UMaine women’s basketball has challenging non-conference schedule

A trip to the Hoosier state highlights a challenging non-conference schedule for the defending America East champion University of Maine women’s basketball team.

The Black Bears, 24-10 last season, will visit Bloomington, Indiana and play Indiana University on Sunday, Dec. 1 and then travel 116 miles northwest to West Lafayette to take on another Big Ten school, Purdue University, the following Wednesday.

Indiana, led by All-American Mackenzie Holmes from Gorham, went 26-6 last season and won a pair of NCAA Tournament games before losing to eventual national champion South Carolina 79-75 in the Sweet 16.

Indiana had rallied in the fourth quarter to beat UMaine 67-59 at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland.

Holmes, who scored 2,530 points at Indiana, has graduated and will begin her WNBA career with the Seattle Storm at the outset of the 2025 season.

The Storm drafted her in the third round (26th overall) of the WNBA draft in April but Holmes isn’t playing this season due to knee surgery.

Purdue is coming off a 15-19 season and earned a WNIT berth. The Boilermakers beat Butler and Duquesne in the WNIT before losing to America East runner up Vermont in the third round.

UMaine will receive a $25,000 guarantee for its game at Purdue, where former University of Maine boss Sharon Versyp used to be the head coach. Versyp is the winningest head coach in Purdue history with 301 before she retired in 2021.

The Black Bears will open the season against Atlantic-10 team LaSalle University (Pa.) on Monday, Nov. 4 before they host the University of Pennsylvania on Sunday, Nov. 10 at the Memorial Gym in Orono.

LaSalle was 8-22 a year ago and UPenn from the Ivy League was 15-13.

Another A-10 team, the University of Rhode Island (21-14 last season), will entertain UMaine on Thursday, Nov. 14 before UMaine returns home three days later to play Ivy League team Harvard (16-12).

UMaine will then play three games in six days: at Boston University (20-12) on Thursday, Nov. 21, home to Quinnipiac (13-18) on Sunday Nov. 24 and at Stonehill (4-26) on Tuesday, Nov. 26.

The Indiana trip follows before the Black Bears begin their final stretch of four non-conference games at Saint Joseph’s of Philadelphia (28-6) on Monday, Dec. 9.

Former Gardiner High School star and Bangor Daily News All-State Schoolgirl first team center Lizzy Gruber was a freshman at St. Joseph’s last season and appeared in 14 games, playing a total of 26 minutes.

St. Joseph‘s played in the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament and won a pair of games over Seton Hall and California before losing to Villanova.

UMaine will entertain in-state team Bates College of Lewiston (24-6), which reached the NCAA Division III Tournament’s Sweet 16 last season, on Saturday, Dec. 21 before participating in a tournament at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J. on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 28-29.

UMaine will play Coppin State (Md.), which was 12-18, on Saturday and Fairleigh Dickinson (14-17) on Sunday.

“We always try to play tough teams and we are again this year,” said UMaine head coach Amy Vachon, who is beginning her eighth season as the head coach. “It’s nice to start at home with a couple of games against two good teams.

“We try to play the best teams in New England and also find some teams out of our region. The goal is to challenge ourselves with our non-conference schedule,” she added.

In addition to Indiana, the Black Bears also played five of the other teams on the schedule  last season.

UMaine beat LaSalle (58-48), URI (59-48) and Harvard (79-61) and lost to Quinnipiac (70-57) and Penn (72-69).

UMaine will have to replace guard Anne Simon, the school’s fifth-leading career scorer (1,982 points) who was also fifth in career steals (280) and 10th in rebounds (721).

She was the America East Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season for the second time in her career.

She led the team in scoring last season at 18.9 points per game but the next seven top scorers all return led by first team All-America East forward Adrianna Smith (16.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 4.7 assists).