The University of Maine women’s basketball team was chosen to finish second in the America East preseason coaches poll behind defending champ Vermont.
The poll was released on Thursday morning.
Vermont received 63 points and seven first-place votes while UMaine earned the other two first-place votes and had 58 points.
Albany, the 2021-22 tourney champ, was third with 48 points followed by Binghamton (39), the New Jersey Institute of Technology (38), the University of Maryland Baltimore County (32), Bryant (18), New Hampshire (17) and UMass Lowell (11).
Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own team.
Vermont returns all five starters including All-America East selections Emma Utterback, Anna Olson and Delaney Richason. UVM was 25-7 a year ago, 14-2 in league play, and won 17 straight games before losing to UConn 95-52 in its NCAA Tournament first round game.
The Catamounts beat Albany 38-36 in the lowest-scoring America East championship game of all time.
The University of Maine returns everyone except back-up center/forward Abbe Laurence off last year’s 16-14 team (11-5 in America East), including Player of the Year Adrianna Smith and 2021-22 Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year Anne Simon, who missed 16 games due to a high ankle sprain but is healthy again.
UMaine has won or shared the league’s regular season title four times over the past six seasons.
Smith and Simon were selected to the All-America East preseason team along with Olson, Utterback, Binghamton guard Denai Bowman and Albany guard Kayla Cooper.
UMaine will regain the services of fifth-year guard Anna Kahelin, who has undergone three knee surgeries and played in only one game last year. She is practicing and continuing her rehabilitation in hopes she can return to the lineup sometime in the early going.
The Black Bears, who lost to Albany 72-64 in the semifinals a year ago, will have three newcomers in 6-foot-2 guard Aislinn Gibson from Hingham, Massachusetts; 6-2 forward Caroline Dotsey from Havertown, Pennsylvania; and 5-4 point guard Emmie Streams from Veazie and Bangor High School.
The 6-foot Smith, a junior forward/center, led America East in scoring and rebounding as she averaged 17.9 points and 9.5 rebounds per game. She was also third in field goal percentage (49.8) and fourth in assists (3.5 per game) and free throw percentage (74 percent).
Smith, who averaged just 7.1 minutes of playing time per game her freshman season, was an All-America East first team selection in addition to being named Player of the Year.
Despite playing in just 14 games, Simon still earned a spot on the All-America East second team by averaging 13.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.6 steals from her guard spot.
She missed eight games early in the season after spraining her ankle in a 55-46 loss to Yale in the third game of the season and missed eight more later in the campaign after reinjuring it in a 50-46 win over Binghamton.
She returned for the last two regular season games and the two America East playoff games and averaged 21 points and five rebounds per game, along with nearly three assists and over two steals.
The previous year, she led the conference in scoring (16 ppg) and steals (2.8 spg) and also grabbed 5 rebounds per game and dished out 2 assists per contest.
The 5-foot-8 Luxembourg native is the school’s 11th all-time leading scorer with 1,357 career points and she is also eighth in points per game (14) and total steals with 196.
There are five more returnees who averaged more than 20 minutes of playing time per game.
Danish senior forward/guard Caroline Bornemann led the team in minutes played at 34.2 per game and the 5-10 Bornemann averaged 9.1 points and 5.7 rebounds.
Senior guard Olivia Rockwood averaged 6.8 points per game and was fifth in the conference in three-pointers made per game with 1.8. Skowhegan sophomore guard Jaycie Christopher averaged 4.9 points and 2.3 rebounds and was the Black Bears’ best 3-point shooter percentage-wise (42.5) among those who shot at least 20 threes and junior guards Sera Hodgson and Paula Gallego each produced 4.5 points per game.
Gallego also averaged 2.7 rebounds and 2 assists.
Sophomore guard Sarah Talon from Windham averaged 3.8 points and was 8-for-18 beyond the 3-point arc.