The University of Maine baseball team is putting its late-season collapse behind it.
After all, despite losing its last four conference games and six of its last eight, the Black Bears are still the top seed for the six-team, double-elimination America East Tournament that they will host at Mahaney Diamond in Orono beginning Wednesday.
Fourth seed UMass Lowell (15-15 in the conference, 25-28 overall) and fifth seed the University of Maryland Baltimore County (11-19, 22-30) will open the tournament on Wednesday at 11 a.m. The 2:30 p.m. game will pit No. 3 seed and defending champ New Jersey Institute of Technology (15-15, 23-25) against No. 6 Hartford (11-19, 13-35).
The losers of the first two games will play an elimination game at 6 p.m.
UMaine (21-9, 27-20) will play at 11 a.m. on Thursday against the lowest seeded winner from Wednesday’s two games. Second seed Binghamton (15-15, 19-28) will face the highest seeded winner at 2:30 p.m.
At 6 p.m., the winner of Wednesday’s elimination game will take on the lowest seeded loser of the games involving UMaine and Binghamton. Since UMaine is the top seed, even if the team loses Thursday it won’t have to play again until Friday.
Games will continue on Friday at 11 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 6 p.m., and Saturday’s championship round will begin at 1 p.m. with an if necessary game to follow right after it.
UMaine shared the conference regular season championship with Stony Brook, but the school is prohibited from playing in the tournament because it is leaving the league for the Colonial Athletic Association. A league bylaw forbids a departing school from playing in league championships.
Graduate student Jordan Schulefand, who plays right field and pitches, said UMaine head coach Nick Derba has supplied the team with the right mindset heading into the tournament.
“He told us we’re 0-0 and it doesn’t matter what we did before,” said the Richmond transfer and UMaine’s leading hitter at .359. “We’ve had one of the best seasons up here since 2013, and that’s what we’re going to build off. We were 21-9 in the conference, and not too many teams can do that. We’ve had an incredible season.”
The 2013 team went 20-9 in the conference and was the regular season champion.
“We forgot about the past couple of weeks pretty quickly,” said graduate student first baseman Joe Bramanti. “We know we’re a good baseball team. We know we can beat anybody. It’s time to move on and refocus on the tournament.”
UMaine finished with the most conference wins since the 1993 UMaine team went 22-4.
Derba said the team wasn’t focused the past two weekends, so now it is time to get back to playing the solid fundamental baseball that enabled it to win 14 consecutive games.
“We talked about each pitch having merit. Any pitch could be the difference in the game,” he said. “Our mindset is let’s go win baseball games. Leave everything on the field. Whatever happens, happens. We now have a renewed sense of urgency, which is good to see. They have a little more bounce in their step.”
Schulefand said one thing the team can take from the last four conference games is the need to get off to better starts.
In the 10-5 loss to Albany, UMaine trailed 5-1 after 4 ½ innings. It fell behind 6-0 after four innings in the 13-8 loss to Hartford in game one of their best-of-three series; UMaine lost the next two games 11-9 and 7-2.
“We need to take care of the baseball, throw more strikes and hit fastballs,” Derba said. “If you don’t beat yourself and play good baseball, you have a very good chance of winning. If we don’t do that, we aren’t going to win. The conference is very good.”
Trevor LaBonte from York, a University of Maryland graduate student transfer, will pitch the opener for UMaine.
He surrendered seven hits and six earned runs over 3 ⅓ innings in the 13-8 loss to Hartford last Thursday.
“I didn’t have great stuff. It was probably my worst outing of the year,” said LaBonte. “I have to get back to what I need to do to be successful: throw strikes, attack the hitters and get ahead in the count.”
LaBonte will enter the game with a 5-4 record and a 4.67 earned run average.
Schulefand said he has had a hard time sleeping because he is so looking forward to the tournament.
“This is what I came here for, an opportunity to go to [an NCAA] regional,” he said.
The tournament champ advances to an NCAA Regional Tournament. UMaine’s last NCAA Regional appearance was 2011.
The UMaine lead-off hitter has been on a tear of late, hitting a robust .500 (29-for-58) over his last 14 games with three homers, seven doubles, nine runs batted in and 20 runs scored.
“Once I wrapped my head around how teams were going to pitch me, I set up a plan for myself to put me in the best position to succeed and that is what has allowed me to take off like I have,” he said.
