The last time the University of Maine women’s basketball team had six players from Maine on it, the Black Bears brought home the school’s only NCAA basketball tournament win.
It’s too soon to know if either the UMaine women or men will make any history this season, but they’re already making waves with the amount of homegrown talent featured on their rosters.
The women’s team has six Mainers on it for the first time since 1998-99, when the Black Bears went on to upset Stanford University in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
That includes two former Miss Maine Basketball winners in transfer Lizzy Gruber from Gardiner and redshirt freshman Maddie Fitzpatrick from Cumberland, highly-anticipated recruit Bailey Breen of South Thomaston, and three veterans from the Pine Tree State in Sarah Talon of Windham, Izzy Allen from Corinth and Emmie Streams from Veazie.
And Maine-born players are also having a moment on the men’s team, with three Maine players on that roster this year, the most since the 2020-21 season. That includes freshman Ace Flagg, the twin brother of NBA rookie Cooper Flagg, whose arrival in Orono has brought its own level of hype to the excitement already surrounding Black Bear basketball.
And the surprise late addition of former Old Town High School star Emmitt Byther to the roster this summer has further bolstered the men’s home state credentials. Flagg and Byther join senior John Shea of Auburn as the three Mainers on the current men’s roster.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that both coaches, Amy Vachon on the women’s side and Chris Markwood on the men’s side, are both from Maine as well. Vachon was a high school standout at Cony in Augusta before leading the way as a captain on that historic 1998-99 Black Bears team. Markwood was a South Portland High School star who initially played his college ball at Notre Dame before returning to Maine and captaining the Black Bears.
The UMaine men kicked off their season with a loss at the George Washington University on Monday night, and next travel to Stony Brook for a 5 p.m. game on Saturday. The UMaine women launch their season 7 p.m. Friday night at home against Saint Joseph’s University.
Vachon noted that her squad does have a lot of players from Maine this year.
“When I became the head coach, I wanted to try to keep the best player in Maine each year,” she told the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday. “That doesn’t always happen. But the Maine kids we have gotten have not only been really great players but people who have fit what our culture believes in and what our program stands for.”
It hasn’t always been easy to keep the best basketball talent in Maine. Skip Chappelle, the former UMaine men’s player and coach who the school’s basketball court is named after, said it had been challenging in the past to keep Division I talent at Maine’s only Division I program.
And the recent momentum surrounding Maine players staying or returning home is exciting, Chappelle said.
“It means tons,” Chappelle said.
Like Byther, Chappelle is a former Old Town standout. And the former coach is looking forward to seeing what the freshman forward can do this season.
The 6-foot-6 Byther jumped at the chance to play for the Black Bears, as he explained ahead of a preseason workout this summer.
“As a Maine kid growing up here, everybody always dreams of playing here, wearing Maine across your chest.” Byther said. “To have an opportunity to come here, it’s a no-brainer.”
Chappelle said that in the past, even if there was a rising Maine basketball star in southern Maine, they might not want to head north to Orono to play in college. But that sentiment seems to be changing, and the pool of Maine basketball talent is getting deeper, too.
“There’s more of a sampling now of kids coming out of high school that can play Division I,” Chappelle said.
Vachon said it means a lot to have Maine kids in her program, but also cautioned that not all of the high school talent in the state will be D-I ready.
“‘It’s important for people to understand that just because you’re in Maine and you’ve won the awards at the end of the year, it doesn’t mean you’re good enough to play at Maine. Not every year is there going to be a Maine kid who can play at Division I,” Vachon said. “Will they? Maybe. But not necessarily at Maine. If a kid is good enough to play here, then we want to do our best to get them here.”
For the Maine players that do get to put on a Black Bears jersey, it’s often a childhood dream come true.
After playing in his first scrimmage for UMaine on Oct. 29, Flagg noted how he grew up watching the Black Bears and said it was a great feeling to put that jersey on.
The 18-year-old freshman wears number 11 — the same number his mother, Kelly Flagg, wore when she was a member of that 1998-99 team alongside Vachon.
“It’s something you’ve always thought of, dreamt it up when you were a kid,” Ace Flagg added. “So to finally be here and play for Maine is amazing.”
BDN sportswriter Larry Mahoney contributed to this report.
