The University of Maine’s softball team will be the fifth seed for the reconfigured five-team America East Tournament next week in Orono.
The double-elimination tournament will begin Wednesday at the Pierre and Catherine Labat Softball Complex on the University of Maine’s campus.
It was supposed to be a six-team, double-elimination affair but has been reduced to five teams after the University of Maryland Baltimore County canceled its season in March following the firings of head coach Angie Nicholson and her husband and assistant coach, Rick Nicholson.
Rick Nicholson made inappropriate contact with two players on two separate occasions while he was swatting insects, according to the Baltimore Sun. He was fired on March 17 and his wife was let go five days later.
The five-team format awards a first-round bye to league regular season champ Bryant University from Rhode Island.
There will be three games each on the first two days, beginning at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The second game will start at 1:30 p.m. and the third game is slated for 4 p.m.
The tourney opener will feature the No. 3 seed against the No. 4 seed. The second game will involve UMaine against the second seed, which could be any one of three teams, and the third game will feature Bryant against the lowest seeded winner of the first two games.
Thursday’s opener and game 4 of the tourney will feature the losers of Wednesday’s first two games in an elimination contest.
Game 5 will be between the winner of Wednesday’s third game against the highest seeded winner from the tourney’s first two games.
Game 6 and Thursday’s final game will be an elimination contest between the loser of Game 3 and winner of Game 4.
Friday’s lone game will be between the winners of Games 5 and 6 and will start at noon.
The championship round will be held on Saturday with a noon first game and, if necessary, finale to follow.
Sean Tainsh, America East’s senior associate commissioner for content strategy, said they looked at several different bracket options for the tournament
“A five-team bracket, double-elimination is not a common one,” said Tainsh. “Each bracket we looked at had something that wasn’t ideal. We tried to come up with something that made the most sense and talked through it with both our Championships Competition Committee and the athletic directors just to get confirmation from them that this format made sense.”
He said they did want to reward their regular season champion.
“Integrity of the overall bracket is important, but we also want to position our regular season champion so we don’t disadvantage them,” said Tainsh.
The way the format is set up, no team will be eliminated on the first day.
The regular season conference games involving UMBC are all forfeit wins for the other five teams.
Second-year head coach Kimberly Stiles’ UMaine Black Bears are currently 6-11 in the conference, including the three forfeit wins over UMBC, and will play either Binghamton (12-5), UMass Lowell (11-7) or Albany (10-7).
UMaine will host Albany for three this weekend including a Friday doubleheader beginning at 3 p.m. and a single game at noon Saturday.
UMass Lowell will conclude its regular season with three at Binghamton.
Bryant wound up 16-4 in league play. It was supposed to play UMBC this weekend.
Binghamton is the defending champ.
