The University of Maine women’s basketball team will play five teams that won at least 24 games as part of its 13-game non-conference schedule that was released this week.
All five played in postseason tournaments with three earning NCAA Tournament berths.
North Carolina State finished at 28-7 and reached the third round of the NCAA Tournament last season, where it lost to Louisiana State University 80-73. NC State has a 23-game home winning streak and has won all six previous games against UMaine.
A pair of Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference schools from Connecticut, Fairfield and Quinnipiac, each finished at 28-5. MAAC Tournament champ Fairfield lost to Kansas State 85-41 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and MAAC tourney runnerup Quinnipiac lost to Seton Hall 57-40 in the first round of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament.
“It’s a challenging schedule once again. There isn’t a team on our schedule that isn’t talented,” said UMaine head coach Amy Vachon, whose team will have a new look with seven newcomers. “We’re excited. There’s good balance. We play more road games but we have some real good home games.”
The other NCAA Tournament team on the Black Bears’ schedule is Ivy League champion Harvard, which went 24-5 including a 64-50 loss to Michigan State in the first round of the tournament.
Saint Joseph’s University of Philadelphia will be UMaine’s season-opening opponent at the Memorial Gym on Friday, Nov. 7. The Hawks went 24-10 a year ago including a win and a loss in the WBIT.
Former Miss Maine Basketball (2023) Lizzy Gruber, a 6-foot-4 center from Gardiner High School, will be making her UMaine debut against the school where she spent the previous two years. She appeared in 14 games at St. Joseph’s as a freshman but was redshirted a year ago before transferring to UMaine.
UMaine will follow that game by visiting North Carolina State on Wednesday, Nov. 12 and then traveling to Virginia Commonwealth (12-19 last season) two days later.
The Black Bears will conclude the November portion of their schedule with a Nov. 17 home game against Women’s National Invitation Tournament team Stonehill (17-16), a Nov. 23 game at Brown (12-15) and playing in a tournament at Iona (N.Y.) in involving the host team (11-21), St. Francis of Pennsylvania (11-19) and WNIT team Illinois-Chicago (15-18).
UMaine will play UIC in the first round.
The December schedule features a home game with Boston University (12-19) on Dec. 1; a game three days later at Penn (15-13), a home game three days after that against Rhode Island (17-16) and trips to Fairfield (Dec. 12), Quinnipiac (Dec. 14) and Harvard (Dec. 21).
The UMaine women, who went 15-16 a year ago, played seven of these teams last year. The Black Bears beat URI (57-53) and Stonehill (87-75) and lost to Penn (56-52), Harvard (83-41), Boston University (67-57), Quinnipiac (61-53) and St. Joseph’s (74-48).
Vachon likes the fact they continue to play several teams on a yearly basis.
“That’s been great,” she said. “It’s tough to find teams to play.”
