at the 6:44 mark, but the Catamounts went scoreless over the final six minutes and Maine rolled off 12 straight points to close the half and took at 35-23 lead at the half.

Maine held off the Catamounts for most of the second half until the final two minutes when UVM started fouling the Black Bears to extend the game.  Vermont was only able to get within eight as Maine went 16-for-18 from the stripe to finish the game.

“It was challenging playing without Lauren (Buschmann). She's such a big part of our offense and defense,” continued Gear McBride.  “Our focus was on trying to get our team mentally confident.  We didn't try to do anything different, in a 24-hour turnaround it's pretty difficult to change the way you play.  We tried to get them to play hard and feel confident in themselves.  In the second half we really started to do some better things and realized that, but unfortunately we dug ourselves into a hole and it was tough to get back in track.”

“We'll look at some different things and put people in position to be successful.  We need to prepare our players to be successful and make sure we don't ask too much of them because one person is not going to step into the void, but as a committee if everyone can get a little bit better I think we'll be in better shape.”

Freshman Niki Taylor scored a career-high 17 points, all in the second half, to lead Vermont.  Junior Shanai Heber posted her second straight double-digit rebound game with 13 caroms and Lauren Wheeler chipped in 13 points, eight in the first half, to round out the leading scorers for UVM.

Three other Black Bears joined Baranowski in double figures.  Brittan Williams added 11 points and Courtney Anderson and Ashleigh Roberts added 10 points each.

Vermont returns to action on Thursday (Jan. 19) at Albany.  Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. at SEFCU Arena.