The basketball court at the University of Maine is named after Skip Chappelle. And the former Black Bears coach and player thinks the action on that court this season has been as good as he’s ever seen it.
“It’s special right now,” Chappelle said Monday as both the women’s and men’s teams start the week with America East tournament games.
The teams made it to the playoff semifinals, with the women defeating the New Jersey Institute of Technology last Thursday and the men defeating UMass Lowell Saturday night.
The women’s team is no stranger to this kind of success, now in its 11th straight year reaching the America East semifinal round. It has been a different story for the men’s program over the years, and Saturday’s victory was the team’s first playoff win in more than 20 years.
Last week, UMaine Athletic Director Jude Killy said the women’s team has “set a phenomenal standard for what basketball can be at the university” and that the men’s team is starting to show what it can become.
“To me, right now, there is so much positive energy around both programs,” Killy said Thursday before each team won its first round playoff games.
That positive energy, combined with other factors like the excitement surrounding Cooper and Ace Flagg along with the level of play in the Maine high school tournament, has Chappelle bullish on the state of basketball across Maine.
“This is the best of the best from where I’m coming from, with what’s going on now with basketball in Maine,” Chappelle said.
The excitement continues Monday night as the UMaine women travel to top-ranked Albany for their 6:30 p.m. semifinal matchup with the Great Danes. Albany is 15-0 at home this season and won both matchups with the Black Bears earlier in the year, by five and 16 points respectively.
The UMaine women finished fourth in the regular season this year, having to weather some key injuries and seeing players like graduate student Caroline Bornemann fill new roles as a result.
Women’s coach Amy Vachon recognized after Thursday’s playoff win over NJIT that this has been “a hard year” for the team, and noted the high expectations for the program each season. With that backdrop, Vachon said the women’s fourth-place finish was impressive and worth celebrating.
“I think for us, really we went into this postseason knowing you take one game at a time,” Vachon said Thursday. “It doesn’t matter what happened at all from any time up until this game. It’s over, it means nothing.”
Vachon said after that first round win that she is “really proud” of her players.
“It’s just nice to see the team really clicking at the right time,” Vachon said.
The UMaine men’s team will follow up the women’s playoff action Monday night with its own semifinal test against Vermont on Tuesday night. It’s a clash between the second and third ranked teams in the conference, and No. 2 Vermont has taken both of the matchups against No. 3 Maine so far this season.
The Black Bears advanced to the semifinals against Vermont with a win in their first home playoff game in 30 years, and their defense was once again key to their success Saturday night.
“It was a tough, gritty, hard-fought win,” Markwood said Saturday after the win against UMass Lowell. “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.”
Graduate student guard Kellen Tynes, who recently won his third straight America East Defensive Player of the Year award, referenced the fan support that the Black Bears received at home on Saturday night.
“We’ve never had a crowd like this in my time,” Tynes said after the quarterfinal win. “They definitely gave us a boost.”
The atmosphere will have a different tone Tuesday night away at Vermont, where the UMaine men’s team has not won since 2011. On Monday, Markwood acknowledged that there is a lot of talk about what hasn’t happened in the program during the past 20 years or so, and that there may be time after the season to reflect on any historical strides being made. But for now, the team’s focus is the game in front of them.
“I think right now, while we’re in it, our expectation and our bar — or our standard — is higher than what’s been set before us,” Markwood said. “I definitely understand and love the fact that there’s a buzz behind our program right now, and people are starting to see that really anything is possible. As long as you have the right people in place, and a great work ethic and the type of talent that we have in our locker room, I think anything is possible.”
