ORONO, Maine — The New Jersey Institute of Technology dealt the University of Maine women’s basketball team one of its only two America East home losses last season, 56-54 on Feb. 11.
Senior guard-forward Caroline Bornemann and her Black Bear teammates weren’t going to let that happen again.
Bornemann poured in 20 of her game-high and season-high 27 points in the first half, including 16 in the second quarter, and the Black Bears went on to post a convincing 81-39 victory at the Memorial Gym on Saturday afternoon.
UMaine jumped out to a 12-2 lead and never looked back.
The Black Bears led 49-25 at halftime and expanded that to 68-32 after three periods.
With its fifth-straight win, UMaine improved to 12-7 overall and 5-0 in America East.
It is UMaine’s first 5-0 start in conference play since the 2003-04 season.
NJIT fell to 8-10 and 0-5 and has lost five straight.
UMaine led by seven with 1:19 left in the first period but outscored the Highlanders 32-15 for the remainder of the half.
Bornemann finished with 12 rebounds to go with her 27 points, which is two shy of her career-high. She shot 10-for-16 from the floor and 5-for-9 behind the 3-point arc.
“It was really nice to see my shots go in,” said the 5-foot-10 Bornemann, a native of Horsholm, Denmark. “My teammates were really good at finding me running up the floor. And whenever they got defenders [on them] in the paint, they would kick the ball out to me.”
Graduate student guard Anne Simon contributed 20 points and 12 rebounds and her 20 points catapulted past Emily Ellis into seventh place on UMaine’s career all-time scoring list with 1,707 points.
Junior forward Adrianna Smith had 10 points and 10 rebounds for her 13th double-double of the season including 11 in her last 14 games. She also had six assists and two steals.
Sophomore guard Sarah Talon chipped in with nine points, three steals and two assists.
Sophomore guard Jaycie Christopher hit a pair of 3-pointers and also had three assists.
Sophomore guard Alejandra Zuniga’s 15 points paced NJIT. She was the league’s Rookie of the Year last season.
Graduate student guard Kenna Squier added six points and senior forward Lilly Anderson had a team-high six rebounds.
UMaine shot 44.6 percent from the floor and 36 percent beyond the 3-point arc compared with NJIT’s 28.6 percent and 18.2 percent, respectively.
The Black Bears outrebounded NJIT 48-28 including a 17-5 edge on the offensive glass.
The Black Bears outscored NJIT 36-18 in the paint and 23-2 on second-chance points thanks to their 17 offensive rebounds.
“It was a great team win, offensively and defensively, from beginning to end,” said UMaine coach Amy Vachon, who was happy to see Bornemann have a great game.
“She does so many things for us, rebounding and defense. She’s a great player. She has worked so hard on her shot and it was nice to see them go in today,” Vachon said.
It was the fourth time in five conference games that UMaine has held its opponent to 48 points or less.
“We weren’t necessarily pleased with all of our defensive efforts in non-conference games, and we know that is going to be the difference for us moving forward,” said Vachon. “I was really proud of them for that.”
Simon said they were aware of the fact NJIT beat them in Orono last season.
“We knew they were going to be hungry for another win so we had to make sure when we came out for the first quarter that we were aggressive and didn’t let them go on a run and punch us first. So we punched them first. And we had a great defensive game,” said Simon, who considered it one of the team’s best performances of the season.
NJIT coach Mike Lane said it “wasn’t one of our proudest moments.
“It wasn’t a very good effort from top to bottom,” said Lane “Alejandra [Zuniga] was the only bright spot, but you can’t win with one person.”
He added that “you can’t give Maine open looks and, right away, Bornemann was getting open looks. We gave them way too many open shots and there was a lot of fouling. We were late to help [defensively] and were hacking kids and sending them to the line.”
UMaine will travel to Albany on Thursday to meet the Great Danes in a battle of the league’s co-leaders. Both are 5-0 in the conference. Game time is 7 p.m.
Albany is 16-2 overall and 8-0 at home.
NJIT visits Bryant (R.I.) at 6 p.m. Thursday. Bryant is coming off a 64-62 home loss to Albany on Saturday.