The University of Maine and Stony Brook women’s basketball teams have some unfinished business.
They were scheduled to meet in the America East championship game last season at Stony Brook when the season was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly a year later, the Black Bears and Seawolves will square off for the league’s regular-season championship. Tipoff is set for 3 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Island Federal Arena in Stony Brook, New York.
UMaine is 14-1 overall and 11-1 in America East play while Stony Brook (10-4) is 8-2 in conference games.
“We’re so excited to play them,” said UMaine fifth-year senior guard Blanca Millan, who didn’t get to play against the Seawolves last season because of a season-ending knee injury.
“We didn’t get to finish the season against them last year so we’ve been waiting to play this series all season. We really want these games,” said Millan, a six-time league player of the week this season. “The seniors want to finish the [regular] season in a really special way.”
With a sweep, the Black Bears will wrest the regular-season title away from the defending champs and claim their third in four years. It would be the fifth time in the last seven seasons that UMaine has won or shared the regular-season title.
At the moment, after this weekend, each team has one scheduled regular-season game remaining on Feb. 20. UMaine will host New Hampshire, the only team to beat it, and Stony Brook will entertain UMass Lowell.
However, America East senior associate commissioner Sean Tainsh said there could be more games added for the weekend of Feb. 27-28.
Tainsh said the tournament format, which previously was announced, is now under further consideration. America East is dealing with the recent decision by Hartford to join Vermont and Maryland Baltimore County in halting the rest of its season.
Since the coronavirus has resulted in teams playing a different number of games, the tournament seedings will be determined by winning percentage.
UMaine has won nine in a row and 24 of its last 25 games dating back to last season, including last weekend’s sweep of third-place UMass Lowell last. Stony Brook, which did not play last weekend, takes a five-game winning streak into the series.
The teams split regular-season games last season with each winning at home. UMaine has won nine of the last 12 meetings but is just 7-13 all time playing on Long Island. The Black Bears lead the all-time series 23-20.
The game features two of the best defensive teams in the country as Stony Brook has allowed only 50.2 points per game, fourth best among 336 Division I teams, while UMaine has surrendered 52.1 per game to rank seventh in the nation.
“We’re both real good defensive teams,” UMaine coach Amy Vachon said. “They’re big, they clog things up and they play man-to-man.
“They want to force you to make shots so we’re going to have to do that,” said Vachon, whose team leads America East, scoring 67.1 points per contest.
Stony Brook ranks 11th in field-goal-percentage defense, limiting teams to 34.2 percent shooting. UMaine is shooting 43.1 percent from the floor.
Last weekend, UMaine outrebounded UMass Lowell 80-66 in their two games.
“We’ve really focused on rebounding the past few weeks and the girls have really taken a nice step forward,” Vachon said.
Millan’s 22.7 points per game rank 14th in the nation and she is averaging 7.5 rebounds, 2.87 steals (tied for 22nd) and 2.1 assists. She is complemented by Anne Simon (12.7 ppg, 5.5 rpg), Dor Saar (10.2 ppg, 5.6 apg, 1.9 spg) and Maeve Carroll (9.6 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 3.1 apg). Saar’s 5.6 assists per game is 20th in the nation.
All-America first-team forward India Pagan (10.8 ppg, 5.3 rpg), who had 26 points in the win over UMaine a year ago, and Anastasia Warren (9.6 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 2.2 apg) headline the list of returnees for Stony Brook. The Seawolves have four transfers including Asiah Dingle (10.5 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 3.6 apg) from Kent State , Leighah-Amori Wool (6.9 ppg, 3.9 rpg) from Western Michigan and Earlette Scott (5.8 ppg, 4.9 rpg) from Providence.