By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

GORHAM – Bates College stumbled through Tuesday night’s NCAA Division III women’s basketball showdown against the University of Southern Maine with The Look.

Though nationally ranked, purely on reputation and speculation, the No. 10 Bobcats looked like a young team with an identity crisis. They spent most of the meaningful minutes at Hill Gymnasium looking to the bench for reinforcements that weren’t coming, either because those players are now in the real world or in physical therapy.

No. 1 USM rolled to a mercifully deceptive 66-48 win. The Huskies, double-digit winners in their first three games, led by 31 with a dozen minutes left before the alarm for garbage time sounded early.

“The good news is we have a mandatory tape exchange in our league,” said Bates coach Jim Murphy. “Colby and Bowdoin both requested this game, so they can have it. What the hell they’ll get from it, I don’t know.”

They’ll see USM nearly doubling up Bates in the rebounding category. They’ll watch the Bobcats shoot 25 percent from the field. And they’ll be privy to a clinic in the low post by Ashley Marble.

Marble led the Huskies with 16 points on 8-for-10 shooting and garnered a game-high 17 boards.

“It doesn’t mean much,” said Marble, pointing out that Bates, of the New England Small College Athletic Conference, beat the perennial Little East Conference heavyweight Huskies by 24 in their annual regular-season meeting last November. USM found revenge with a 67-64 overtime tournament win in March on its journey to the Final Four.

The Huskies returned all five starters and exhibited a strong bench Tuesday. Donna Cowing chipped in 10 points. Katie Frost and Auburn’s Megan Myles added eight apiece.

USM bounced back from last year’s early losses to Bates and Bowdoin with a school record 28-game winning streak. Bates (1-2), which dropped a 73-62 decision to No. 8 Brandeis over the weekend, appears miles away from that kind of run at the moment.

Sarah Barton, who was held to eight points and a frosty 3-for-14 from the field, was the lone returning starter on the court. Olivia Zurek, Heather Taylor and Betsy Hochadel have graduated. Six-foot-one junior center Meg Coffin is out at least another week with back spasms. Talented transfer Matia Kostakis is hobbled until second semester.

“We can’t dwell on who we don’t have. Both teams played with five players tonight, although it seemed like Southern Maine was playing with six or seven the way they outhustled us,” Murphy said. “Part of it’s frustrating because we’ve had some good teams, and this isn’t a good team right now. We’re not a very good team at all.”

Freshman Val Beckwith was a bright spot for Bates with 17 points.

USM scored the first seven points of the game and finished the first half with an 18-5 surge to take a 36-17 lead at the break.

The Bobcats endured a six-minute scoreless snap in one stretch and struggled to find open shots at close range. They failed to take advantage of 28 turnovers by USM, which isn’t in a hurry to watch the tape, either.

“We didn’t come out as we hoped to. We didn’t do what we needed to do or play the way we needed to play,” Myles said. “We still got it done, but I don’t think it was a fair showing of either team.”

Bates hopes the Edward Little High School graduate is right. The Bobcats lost only three regular-season games all last winter, when they were No. 1 in the nation for three weeks.

“If we get outworked like this, with our schedule,” said Murphy, “we’re going to lose by 20 a lot.”