Floor it

The planned renovations for The Pit may be crawling along, but it seems the UMaine men and women hoopsters will be running on a new (well, sort of new) floor when they next take the court at Alfond Arena.

Black Bears 57, Kennesaw State 51

The Black Bears limited visiting Kennesaw State to 30 percent shooting, got a double-double from Troy Barnies and 20 points from Gerald McLemore for the victory.

UMaine (5-4) held the Owls' top scorer, Markeith Cummings to 11 points (on 3 of 10 shooting) and six rebounds. Cummings came into the game having registered double-doubles in Kennesaw's first two Atlantic Sun games, including a 32-point outburst against a good Belmont team. Kennesaw falls to 4-5.

Barnies had 11 points and 13 rebounds for UMaine, which shot only 35 percent overall. The Black Bears, however, outgunned Kennesaw from long range, hitting 9 of 21 (43 percent) from distance compared to the Owls' 17 percent (5 of 29).

Battling foul trouble, Sean McNally had 10 rebounds in only 13 minutes of action. Freshman Mike Allison helped pick up the slack, scoring seven points and grabbing seven boards.

Game 9

Kennesaw State (4-4) at Black Bears (4-4)
Sunday, Dec. 13, 1 p.m.
Alfond Arena, Orono

First game of a three-game road trip for Kennesaw, which has won two of its last three games. UMaine will try to improve on its last Division 1 Alfond Arena performance, a 13-point loss to Quinnipiac in the home opener.

The Black Bears and Kennesaw met in the championship game of the 100 Club Classic at Kennesaw last season, with UMaine winning, 60-47. The Owls play in the Atlantic Sun Conference. USA Today picked Kennesaw to finish ninth in the 11-team league.

The Owls, however, are off to a solid conference start with a 97-91 win over Lipscomb and a 75-70 loss to Belmont, a pair of teams picked to finish well above them. Redshirt freshman Markeith Cummings registered double-doubles in both A-Sun games, including an Owls season best 32 points (and 11 rebounds) against Belmont. He had 10 points and 10 assists against Lipscomb. Cummings was named A-Sun Player of the Week.

Fourteen of the 16 players on Kennesaw's roster are from either Georgia or Alabama. The odd men out? One's from Maryland and the other, Bosnia.

Meanwhile, the Black Bears' roster has representatives from seven states, Canada and Bulgaria.

Kennesaw leaders
Scoring
Markeith Cummings, 6-7 forward, 17.2 ppg;
Kurtis Woods, 6-3 guard, 13.6;
Jon-Michael Nickerson, 6-6 forward, 12.2.

Rebounding
LaDaris Green, 6-9 forward, 7.4 rpg;
Cummings, 5.9;
Nickerson, 5.6.

The Owls finish the road trip with games at Western Michigan and Georgia Tech.

Game 8

UM-Presque Isle (0-4) at Black Bears (3-4)
Wednesday, Dec. 9, 7 p.m.
Memorial Gym, Orono

The game is scheduled for "The Pit," Maine's practice facility and, hopefully sometime this century, its future home. Game may be threatened by today's storm. After two-game foray to polar opposites of the college hoop spectrum (Syracuse/Presque Isle; and how many times have those two words ever appeared in the same hoops sentence), the Black Bears returned to normalcy when they host Kennesaw State Sunday.

For what it's worth: Fordham (without leading scorer Jio Fontan who has announced plans to leave the Bronx school) defeated expected America East contender Stony Brook last night ... by 16 (93-77). Huh?

Wonder if Jio, a native of Puerto Rico and a product of famed high school St. Anthony in Jersey City, could find happiness in Orono? He led Fordham in scoring last year at 15-plus a game and was named to the All-A-10 rookie team.

Syracuse 101, Black Bears 55

Gerald McLemore led UMaine with 21 points in the loss to No. 7-ranked Syracuse. Mike Allison had three points and a team-high nine rebounds. Some photos from the game.

The Boz

Steve sent me this link to a nice article on Black Bears reserve guard Jerrell Boswell. Obviously, he's still got some work to do on his defense as he hasn't gotten on the floor much in the early going. There are many adjustments that high school players and junior college players must make in order to contribute at the D1 level. Even at the America East level of D1, the difference between high school ball and small JUCO programs can be vast. Let's hope Jerrell can work his way into the rotation so he can show us some of that offensive firepower.

Game 7

Black Bears (3-3) at Syracuse (7-0)
Saturday, Dec. 5, 7 p.m.
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.

UMaine checks out the high-rent district tonight when it visits the Orange. Syracuse is No. 13 in the RPI while the Black Bears check in at 258.

The Orange are in the midst of their annual parade of "guarantee games," never leaving the Carrier Dome while racking up the wins against schools grateful for the opportunity to play in the Dome and happy to bring a little money home to their cash-starved programs.

Here's Syracuse's non-Big East home schedule this season: Albany, Robert Morris, Cornell, Columbia, Colgate, Maine, St. Francis (N.Y.), St. Bonaventure and Oakland.

The Orange played Cal, North Carolina and Florida on neutral courts.