ORONO, Maine — Finally!
The University of Maine third-seeded men’s basketball team was looking to win its first America East tournament game in 21 years on Saturday night against a battle-tested UMass Lowell team that has reached the league championship game the previous two seasons and in three of the last four.
And the Black Bears snapped their 18-game postseason losing streak with a 72-64 quarterfinal victory at an energized and loud Skip Chappelle Court in the Memorial Gym.
UMaine will travel to Vermont for a Tuesday night semifinal.
Graduate student guard Kellen Tynes scored 20 points for the 19-13 Black Bears and also handed out six assists, had five rebounds and made three steals. Junior guard Jaden Clayton and senior guard-forward A.J. Lopez had 16 points apiece with Clayton also hauling down four rebounds and making three steals and Lopez contributing two rebounds.
Senior guard-forward Quion Burns added 11 points and three rebounds and junior forward Killian Gribben added six points, four rebounds, three assists and three blocked shots.
Graduate student forward Max Brooks poured in 25 points and corralled 10 rebounds, both game-highs, to pace the River Hawks. He also blocked two shots. Graduate student forward Quinton Mincey had 23 points and six rebounds. Freshman guard Martin Somerville had six points, four rebounds and three assists.
Defense was the name of the game for Black Bears as they held UMass Lowell 16 points below their scoring average of 80 points per game.
“Maine played great defensively,” said River Hawks coach Pat Duquette. “And it just wasn’t Tynes. It was across the board. They were locked in. And then they had a great home court atmosphere.
“When it’s that loud, it’s worth eight to 10 points and that’s about what they beat us by,” said Duquette.
“It was a tough, gritty hard-fought win,” said UMaine head coach Chris Markwood. “In playoff basketball, you have to do it on the defensive side of the basketball. To hold them to 64 when they are averaging 80 is a big deal.”
“We harp on that every single day,” said Clayton. “We want to be one of the best defensive teams not just in the conference but in the country. We showed that on multiple occasions. When we do that, we’re hard to beat because of all the weapons we have, offensively.”
UML shot 51.9 percent from the floor but went just 3-for-14 (21.4 percent) from beyond the 3-point arc.
In two, one-point regular season wins for Maine over UML, the River Hawks shot 41 percent from long distance.
Markwood said he knew Brooks and Mincey would get their points because they are the focal point of UML’s offense but said he wanted his team to “take away the 3-point line as much as possible.”
The crowd, headlined by the football team’s enthusiasm, was definitely a factor according to Tynes.
“We’ve never had a crowd like this in my time,” said three-time America East Defensive Player of the Year Tynes. “They definitely gave us a boost.”
The Black Bears used a 19-10 run in the second half to extend a four-point lead to a 13-point advantage with 4:33 remaining.
Tynes had nine of the points.
But the River Hawks scored nine unanswered points, including four points and an assist from Anthony Blunt off the bench, to make it 66-62 with 1:30 to go.
That’s when Clayton teamed up nicely with Gribben for an uncontested layup 27 seconds later as Gribben set a screen for him after giving him the ball.
“We work on that all week,” said Clayton. “It’s second nature.”
Clayton returned the favor seconds later when he stole the ball and fed Gribben for a clinching dunk.
That was UMaine’s ninth steal as the Black Bears forced 14 turnovers leading to a 13-4 edge in points off turnovers.
After a shaky start in which the Black Bears made just three of their first 10 field goal attempts and fell behind by seven on two different occasions, the Black Bears outscored UMass Lowell 28-16 to take a 34-29 lead into the intermission.
It was a lead they would never relinquish.