Young UMaine Women’s Team Selected 3rd in pre-season AE Poll

Today, Thursday, October 20th, the America East Women’s Coaches pre-season team finishing regular season poll had the young UMaine women’s team finishing in 3rd place just 2 votes behind second place UMBC.

However. Maine had 2 first place votes behind UMBC’s 2 an first place pick defending champion Albany with 5 first place votes.

Here are the pre-season positions voted on by the leagues coaches:

Place..Team….Total Votes..First place votes

….1…..Albany………60………………5

….2…..UMBC………53………………2

….3…..UMaine…….50………………2

….4…..Binghamton.49

….5…..Stonybrook..36

….6…..UNH…………24

….7…..Hartford…….23

….8…..Vermont…….20

….9……UMass-Lowell..18

This is a very good ranking for the Blackbears who graduated 7 seniors and 4 starters.

The only returning starter is first team pre-season all conference America East selection, point guard Sigi Koizar, who has been a first team end of season America East Conference selection as a sophomore and junior.

However, with 8 incoming freshmen to join 5’10” junior transfer point guard Tanesha Sutton from D-1 Duesquene University who had to sit out last year because of the transfer should be a big factor in the success of the Blackbears.

Also returning are 6 other players with very little actual game experience.

However, the incoming 8 freshmen should make the team more athletic and have more overall size then last year’s successful team.

This year’s team should be a little more athletic than last years defending regular season conference co-champion with Albany and losing to Albany by 1 point in the conference tournament championship game.

Look for this team to be contenders by the time the incoming  8 freshmen become accumalated and adjust to D-1 basketball. Look for them to be possible contenders come tournament time being led by Sigi Koizar and Tanesha Sutton.

Sutton is a very good player who should be able to take some pressure of all everything point guard Sigi Koizar who will be a marked player in conference play as last season she was the 3rd highest ppg player in the conference at 17.7 ppg, lead the league in 3 point % at 43.4%, lead the conference in 3’s made with 85 (also a school record). She averaged 20 plus points per game 14 times, was in the 30’s 3 times. was in double figured 32 times out of the 35 games and had a personal career high of 32 points in one game.

Sigi was in 9 of the leagues top 10 in the 10 statistical offensive categories.

Sutton has point guard skills which will allow Koizar to play shooting wing point and give her a break from point guard and give her more offensive moves off receiving the pass instead of off the dribble at point guard.

Looking forward to see this combination and the new international freshmen athletic players.

UMaine opens their non-conference schedule on Sunday, October 30th at 12noon  hosting D-2 Stonehill at the Cross Insurance Center.

If you would like to read an article about Sigi Koizar being named to the AE Conferences pre-season lst team, just go to MBR, (Maine Basketball Report) go to University of Maine D-1 thread and you will find that post there.