U of Portland vs. UN of Maine

The first thing that stands out about the Maine Black Bears roster is that of the 15 players listed, there are 3 from the US, 2 from Canada, 2 from Sweden, 2 from Serbia, and 1 player each from Ukraine, Turkey, Denmark, Latvia, England, and Lebanon.

One has to assume most of the players converse in English, but it might take a multi-lingual referee to know when to T-up a player for foul language.

When looking at the background of the coaches there were two things that stood out:

1. First-year assistant Igor Vrzina was previously the head coach at Lee Academy, and five of the players on the Maine roster are graduates of Lee;

2. In the Pilots exhibition game against George Fox, one of the referees was the only female to ever referee a men's D1 basketball game, Chrystal Hogan...and tonight against Maine, one of the assistant coaches is the ONLY female coach of a D1 basketball team, Edniesha Curry.

Maine won both their exhibition games and also won their first regular season game against Merrimac of the Northeast Conference before losing to Harvard. After tonight's game, Maine will travel up the road to play UW on Tuesday.

As of this posting, the Pilots are favored over the Black Bears by 7.5 with a 127.5 o/u.

The first half offense from Diabate is what I’ve been waiting for the last three years. Keep it up! And keep feeding the post, guards.

Nice win! I kept waiting for the Pilots to take complete control of this one, but Maine just kept hanging around.

And holy crap. Diabate was unreal during parts of this one, showed some nice touch and made some GREAT effort plays as well.

Probably Diabate's best game so far.

Great to see Hugh back.

Great composure again by the Pilots. Even though Maine took the brief lead in the start of the second half they didn't collapse.

Post game Stadium interview with Diabate: https://vocaroo.com/i/s1YebyQ8sECS

DoubleDipper wrote:One has to assume most of the players converse in English, but it might take a multi-lingual referee to know when to T-up a player for foul language.

Apparently referee Kevin Brill ("Mr. Bean") must know Serbian, 'cause he T'd-up Veljko Radakovic from Belgrade when he made a comment after thinking he was fouled...

JoJo sank both free-throws...

I think the Serbian word is the same in English.

Oops.

Last night was my first in-person game of the year. A smattering of thoughts and impressions...

I like our point guard rotation. Chase Adams is great. His play is electric, and I also saw him directing traffic and correcting mistakes made by other players. Natural leader. Ferebee as a backup looked solid, and made a few timely plays. Walker and Porter can also fill in as needed at the point, but both of those guys made big contributions last night playing at the shooting guard position.

Diabate... what a game! I recognize that the interior players for Maine are not on the same caliber as USC, or even SJSU, but Diabate was simply making shots last night that he was missing in previous games. He hit just about everything, including the gimmes that he missed in earlier games, and some much higher-degree-of-difficulty attempts. If he can now develop some consistency from game to game we'll be in business. We need that regular interior offensive dimension. And in the second half he fought for some really big rebounds, which the fans recognized with loud (relatively speaking for the Chiles Center) applause.

Great to see Hogland get back into the mix.

The two factors that carried the Pilots offense against USC and SJSU were Isaiah White's scoring and the high percentage of three-point shooting. Both of those factors disappeared last night. The fact that the Pilots were able to pull out the victory anyway bodes well. This is a team that can find different ways to put points on the board from game to game.

For most of the game it really felt like the Pilots were in control. At times it seemed that the score just didn't reflect the feel and momentum of the game. Hats off to Maine for making it a tough game, when it felt for the most part that they were outplayed.

The fan experience at Chiles has gotten worse. First, what is going on with the sound system? It sounds like all the cables are loose or the speakers are blown. Embarrassing. Just fix it. Second, what happened to the beer and wine sales? UP made a big deal out of promoting that the last two seasons. There was always a line of people waiting to buy beer at halftime. And then this season, no mention of it. On the plus side, the video replay board seems to be functioning now. Just plug your ears.

Interesting to note that UP has not updated its court with the new WCC logo. So far this year I've seen footage of games at Gonzaga and BYU, and photos of LMU's new court. All three of those schools have the new logo on their floors.

I agree with many of your points NoPo, especially about Adams. My favorite moment of the night came in the second half when Chase brought the ball down and didn’t see a wide open player in the corner. Instead, he forced the pass to a covered man. In the deadball situation that followed, Terry was as animated as I’ve ever seen him towards a player. You could read his lips as he bee-lined straight for Chase, “HE WAS WIDE OPEN!” Chase went up to Terry and put both hands on his shoulders as if to say, “Relax coach.” It showed a lot of poise for a teenage kid to do that to an NBA legend.

As for the beer and wine, they were selling it on the first level opposite the main concession stand. Not sure if it’s there all season but I definitely partook.

I’m excited to see how the boys perform against PSU. It always seems to be a competitive game. I might have to make my way down to that new gym of theirs to check it out.

Go Pilots!