Over the course of the weekend series against first-place Maine, the Binghamton women’s basketball team was defeated soundly. The Bearcats struggled against the America East (AE) favorites, falling 67-46 on Saturday and 70-53 on Sunday.

“You have to play 40 minutes against this team,” said Binghamton head coach Bethann Shapiro Ord. “Maine’s a very good team — there’s a reason why they’re in first place.”

Despite the disparity in the final scores, there were periods throughout both games where the competition was tight. On Saturday, the Bearcats (4-10, 4-8 AE) had their lowest-scoring game of the season losing 67-46, but they rivaled the Black Bears (12-1, 9-1 AE) early on in the game. After the first half, BU was down by just three points, and they managed to hold the highest-scoring player in the AE, redshirt senior guard Blanca Millan, to just three points.

By the end of the game, Millan tallied 20 points, but she wasn’t the Black Bears’ lead scorer. Sophomore guard Anne Simon, last season’s AE Rookie of the Year, racked up 22 points. Last season, Simon scored a career-high 28 points and capitalized on turnovers in a similar manner against Binghamton.

“It’s not just [Millan] and [senior guard Dor Saar] who score, as you can see, and Simon did what she did to us last year tonight,” Shapiro Ord said. “We weren’t just focused on those two. You can’t be.”

The Black Bears went on a tear to start the second half, outscoring Binghamton 43-25 in the second half and earning a 67-46 win.

Despite losing again on Sunday, the Bearcats had the highest scorer on the court, as sophomore guard Birna Benonysdottir scored 18 points in just 20 minutes of play before fouling out.

“Our mindset was attack and that was [Benonysdottir’s] mindset today, which was great,” Shapiro Ord said. “She didn’t just settle for threes. She went to the basket. She posted up. We got her inside out. She was battling.”

The Bearcats were able to keep the game closer in the second half than in the previous game, in large part to Benonysdottir’s effort. In the second half, it was sophomore guard Denai Bowman who led BU, finishing the game with 15 points despite being held to two in the first half.

Despite BU having two strong performances in scoring, Maine’s roster is deep and it’s not just Millan and Simon who are doing the scoring. Saar and senior forward Maeve Carroll were also key contributors on both days, including Sunday’s 70-53 win by Maine.

“You can’t just trade baskets with a team like that, especially when you’re trying to come back and that’s what I think we did,” Shapiro Ord said.

With the AE just a month away from the expected conclusion of its regular season, the league and its institutions are dealing with the most COVID-19 interruptions yet. As the season winds down, one team in the AE will no longer be competing. The Vermont women’s basketball team announced Sunday that their student-athletes decided to end their season, following a lengthy layoff due to positive test results within the program. The Catamounts had played just six games and hadn’t played Binghamton yet. It remains to be seen if any changes will be made to the conference schedule or standings as a result. The UVM men’s basketball team is unaffected by the decision.

“It’s whatever’s best for each program and if that’s what they feel like doing for safety reasons then that’s what has to happen,” Shapiro Ord said. “It’s just different times right now.”

Following Sunday’s game, the AE announced a revised schedule for the next two weeks. Binghamton will be off next weekend prior to returning to action the following week.

“I told them we gotta learn from today from this weekend and we gotta focus forward and continue to get in the gym and get better,” Shapiro Ord said. “One thing this team’s been doing is getting in watching film, getting in the gym, getting shots up. You probably know which ones are always in the gym because they’re out there the most.”

The Bearcats will play NJIT on Saturday, Feb. 6 and Sunday, Feb. 7 at the NJIT Wellness and Events Center in Newark, New Jersey. The start times will be determined in the coming days.