Andrew Fleming’s last two games in a University of Maine uniform have epitomized the men’s basketball program’s up-and-down journey toward respectability in America East.
First came his nationally recognized performance during a 78-59 victory at UMass Lowell, when he scored a career-high 38 points while making 18 of 20 shots to tie the conference record for field goals in a game.
That was followed by Sunday’s 1-of-11 shooting, five-point effort against a New Hampshire defense focused on moving him away from the basket.
The common denominator? The Black Bears won both games, marking the team’s first back-to-back victories since 2016.
“We just kept working,” said Fleming, who contributed a game-high 11 rebounds and four assists in the 62-53 victory over UNH and subsequently was named UMaine’s first outright America East player of the week in five years.
UMaine opens the second half of its conference schedule Wednesday night at league-leading Vermont, which is one of just two AE teams that have led UMaine at halftime this season. The Catamounts won 73-49 on Jan. 9 at the Cross Insurance Center, also are the only conference team to lead the Black Bears by more than two points at intermission.
While UMaine (5-18 overall, 3-5 AE) enters Wednesday’s rematch one victory short of matching its most wins in conference play since a 6-10 finish in 2013, there is the sense that things could be even better.
“We’ve been awfully close,” UMaine head coach Richard Barron said. “We’ve had overtime losses, double-overtime losses, and most recently the Hartford, Stony Brook, UMBC and Binghamton games where we had substantial leads in the second half.
“When you go back and look at our season, it’s not unexpected that we are where we are,” he said, “but I think it is quite appropriate for us to be able to say we know we can do better. That’s the spur in the saddle that motivates you.”
UMaine finished out its victories over UMass Lowell and UNH with offensive execution and defense, yielding an average of 56 points.
The offensive featured accurate ball movement — UMaine had 16 assists on 23 field goals against UNH and 22 assists on 32 baskets against UML — while committing just nine turnovers in each game.
“It takes everybody,” said Barron, whose team ranks second in America East with 14.7 assists per game. “Everybody’s got to be in the right spots and we’ve got to be moving together.”
UMaine’s high-low approach against UMass Lowell helped Fleming, a 6-foot-7 junior forward, make six dunks and eight layups, along with a putback of one of his misses.
“It was so much fun,” said Fleming, who is the first player in the last 20 NCAA seasons to shoot 90 percent from the field in a game while attempting at least 20 field goals, according to ESPN Stats & Info.
“It was really all my teammates, honestly. They got me the ball right at the basket and I just had to lay it in. We really just stuck to our offense that game, and it happened that UMass Lowell had a strategy to take away different things, and we got a lot of open layups.”
Four days later, Fleming struggled with shot, but UNH’s defensive focus on him left Vilgot Larsson open on the perimeter for 3-point shots early in the contest en route to a career-high 23 points. Fleming’s presence also made room near the basket for Sergio El Darwich to post up smaller guards and score 12 of his 18 points after intermission.
“The way our offense works is we really don’t go to this guy on this possession and another guy on the next possession,” Fleming said. “The offense flows and they’re going to give us an option to take, and it happened at UMass Lowell that the high-low option was there and [Sunday] it happened that the drives and the post-ups for Sergio were there. It’s just finding whatever someone gives us and taking advantage of it.”
UMaine hopes to continue building during the second half of the AE schedule, which begins in challenging fashion at Vermont and continues at home Sunday against defending league champion Maryland, Baltimore County.
“We’ve known all season that we were close, and we’ve continued to work at playing for a full 40 minutes,” Fleming said.
“I think you’re going to continue to see wins if we continue to stay in our offense.”
