BOSTON — University of Maine men’s basketball coach Bob Walsh wasn’t in the mood for talk of moral victories after his Black Bears’ fell for a third time in three days, 71-66 to LIU Brooklyn in the final game of the Steve Wright Classic at Boston University on Monday.
“To fight really hard and celebrate a tough loss, that is not us,” said Walsh.
For the second time in as many days, the Black Bears came storming back from big second-half deficits, cutting two 17-point LIU leads down to a three-point deficit, 69-66, with 11 seconds left. But for the second game in a row, they didn’t have quite enough to get over the final hump.
“We were able to cut it to a one-possession game late, but we didn’t have enough time,” said Walsh, whose team outrebounded an extremely physically LIU squad 34- 33, including a robust 14 offensive boards. But the Black Bears shot just 39.3 percent from the floor, with 14 turnovers.
“We just played really poorly in the first half. I thought we allowed LIU to dictate how the game was going to be played. We just reacted to it,” said Walsh.
Maine slipped to 1-4 and LIU improved to 4-1.
Fouls and free throws proved to be the difference, with Maine putting LIU in the double-bonus with nearly seven minutes remaining in the first half en route to 25 personal fouls on the day. LIU converted 31-of-35 free throws while the Black Bears attempted just 15 shots from the charity stripe, knocking down 11.
“We can’t play a half as badly as we did in the first half today and expect a win. You expend way too much energy doing that to come back,” said Walsh, whose team went into the intermission down nine, 37-28. “We fouled way too much in the first half, we gave them 15 points at the free-throw line in the first half.”
With UMaine trailing 55-38 with 9:21 remaining, wing Ilker Er brought the Black Bears to life with a pair of 3-pointers over the next two minutes en route to a team-high 13 points on the day.
“It was really good to get him going today, because he can really shoot it, it’s all about getting him acclimated to Division I as quickly as possible,” said Walsh of the Turkish native.
A steal and coast-to-coast drive punctuated by a massive tomahawk dunk from forward Andrew Fleming — his second backboard-shaking slam in as many days — cut the lead to 59-52, with 5:38 remaining.
“He’s shown us something good each of the three games we’ve played,” said Walsh of the freshman forward who stuffed the stat sheet, scoring eight points, to go with six rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block in 28 minutes.
But the Blackbirds turned the final five minutes into a game of attrition, and Maine simply had too much ground to cover and not quite enough time. Dennis Ashley’s 3-pointer with 11 seconds to play got the Black Bears to within three, but LIU was able to inbound the ball and sink their free-throws for the game’s final margin.
For Walsh, once again, there were several positives from the day, including a career-high
11-points on 3-of-6 shooting from Ashley, a redshirt freshman guard. But after the game, Walsh was in no mood to look for silver linings.
“There’s always positives, but we’ve got to get past being the team and the program that is comfortable fighting hard, but not being good enough. I think in some ways we’ve become comfortable with that as a program,” he said, before adding, “I still love my team, and it’s a team I feel confident we’re going to win with.”