Men’s Basketball
MAINE vs. HARTFORD
Time, site: Thursday, 7 p.m.; Chase Arena, West Hartford, Connecticut
Records: UMaine 6-21 (3-9 America East), Hartford 14-11 (7-4)
Series, last meeting: Hartford leads 42-31; Hartford 86-68 on 1/18/18
Key players: UMaine — 5-11 G Aaron Calixte (16.5 points, 3.1 rebounds, 2.9 assists per game), 6-6 G Isaiah White (10.4 ppg, 4.6 rebounds), 6-7 F Andrew Fleming (9.2 ppg, 5.2 rpg), 6-6 G Ilker Er (8.6 ppg, 3.8 rpg); Hartford — 6-8 F John Carroll (15.4 ppg, 6.1 rpg), 6-4 G Jason Dunne (14.7 ppg, 3.3 rpg), 5-10 G J.R. Lynch (13.4 ppg, 4.4 rpg), 6-10 C Hassan Altia (7.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 1.9 blocks per game)
Game notes: Hartford continues to rank as the surprise team in America East, sitting solidly in third place entering the final two weekends of the regular season after being picked to finish eighth in the nine-team conference in a preseason coaches poll. The Hawks showed major balance in its earlier victory over UMaine this winter with six players scoring in double figures as the Hawks withstood UMaine’s game-opening 11-0 run to win going away. Hartford is coming off a 69-63 loss to fourth-place Albany on Sunday that ended a three-game winning streak. Coming off a three-point loss to Stony Brook, UMaine sits in eighth place, one-half game behind a UMass Lowell team that already owns a win over the Black Bears this winter. With three straight road games (Hartford, UMass Lowell and Albany) before a season-ending home game against league-leading Vermont, coach Bob Walsh’s Black Bears would like to move up at least one spot in the standings to avoid having to face Vermont — and its current 32-game conference winning streak — in the America East quarterfinals. Calixte continues to be a model of consistency from the free-throw line, where he now leads America East and ranks 22nd in NCAA Division 1 at 89.7 percent (96 of 107).