There’s little doubt Stephane Ingo would have had numerous options had he chosen to transfer from the University of Maine men’s basketball program after a 2020-21 season that was limited to nine games due to COVID-19.
The 6-foot-9-inch forward from Mississauga, Ontario, has emerged as one of the top shot blockers in America East, with 1.3 rejections per game two years ago before doubling that average while ranking second among AE shot blockers during last winter’s abbreviated campaign.
Ingo also has improved his offensive game to become a capable low-post scorer with steadily expanding range while more than doubling his scoring average from 4.5 points per game two years ago to 10.6 ppg last winter — second-best on the team.
The Black Bears’ elder statesman — a redshirt junior basketball-wise — has at least two more years of playing eligibility with a graduate year opportunity looming next season. So what upper-level Division I program seeing Ingo’s name in the transfer portal wouldn’t consider the UMaine captain?
But Ingo has other ideas, and supported by a UMaine roster with nine new players under fourth-year head coach Richard Barron he thinks the Black Bears finally are poised for upward mobility within the conference ranks.
“I have unfinished business,” said Ingo after the Black Bears held their first official practice of the 2021-22 season at Memorial Gymnasium on the Orono campus Wednesday.
“I want us to win at Maine. It’s easy to go into the transfer portal, almost every kid did it this year, but for me it wasn’t about that. It was about doing it at Maine where I committed and doing it with coach Barron and the new guys here. I want to see it through and bring a championship here. That’s honestly my goal.”
It’s a challenging goal, especially given that UMaine has not won even an America East postseason game since 2005 and has gone a combined 11-29 during the last two years since Ingo sat out a redshirt season in 2018-19 after arriving from Gould Academy in Bethel.
But the influx of new talent that has arrived on campus since last spring — five freshmen and four transfers including Division I veterans from Hofstra and Louisiana-Monroe — has Ingo believing that the changes offer great potential.
“It’s like a jolt of energy into our program, a fresh start with new guys eager to learn and wanting to get out there and play,” he said. “We have a lot of depth on our team this year, so for me there’s a lot of optimism, a lot of excitement honestly. Having seen change every year, this is probably the best change we’ve had.”
Perhaps most intriguing to Ingo is the chance to team up front with 7-1 center Chris Efretuei, a graduate transfer who averaged 4.7 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.3 blocked shots in 31 games last winter for Louisiana-Monroe.
“It’s about us being interchangeable and also being able to play off each other,” Ingo said. “That’s going to be the biggest thing for us and it’s going to help us in the conference because nobody will be able to match our frontcourt size.”
That size doesn’t stop with Ingo and Efretiei. Eight of the nine newcomers are at least 6-4, and five stand 6-7 or taller.
Other transfers new to the squad are 6-5 sophomore guard Vukasin Masic of Belgrade, Serbia, via Hofstra; 6-7 sophomore forward Peter Filipovity of Kaposvar, Hungary, via Utah State Eastern; and 6-4 junior guard Maks Klanjscek of Ljubljana, Slovenia, via Salt Lake Community College.
Incoming freshmen for the Black Bears are 6-1 guard Byron Ireland of Annapolis, Maryland; 6-5 guard Sam Ihekwoaba of Orlando, Florida; 6-8 forward Kristians Feierbergs of Riga, Latvia; 6-10 forward Milos Nenadic of Kitchner, Ontario; and 6-7 guard Novak Perovic of Belgrade, Serbia.
“In the past few years we’ve been a little top-heavy with our rosters,” said Barron, who added that this year’s team has more depth. “Just having the depth alone is going to make practices a lot more competitive and there will be a cumulative effect to that. I also believe our talent level is pretty high, certainly relative to where we’ve been. It’s very early, but I can see where I think we’re going to be and I’m optimistic.”
LeChaun DuHart, a 5-10 junior guard who led the Black Bears with 11 points per game on 38.5 percent shooting from beyond the 3-point arc last winter in his first season at UMaine, also sees improvement stemming from both the team’s size and depth.
“We haven’t had the best seasons recently,” he said. “But having new guys and new coaches gives you that feeling that we can actually do something this year with all the fresh faces and fresh energy on the court.”
