BANGOR — On the Cross Insurance Center court Saturday afternoon, momentum couldn’t make up its mind. Did it want to ride with the University of Maine women’s basketball team, or with Brown? The Black Bears or the Bears?
Brown, no wait, Maine. Well, on second thought …
In a game in which both teams saw double-digit leads disappear, Maine finally went ahead for good in overtime, taking a 102-96 win.
“It wasn’t the greatest defensive effort. Kudos to Brown. We knew they could score the basketball,” Maine Coach Amy Vachon said. “We’re up 16 with four minutes (left), and all of a sudden it’s going into overtime.”
Maine (7-2) overcame a pair of double-digit deficits in the first half and appeared to take control early in the fourth quarter. After the Black Bears entered the fourth trailing 60-59, Tanesha Sutton’s jumper with 3:54 left in regulation gave Maine an 84-68 lead.
Needing to get hot from the perimeter, Brown did. The Bears hit five 3-pointers, while Maine struggled at the line, going 4 for 10 in the fourth quarter to allow Brown to fight back. Brown finished with seven 3s in the fourth quarter after making five in the first three quarters combined.
“We can definitely shoot, but not like that, usually,” said Mary Butler, a Bangor native and Brown senior whose 3-pointer cut Brown’s deficit to 87-83 with 1:20 left. “It was necessity. It was life or death.”
Butler scored 13 points. Brown opened overtime with a 3-pointer by Erika Steeves, who finished with 30 points and 12 rebounds, but Maine scored the next eight points, taking the lead for good on a Blanca Millan 3-pointer with 3:33 to play.
Millan, who scored her 1,000th career point in Thursday’s win at Harvard, finished with a career-high 36 points against Brown.
“(Overtime was) just an opportunity to step up and show that we can really do much better. Everyone stepped up, and we got the win,” Millan said.
Brown used a variety of zone defenses to try to slow down Millan. But other Black Bears also contributed. Sutton scored 21 points, and Parise Rossignol got 15 of her 25 points in the fourth quarter.
Before the second half, Vachon challenged the Black Bears to remember their strengths.
“In my head, I’m thinking, ‘I need to make my pull-up jumper. I don’t think I’ve utilized that as much as I should,'” said Rossignol, who was 10 for 14 from the field.
“I thought when we hit the 3 to start the overtime, we were in good shape. But we couldn’t get the stops,” Brown Coach Sarah Behn said. “They’re hard to guard. We tried to take (Millan) out a little bit, but somebody else would heat up for them.”
Brown led 26-16 early in the second quarter, but Maine rallied to tie it at 28-28 on a Millan 3. Then Brown opened a 43-33 lead on a Steeves layup before Maine cut the deficit to 45-39 at the half. The teams traded the lead four times in the third quarter.
Rossignol said the game was a grind, pointing to mistakes the Black Bears made.
“It’s nice to learn the lessons and win,” Rossignol said.
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