The Black Bears close out their regular season against rival UNH.
By Justin Pelletier
Staff Writer

Maine’s football season hangs in the balance on Saturday as the Black Bears visit arch-rival the University of New Hampshire to battle for the Brice-Cowell Musket, and more importantly for Maine, a potential berth in the playoffs.

“I don’t know that we’ve thought past the fact that we’re playing New Hampshire this weekend,” said Maine coach Jack Cosgrove. “We haven’t accomplished anything else this season that leads us to believe that there is something at stake past this Saturday. At the same time, it is New Hampshire, and we always have a battle with them. The rivalry is there in all sports, and that makes it even more special.”

The Maine defense enters the game as the top defense in the Atlantic-10 Conference, and is fresh on the heels of limiting the conference’s top offense, Villanova, to 10 points and less than 300 yards last weekend.

“They’ve met every challenge thrown at them this season,” said Cosgrove of his defense. “That performance last week is a heck of a statement about how far we’ve come from injuries at the beginning of the year. We lost a lot in the off-season, and then with two key losses from the first two weeks, we’ve molded into a solid unit.”

Brandon Magowan has been the lone consistent and experienced player in the Maine secondary this season, and continues to help lead the defense.

On offense, the Black Bears have also started to come together better, despite working through some injuries and some inexperience.

“Marcus (Williams) hasn’t been able to give us everything that he could at the beginning of the season physically,” said Cosgrove, “but he is such a workhorse and is so good at moving the ball. He helps us to control the clock.

Williams became the ninth player in Maine football history to surpass 2,000 yards career rushing this season, and he is currently fourth among Black Bear career rushing leaders with 2,818 yards. He needs 25 yards to pass Royston English into third place.

So far in 2003, Williams has 1,239 yards on 235 carries, and he is the first Black Bear to rush for 1,000 yards in a season twice during his career. Williams’ 123.9 yards per game average is best in the A-10, and 13th nationally.

One more weekend

Maine’s tour of all eight Hockey East schools comes to an end this weekend as the Black Bears square off against Massachusetts and Providence. The two games will end a string of eight consecutive games against each different opponent in Hockey East, and will then give Maine a better idea of where it stands in the conference.

“I like it,” said Maine coach Tim Whitehead. “We’ve never been able to do this before, and I think it’s a good idea for us. It lets us know how everyone else is.”

Last week, Maine rebounded from two consecutive losses with two quality wins, the first against Northeastern and the second a 4-0 blanking of UMass/Lowell.

The difference this week is the quality of the opponents. Massachusetts currently sits atop Hockey East at 5-2-0 and is ranked ninth in the country in both major national polls.

Providence, meanwhile, has been an enigma. They have a win against New Hampshire, but lost this week to Massachusetts.

“The two teams are very different,” said Whitehead. “Massachusetts plays a much more wide open, up-and-down game on an Olympic sheet of ice, while Providence’s game is more pro-style, very physical.”

Maine plays just one more home game this year, a Dec. 13 game against Dartmouth, and has a two-week layoff before taking on Merrimack on Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 in North Andover, Mass.

Bears sign pair

Maine announced on Thursday that the men’s ice hockey team has received two national letters of intent during this past week’s early signing period.

Rob Bellamy, a 6-foot, 195-pound left wing from Westfield, Mass., plays for the New England Junior Coyotes.

Bret Tyler is a 5-foot 9-inch, 182-pound defenseman from Maynard, Mass., who has played the last four years for the Junior Bruins. Last season he had 27 goals and 60 assists as the top scoring defenseman in the EJHL.

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