{"id":66143,"date":"2025-08-07T22:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/66143\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T22:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T22:19:06","slug":"new-look-same-tough-non-conference-schedule-for-umaine-womens-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/66143\/","title":{"rendered":"New look, same tough non-conference schedule for UMaine women\u2019s basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Maine women\u2019s basketball team will play five teams that won at least 24 games as part of its 13-game non-conference schedule that was released this week.<\/p>\n

All five played in postseason tournaments with three earning NCAA Tournament berths.<\/p>\n

North Carolina State finished at 28-7 and reached the third round of the NCAA Tournament last season, where it lost to Louisiana State University 80-73. NC State has a 23-game home winning streak and has won all six previous games against UMaine. <\/p>\n

A pair of Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference schools from Connecticut, Fairfield and Quinnipiac, each finished at 28-5. MAAC Tournament champ Fairfield lost to Kansas State 85-41 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and MAAC tourney runnerup Quinnipiac lost to Seton Hall 57-40 in the first round of the Women\u2019s Basketball Invitation Tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a challenging schedule once again. There isn\u2019t a team on our schedule that isn\u2019t talented,\u201d said UMaine head coach Amy Vachon, whose team will have a new look with seven newcomers. \u201cWe\u2019re excited. There\u2019s good balance. We play more road games but we have some real good home games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other NCAA Tournament team on the Black Bears\u2019 schedule is Ivy League champion Harvard, which went 24-5 including a 64-50 loss to Michigan State in the first round of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Saint Joseph\u2019s University of Philadelphia will be UMaine\u2019s season-opening opponent at the Memorial Gym on Friday, Nov. 7. The Hawks went 24-10 a year ago including a win and a loss in the WBIT.<\/p>\n

Former Miss Maine Basketball (2023) Lizzy Gruber<\/a>, a 6-foot-4 center from Gardiner High School, will be making her UMaine debut against the school where she spent the previous two years. She appeared in 14 games at St. Joseph\u2019s as a freshman but was redshirted a year ago before transferring to UMaine.<\/p>\n

UMaine will follow that game by visiting North Carolina State on Wednesday, Nov. 12 and then traveling to Virginia Commonwealth (12-19 last season) two days later.<\/p>\n

The Black Bears will conclude the November portion of their schedule with a Nov. 17 home game against Women\u2019s National Invitation Tournament team Stonehill (17-16), a Nov. 23 game at Brown (12-15) and playing in a tournament at Iona (N.Y.) in involving the host team (11-21), St. Francis of Pennsylvania (11-19) and WNIT team Illinois-Chicago (15-18).<\/p>\n

UMaine will play UIC in the first round. <\/p>\n

The December schedule features a home game with Boston University (12-19) on Dec. 1; a game three days later at Penn (15-13), a home game three days after that against Rhode Island (17-16) and trips to Fairfield (Dec. 12), Quinnipiac (Dec. 14) and Harvard (Dec. 21).<\/p>\n

The UMaine women, who went 15-16 a year ago, played seven of these teams last year. The Black Bears beat URI (57-53) and Stonehill (87-75) and lost to Penn (56-52), Harvard (83-41), Boston University (67-57), Quinnipiac (61-53) and St. Joseph\u2019s (74-48).<\/p>\n

Vachon likes the fact they continue to play several teams on a yearly basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been great,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s tough to find teams to play.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Maine women\u2019s basketball team will play five teams that won at least 24 games as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99,7157],"class_list":{"0":"post-66143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-update"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}