By Kevin Mills,Staff Writer

GORHAM – The Maine Maritime Academy’s women’s basketball team probably wishes Ashley Marble had stuck to volleyball.

Not so the Mariners could travel from Castine to Orono to watch her play, but so MMA wouldn’t have had to see her perform Friday night.

Marble, a former volleyball player at Maine, scored 18 of her game-high 25 points in the opening half in the first round of the NCAA Division III Tournament at Warren G. Hill Gymasium to lead the University of Southern Maine to a convincing 81-41 victory over the Mariners.

“All year, we’ve been trying to come out and play hard,” said Marble. “I don’t think we have in certain games, but everybody stepped up and came out strong in the first five minutes of the first half and the second half. I think that’s huge.”

Marble was coming off a stellar Little East Conference in which she was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

She picked up where she left off to advance the Huskies to Saturday’s 7 p.m. second-round game against Norwich.

The former Woodland standout, playing against two of her former teammates in Julia Knights and Kaitlyn Leeman, finished with 25 points and 10 rebounds. Megan Myles and Katie Sibley each added nine points.

“I think we’ve been playing very well,” said USM coach Gary Fifield. “In the second semester, we got on a roll here. In the last week of the regular season, we were like a machine for a while. If you thought we played well today, you should have seen us against Keene St. or Dartmouth.”

MMA was led by former Dirigo star Alyssa Burns with 18 points. Meghan Marshall added 11.

“Alyssa is a great athlete,” said MMA coach Craig Dagan. “She’s a tremendous ballplayer. That’s the one thing you need to have against a team like this. When she’s on, she’s capable of putting up big points against a team like that. Unfortunately, we didn’t have more people step up like she did.”

Though the Mariners led USM at the half last year in the tournament, that wasn’t the case this time around. Marble set the tone early with two straight hoops to start the game. USM, the top-ranked Division III team in the nation at 28-1, built a quick 6-0 lead and jumped ahead 17-5 thanks to nine straight points. After a jumper from Myles and a basket from Katie Frost, Marble hit a 3-pointer and scored on a rebound off a missed free throw.

“We talked a lot about getting off a good start and playing well in the first five minutes,” said Dagan. “If we didn’t get off to a good start in the first five minutes, we knew we could be in for a long night. That was the difference. They got off to a strong start and didn’t look back.”