The Central Maine Community College women’s basketball team went 25-2 over the course of the regular season with a perfect 16-0 record in conference play. The No. 2 Mustangs now enter the 2019 USCAA Division II national tournament with a chip on their shoulder after losing in the final a year ago.

While the chip is there, it’s in the back of the players’ minds. Coach Andrew Morong has helped the team focus on this year, not past disappointments.

“We just tried it,” Morong said. “We spent zero time talking about last year, we spent zero time talking about the national championship this year. It’s all those little things that we know work because it’s been validated before for us. So we know that the process works. So we just gotta get everyone to buy into that.”

The Mustangs average 83.5 points per game while giving up just 47 points a game.

The player who leads the scoring attack is Brooke Reynolds, the lone senior on the team. The Edward Little High School graduate averages 13.6 points per game on 66-percent shooting. Reynolds is one of six players in CMCC history that has scored at least 1,000 points.

Sophomore guard Alex Bessey has been a scoring threat this year, averaging 10.8 points per game while also averaging 2.5 assists and 1.7 steals a game.

The Mustangs’ defense has been stout all year. There are nine players that average over one steal a game on CMCC, with Brooke Reynolds leading the way at 4.5.

Brooke’s sister, Jordyn, is also a force on defense, averaging a team-high 2.3 blocks a game, along with 1.9 steals.

Morong is excited with the different options his team has, as 12 of his players average double-digit minutes.

“We started freshman point guard Rebecca Davila, who has learned a lot and she still has a lot more to learn,” Morong said. “We have Ahna McCusker, who is arguably one of the better athletes in the conference who still is just trying to figure it out. She’ll have a game of 16 points, 10 rebounds, and the next game she’ll score four points against an inferior opponent.”

The top-seeded Villa Maria Vikings enter the tournament with a record of 20-2. The Vikings score 87.2 points per game while giving up 62 per game.

Shaquana Owens averages an outstanding 18.4 points a game and 9.8 rebounds while shooting 39.5 percent from the 3-point line.

Third-seeded Penn State Lehigh Valley is 24-2 and enters the tournament on a 23-game win streak. PSLV is led by freshman Kion Andrews, who scores 17.2 points a game while grabbing 7.9 boards.

The Mustangs don’t do a lot of film watching, they leave that to the coaches. CMCC has been focusing on situational play the past couple of weeks and is going to try to do what’s gotten it there.

“I mean, you get to this point in the season, you’re not going to create anything new, right?” Morong said. “You’re not going to change the way you play, you just have to fine-tune a little bit and kind of try to prepare for the unexpected… it’s hard enough to do what we do, we don’t need to saturate the girls with what everyone else is doing as well. On top of that, that’s just a way to overwhelm them.”

The Mustangs open tournament play Monday against No. 7 Davis College, which beat University of Maine at Machias on Sunday, Tip-off for CMCC’s opener is scheduled for 2 p.m.

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