The USM women’s basketball team is known for their great program and it showed this year as they played in NCAA tournament for the 16th straight season. After their last two seasons were cut short in the first round of the NCAA DIII tournament with loses to Brandeis and Emmanuel, the Huskies earned a first-round, 74-63 win against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at LeFrak Gymnasium on the campus of Amherst College on Friday. USM’s season was halted on Saturday though, as they lost 76-49 to the #1 ranked team in the country, the 29-0 Amherst College Lord Jeffs.
The theme of USM’s 2010 season continued on Friday afternoon as freshman sensation Curran Leighton (Dover, N.H.) recorded her ninth double-double with a game-high 20 point and 13 rebound performance. Leighton led three other USM players in double figures in the game, which included senior co-captain Haley Johnson (West Simsbury, Conn.) who scored 15 points and pulled down 11 rebounds. The other two USM players who reached double figures were junior guard Kaylie DeMillo (Jay) who was 5-of-7 from behind the arc to help total 19 points, five rebounds and five assists and senior guard Nicole Paradis (Skowhegan) who chipped in with a respected 13 points and six rebounds.
The Huskies trailed the Engineers 18-13 with a little less than eight minutes to play in the first half, but then went on an offensive surge going on a 10-0 run and outscoring RPI 15-6 to earn a 28-24 lead at the break.
Coming out strong once again in the second half, USM continued its offensive dominance as they increased their lead to eight, 42-34, eight minutes into the half. The Engineers then responded with a run of their own as they cut the USM lead to two, 43-41 with ten minutes to play. The RPI run didn’t phase USM for long though as they went on a 14-5 run to make the score 57-46. DeMillo made two of her five three pointers in the run.
RPI wouldn’t get any closer than eight points as the Huskies went on to grab the victory 74-63.
“We had the first game NCAA Tournament jitters, yet we were still able to execute our game plan well enough to win,” USM head coach Gary Fifield said. “Renee Nicholas did a tremendous job stopping their top player Whitney Coleman, which was a huge key to our win.”
In Saturday’s game, the Lord Jeffs rode the play of sophomore center Lem Atanga McCormack who scored a game-high 20 points en route to their 29th win and a ticket to the NCAA “sweet sixteen”.
Amherst got on the board quick and stayed ahead with the help of 7-for-8 shooting from the field by McCormack. The first seven points of the game were scored by Amherst and an outstanding 9-for-11 shooting performance by the Lord Jeffs in the first ten minutes helped them gain a 42-19 lead over the Huskies at the half.
“We walked right into a buzz saw. Amherst is a very, very talented team. It was nothing we were doing; they were just out to prove something and were on fire from the beginning.”
USM was ice cold in the first half, as they shot only 25.9 percent from the field on 7-for-27 shooting.
In the second half, the Huskies were able to keep up with Amherst and make it a game, but in the end they were too much as USM never got any closer than 19 points and the Lord Jeffs went on to win 76-49.
Other notable scorers for Amherst included junior center Sarah Leyman who had 10 points and seven rebounds, and freshman guard Marcia Voigt who tallied nine points.
USM was lead by Leighton who scored a team-high 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds, and Johnson who added 10 points.
As USM concludes their 2010 season, several players earned All LEC-Conference and other honors. Leighton earned first team All-LEC honors and was also named to the All-LEC Rookie team and was honored as the conference’s Rookie of the Year. She was named the LEC Rookie of the Week seven times, the Player of the Week once, the Maine Women’s Basketball Association Rookie of the Week eight times, and the NE Women’s Basketball Association Rookie of the week four times. Sophomore guard Renee Nicholas (Sebago) garnered LEC All-Defensive team honors after averaging a conference leading 4.5 steals per game. The sophomore notched a tremendous 126 steals in 28 games, and broke a USM record when she had 13 steals on Jan. 26 in a win over UMass Boston at home.
Although the Huskies are losing three vital parts of their team in Johnson, Paradis, and Ruthie Briggs, USM looks to field a young but experienced team in 2011, and will continue their quest at winning an LEC title again and ultimately a National Championship.
“Haley has really stepped it up this year, and she’s a tremendous leader on and off the court. Nicole has been a great player for us. She’s been banged up this year and it really showed how much she sacrifices her body for the sake of the team, and Ruthie is the ultimate team player so we’re definitely going to miss them,” Fifield said. “We have some young players though that really stepped it up for us this year and will help us next year to keep the 20 win streak going and win an LEC Championship.”