The University of Maine men’s basketball team hasn’t won on the Vermont Catamounts’ home court in over 20 years.
The Black Bears will need to re-write that unfortunate bit of history if they want to keep themselves in the America East tournament, and keep their season alive on Tuesday night.
Even with that history looming, the Black Bears remain much more concerned with the present, and the opponent in front of them rather than the results in the record book.
“I think a lot of the historic stuff that people are talking about right now, in the whole scheme of things for our guys, I don’t know how much it weighs on them at all,” UMaine head coach Chris Markwood said in an interview on Monday.
The task of facing the second-ranked team in the conference, who Markwood called “the most disciplined team in the league,” is enough work already.
Vermont won both regular season games, besting UMaine 55-49 in Burlington on Feb. 1 and winning 65-61 in Orono on Feb. 15.
Markwood says the third matchup will be a “great challenge for us, which I think our guys are ready for.”
UMaine entered the playoffs as the No. 3 team in the conference, right behind the second-ranked Catamounts. The Black Bears already erased a 21-year winless streak in the playoffs with Saturday’s victory over UMass Lowell. Defense played a significant role in that win, and Markwood expects it to be key again Tuesday night.
“I think for us, it’s always going to start on the defensive side of the ball,” he said, noting that the Black Bears will need to “come out and guard with great discipline and force,” get rebounds and turn those efforts into offense.
On the offensive side of the ball, Markwood said his team can’t let Vermont force them into difficult shots.
One difficulty that there will be no avoiding is the challenging atmosphere that typically greets visiting teams at the Patrick Gym in Burlington.
“They’ll have a good atmosphere, they always do,” said Markwood, who is no stranger to that location as a former Vermont assistant coach. He added that his team will need to embrace the setting and use it as a “a little bit of us against the world mentality.”
It will be a different backdrop than Saturday’s home game, where the Maine fans helped give the Black Bears a boost in the first round win. Markwood appreciated the community support.
“I’m happy that the community is getting behind it,” he said Monday. “And people are starting to see that men’s basketball having success, whether it’s in the regular season or the post-season, can happen.”
Now in his third year as head coach, Markwood is also a former UMaine player and assistant coach. He’s very familiar with the history involved, and said there may be time after the season to reflect on the program’s strides this year. But for now, he’s excited to see how his squad handles the bright lights in Burlington. That won’t require anything extraordinary, he said, just his UMaine team being really good at what they do.
“I’m proud of our guys. They’ve earned this opportunity, I think they’re ready for this opportunity,” Markwood said.
Vermont has consistently gotten the better of the matchup in recent years, with a 34-2 record against UMaine since 2011.
“Like I said, it’s us against the world,” Markwood added. “You’re heading up into a really hard place to win, and everybody is gonna be going against you.”
