This story will be updated.
The University of Maine’s newly crowned Hockey East champion men’s hockey team will open the 16-team NCAA Tournament Friday as a No. 1 seed in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The 24-7-6 Black Bears were selected Sunday afternoon as the No. 3 team in the country and will take on No. 13 Penn State, the 20-13-4 host school from the Big Ten Conference, in the tournament’s opening round at the PPL Center at 8:30 p.m.
UMaine is the top-seeded team in the region, where the Black Bears and fourth-seeded Nittany Lions will be joined by the second-seeded University of Connecticut and third-seeded Quinnipiac University of Connecticut.
If UMaine and UConn win their openers, they would face off for a trip to the Frozen Four in a rematch of Friday’s game that the Black Bears won 5-2 at the TD Garden in Boston to claim the conference championship.
The Hockey East upheaval had little effect on the NCAA Tournament seeding. Boston College, which was bounced from the conference championship in an upset to Northeastern University, opens the tournament in Manchester, New Hampshire, as the No. 1 overall team in the country for the second year in a row.
It will be UMaine’s 19th trip to the NCAA Tournament and its second consecutive one under fourth-year coach Ben Barr. He has rebuilt the legacy program that won national championships in 1994 and 1999 but has not been to a Frozen Four since 2007.
