The University of Maine women’s basketball team rebounded from last Sunday’s humiliating home loss to the University of Maryland Baltimore County with a solid performance on Saturday.
Freshman guard Anne Simon paced four Black Bears in double figures with a game-high 18 points in a 69-52 America East victory over Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Simon also grabbed five rebounds and made two steals as the Black Bears improved to 9-14 overall and 5-4 in America East.
UMaine has won 11 of the last 12 meetings between the two and eight of the last nine in West Hartford.
Fifth-year senior guard Maddy McVicar and junior forward Maeve Carroll each scored 12 points and junior point guard Dor Saar added 11. The other starter, junior guard Kelly Fogarty, scored nine points.
McVicar also corralled five rebounds, handed out three assists and made two steals. Carroll made three steals and had four rebounds, Saar had seven assists and four rebounds and Fogarty added three rebounds and two assists.
Kira Barra came off the bench and produced four points and three rebounds and Anna Kahelin chipped in with three points and five rebounds.
Jada Lucas led Hartford (0-22, 0-9 AE) with 13 points and four rebounds. Jordan McLemore tallied eight points and seven assists and Carmen Villlalobos provided seven points and game-high nine rebounds.
The Black Bears used a 15-4 spurt spanning the first and second quarters to transform a two-point lead into a 27-14 advantage.
Simon had a 3-pointer and a short jump shot during the rally, Fogarty hit a 3-pointer, Kahelin, Saar and Carroll added baskets and McVicar sank a free throw.
UMaine built the lead to 35-18 in the second quarter before the Hawks closed out the half with a 6-0 run.
But Simon’s jumper to start the second half and Saar’s 3-pointer swelled the lead to 40-24 and Hartford couldn’t get any closer than 14 the rest of the way.
After a poor defensive showing against UMBC, UMaine head coach Amy Vachon used three-quarter-court pressure and some zone which helped the Black Bears limit the league’s lowest-scoring team (52 points per game) to 32.7 percent shooting from the floor (17.6 percent from the 3-point arc).
“We haven’t been great, defensively,” Vachon said. “We aren’t going to abandon what we’ve done before, but we wanted to look at some different things. We wanted to delay them [with the three-quarter court pressure] so we wouldn’t have to play half-court defense as long. We haven’t been too successful with that.
“We haven’t played zone all year in conference play so when we came out in a zone, we might have surprised them a little bit,” Vachon added.
UMaine also forced 18 turnovers which led to a 19-2 edge in points off turnovers.
Hartford is America East’s most turnover-prone team (19.7 per game).
UMaine shot 45.6 percent from the floor and 37.5 percent from the 3-point arc.
Vachon said Barra and Kahelin gave them some productive minutes off the bench.
UMaine plays its next three games at home beginning with Wednesday night’s 7 p.m. game against the University of Vermont.