by MaineBBFan99 » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:13 pm
Arguably Maine's best performance all season, Maine dominated Binghamton en route to a 61-38 convincing win on the road. With Albany's loss at UNH and Hartford's loss against Stony Brook this afternoon, Maine is now tied for first place (with Albany) and is two games clear of the next best teams. To be sure, the game at Binghamton was the start of a very difficult 4-game stretch for the Black Bears, with games vs. Hartford and UNH and at Stony Brook next week. So, the conference standings are certainly subject to change.
- Blanca Millan deserves serious consideration for conference player of the year. Granted, I may be a bit prisoner of the moment after she played an outstanding overall game against Binghamton. That having been said, she has been the poster child for offensive consistency during the conference regular season, scoring between 14 and 23 points in every single game. She has done this while boasting an effective field goal percentage of 53.9%, best for fifth in the league (by comparison, Imani Watkins is tied for 27th at 46.8%). The rest of her offensive stat line is as follows: 17.7 PPG (4th in the league), 5.1 RPG (14th), and 13.6 overall offensive efficiency (2nd). What often goes overlooked is Blanca's outstanding defensive ability, and I am not just referring to her league-leading 2.9 steals per game. She often (very effectively) guards the opponent's best offensive player. This was on full display this afternoon, as she was instrumental in holding league scoring leader Imani Watkins to 15 points (7 below her league average) on just 5-18 shooting from the field. Oh, by the way, she has led a team picked sixth in the preseason poll to a current tie for first place.
- It was a relief to see Tanesha Sutton back on the court. It didn't feel like her strongest game (a few uncharacteristic turnovers), but she just missed a double double, with 15 points and 9 boards. Not too shabby!
- Despite Maine's 14-point lead at the break, Maine's nine first-half turnovers (mostly unforced) made me a little nervous that we might see a repeat of the match-up in Bangor on January 6th. My fears were alleviated when the Black Bears cleaned up their play in the second half committing only two turnovers. For those of you counting at home, after committing 21, 25, 18, and 19 turnovers in its first four conference games, Maine has committed 4, 9, 10, 8, 10, and 11 turnovers during its six-game winning streak.
As someone else previously said, next week's games will go a long way toward determining Maine's seeding for the tournament next month. It's certainly possible that Maine's season finale at home against Albany could determine the regular season conference champion - now wouldn't that be fun?!
Last edited by
MaineBBFan99 on Sat Feb 03, 2018 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.