Want an idea of what an NCAA tournament bid can mean to a school, or even a state?

The entire state of Vermont was buzzing all week leading up to Saturday’s America East Conference championship game between the University of Maine and University of Vermont.

Everywhere you turned, a Vermonter would remind you that this was the first nationally-televised sporting event at Patrick Gym since Howard Cosell called the 1976 U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials there, with Sugar Ray Leonard and the Spinks brothers, Leon and Michael, between the ropes. Jack Healey, a legendary radio sportscaster from Rutland, was called this the biggest sporting event in Vermont history, and as he’ll tell you, he’s seen ’em all.

Dozens camped outside Patrick Gym the night before to get their hands on the last of 3,200 tickets sold. Perhaps some of them were confused Phish fans, thinking they were in Limestone, though the rock band was only scheduled to perform the national anthem before the game. Adding to the rock concert atmosphere was the much-anticipated return of two-time conference player of the year Taylor Coppenrath, who his coach calls “a rock star in this state.” The game led local newscasts and all of Burlington was decked out in green and gold, anticipating the Catamounts’ second NCAA tournament bid in as many years.

Witnessing all the hoopla, one couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if the game were in Orono. Taking that one step further, one must imagine what it would be like if the University of Maine men ever picked up an NCAA bid.

Unfortunately for coach John Giannini, the reality currently is that the Maine men are third on the Orono totem pole for winter sports, trailing the women’s basketball team by a furlong and the nationally-acclaimed hockey team by a couple of laps.

Giannini has worked hard to make the men more than just a blip on the Maine sports fan’s athletic screen. The Black Bears have 107 wins in the last six years, including 65 conference wins, the most among all America East schools in that time frame.

Yet after yesterday’s 72-53 loss to Vermont, Maine is now 0-2 in America East Championship games under Giannini’s watch and 0-4 overall in the tournament’s 25-year history.

Maine is now the only one of five charter members of the conference, which started as the ECAC North in 1979, never to have won the league championship. In fact, the Pine Tree State is the only state with a Division I basketball program to have never sent a team to the NCAA tournament.

As hard as that may be for Black Bear supporters to swallow, it may be harder to face the fact that the men’s program has had numerous chances to improve its standing in the eyes of Maine sports fans and has yet to do so.

Of course, the men’s basketball program will never be on the level as their puck-slapping brethren in Alfond Arena. We’re talking perennial contenders for the national title in a hockey-crazy state. The university could wake Rudy Vallee from the dead to sing the national anthem before every basketball game and still the men couldn’t compete with that.

But one can argue that the men are in danger of falling even further behind the women with the Lady Bears having clinched their seventh NCAA berth with a convincing win over Boston University Saturday.

Granted, the women have had other factors advance their popularity besides tickets to “the Big Dance.” Like UVM, the Maine women have had a “rock star” on the court – Cindy Blodgett. There’s no easier way to increase you’re program’s visibility than to have a star player who’s also the hometown girl, someone Mainers can follow from high school right through to the WNBA.

The men haven’t had this advantage. Several Mainers have caught a whiff of stardom – Andy Bedard, Francois Bouchard, Matt Rossignol, to name a few. But none have captured the imagination of the entire state the way Blodgett did.

Giannini acknowledged as much in his post-game press conference yesterday. Asked if he could imagine what it would be like to have the kind of atmosphere Burlington had this week in Orono, the coach replied, “It would be great.”

Then, referring to UVM’s good fortune in having Coppenrath on the roster, he added, “If we could get a genetic anomaly, 6-9, 250-pound player in our hometown, it would be great.”

There was no shame in losing to Vermont yesterday, especially on its home floor in front of a packed house. Just ask the Maine women, who lost to the Catamounts in a sold-out Patrick Gym in the 2000 America East championship, how tough a task that can be.

But that women’s team went on to secure an at-large bid into the tournament, then proceeded to fly down to Norfolk, Virginia the next week and pull off one of the greatest upsets in NCAA women’s tourney history with a win over Stanford in the regional quarterfinals.

Given that America East is a lot lower in the pecking order for at large bids into the men’s tournament than the women’s, it’s clear that the Maine men are going to have to win the conference tournament to get to “the Big Dance”, and perhaps more importantly, get into the hearts and minds of Maine sports fans.

Randy Whitehuse is a staff writer. He can be reached by e-mail at rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com

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