BANGOR- Jasmine Dickey scored a game high 32 points, and the Delaware Blue Hens outscored the Maine Black Bears by 16 in the second half Monday night to pull away for an 83-60 non-conference women’s basketball win at the Cross Insurance Center. It was the first home game at the CIC for Maine since March 4, 2020.
Maine (0-3) never led in the game and it was a quarter of runs in the opening 10 minutes of action. Delaware (2-1) opened up with a 7-2 lead just 1:27 in. A three-pointer and a layup by Alba Orois quickly tied it, before the Blue Hens ran off nine straight with four of those from Dickey to make it 16-7. The Bears second run was 7-0 and cut it to a pair on baskets from Anne Simon, Caroline Bornemann, and a three-pointer from Bailey Wilborn. Maine trailed 18-14 after one. The guests extended the advantage to their biggest of the first half on a basket in the paint in the second by Ty Battle to make it 33-23. Five straight points by Maeve Carroll and a jumper by Orois sliced it to 33-30, but Delaware closed out the first half on a 6-2 spurt for a 39-32 lead at the break.
The Blue Hens scored seven of the first nine points in the third quarter to push it out to 12 at 46-34, and the Black Bears never got closer than seven the rest of the way. A jumper by Dickey early in the fourth capped off an 11-0 run for a 64-46 advantage with 7:12 to play. Delaware would lead by as many as 25 late in the contest, sending Maine to their first 0-3 start to a season since 2012. Delaware head coach Natasha Adair said, “Coming out of our first game, there was alot of things we wanted to talk about in regards to Delaware basketball. Everything starts for us on the defensive end, and we felt like we didn’t have a flow. We talked about it, even at halftime to see where we were at. Let our defense dictate our offense, let our defense get us out in transition. You could just see the energy, and that’s how we play. We defend, we rebound, we run, and we score, in that order”.
Carroll led Maine with 18 points, eight rebounds, and four assists. Simon had 13 points, four rebounds, and two steals. Orois finished with nine points, eight rebounds, and nine assists. Bornemann chipped in six points, and Sera Hodgson had five. Dickey, the preseason favorite for CAA Player of the Year, added eight rebounds, two assists, and two steals on 14-24 shooting. Battle had a double double with 18 points and 10 rebounds, while Tyi Skinner contributed 11 points and seven assists. Maine head coach Amy Vachon said, “I thought we played really well for two and a half quarters. I love how we competed, there was some points left on the board missing layups and not executing necessarily on defense. I thought they (Delaware) hit some tough shots in the first half, I thought we rebounded really well, and then the wheels just fell off. I gotta go back and look at the film and see what happened there”. The Black Bears hit the road for the second time in the early season when they take on Yale out of the Ivy League in New Haven, Connecticut on Friday evening at 6 p.m.
