On November 11 UMBC will open the 2011-12 campaign against Ivy League rival University of Pennsylvania but fans will be able to get their first look at the squad on November 4 when they take on Division III opponent College of New Jersey.

As always the Retrievers will be faced with more road games than home games and this season they will have five-straight road game from the middle of November to the beginning of December.

While UMBC has three games against major conference programs none of them are completely unbeatable like Notre Dame and Connecticut may have been last season. UMBC certainly has to play at a much higher level than they have the past two seasons to keep close them but St. Johns’, which went to the NCAA tournament last season, was a senior laden squad in 2010-11 while Rutgers and Indiana continued on their recent trends of losing.

One thing that is nice to see is UMBC’s return to the ESPNU Bracket Busters challenge, where they will get to face one of the nation’s top mid-major programs.

UMBC will begin non-conference play on Monday, January 2 on the road against New Hampshire and will play their first home conference game three days later when they host Albany.

Friday, Nov. 4 – College of New Jersey (exhibition) – 7:30 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 11 – Pennsylvania – 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Nov. 13 – @ St. Johns – 2:00 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 17 – Loyola (Md.) – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, Nov. 19 – @ VMI – 1:00 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 22 – @ Central Connecticut St. – 7:00 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 28 – @ Rutgers – 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Dec. 1 – @ American – 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Dec. 10 – @ Towson – TBD
Wednesday, Dec. 14 – Morgan State – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, Dec. 17 – Rider – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, Dec. 22 – @ Indiana – TBA
Wednesday, Dec. 28 – @ Niagara – 7:00 p.m.
Monday, Jan. 2 – @ New Hampshire – TBD
Thursday, Jan. 5 – Albany – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 7 – @ Maine – TBD
Wednesday, Jan. 11 – Stony Brook – 7:00 p.m.
Tuesday, Jan. 17 – @ Hartford – TBD
Thursday, Jan. 19 – Binghamton – 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, Jan. 22 – Vermont – 1:00 p.m.
Wednesday, Jan, 25 – @ Boston U – TBD
Wednesday, Feb. 1 – @ Albany – TBD
Saturday, Feb. 4 – Maine (Hall of Fame Day) – 3:30 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 7 – Hartford – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 9 – @ Stony Brook – TBD
Sunday, Feb. 12 – New Hampshire – 1:00 p.m.
Wednesday, Feb. 15 – @ Binghamton – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 18. – @ ESPN U Bracket Buster – TBD
Wednesday, Feb. 22 – Boston U – 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 25 – @ Vermont – TBD
Friday, March 2-4 – America East Conference Tournament (U. Hartford)
Saturday, March 10 – America East Championship Game

Also in the Q&A Monroe discusses the additions of Division II transfer Ryan Cook and six freshman to the roster and what kind of expectations he has for this season.

Ray Martin has coached more than 10 NBA professional athletes in his more than 30 years of coaching.

Men’s basketball coach Randy Monroe has announced the hiring of Ray Martin as an assistant basketball coach at UMBC today.

For the last three decades Martin, who had a very successful college career at Notre Dame in the 1970’s under Digger Phelps, has been coaching basketball and spent the last four as an assistant coach and assistant head coach at North Carolina Central University.

In 1973 Martin, a native of Long Island City, Queens, N.Y., was an All-American at Mater Christi High School (now St. John’s Preparatory High School) in Astoria, Queens, N.Y. and was voted as the Best High School Basketball Player in New York City. He then went to Notre Dame where he was apart of the team that ended UCLA’s 88-game winning streak on Jan. 19, 1974. Martin became the team’s starting point guard midway through his career and was a team captain by his senior season.

After he graduated in with a bachelors degree in economics from Notre Dame in 1977 Martin became the head freshman coach at Harvard University for the 1977-1978 season. He then went on to spend eight seasons as an assistant coach at North Carolina State University under the late Jim Valvano.

While at N.C. State from 1980-1988, the Wolfpack won two ACC Championships (1983, 1987) and made six trips to the NCAA tournament, including a National Championship in 1983. Following his stint with the Wolfpack Martin served as an assistant coach at Southern Methodist (1988-1989), the University of Tennessee (1989-1993), Shaw University (1994-1995, 2002-2003, 2004-2005), Florida Atlantic University (1995-1996), Miami (Ohio) University (1996-1998), Fordham University (2003-2004), and South Carolina State University (2006-2007). Martin was the head basketball coach at Long Island University from 1998-2001. In 1988 Martin was an assistant coach for John Thompson during the 1988 U.S. Olympic Trials in Colorado Springs.

In his career Martin has coached many NBA professional athletes, including Allan Houston, Spud Webb, Sidney Lowe, Wally Szczerbiak, Nate McMillian, Vinny Del Negro, Thurl Bailey, and Tom Gugliotta.

Nate Stewart

After five seasons of serving as an assistant coach for the men’s basketball team Nate Stewart has been named the head coach of Eastern University in St. David’s, Pa., announced Eastern’s Director of Athletics Brad Fields.

Stewart started at UMBC in 2006 and was the longest-tenured assistant under Randy Monroe.

In Stewart’s second season the Retrievers won the America East championship and returned to the championship game the following year.

Eastern University is a Division III athletic program in the Freedom Conference and recorded a 12-12 record last season.

Chris De La Rosa led the conference in points and finished second in assists this season.

After a rough season Chris De La Rosa was UMBC’s lone all-conference representative. In his second season with the Retrievers De La Rosa averaged 15.9 points per game, which was the second most in the league, and lead the conference with 6.0 assists per game. He is the 11th Retrievers to earn AE All-Conference honors and was the fifth to be named to the second-team.

Even though his statistics should have made him a candidate for Player of the Year, the team’s record likely kept him out of contention for the award, but, it’s hard to think there are five players in the conference better than him. John Holland, the Player of the Year, was joined on the first team by Tim Ambrose, Evan Fjeld, and Troy Barnies, all of whom were locks, as well as Darryl Partin, who was very good but really benefited from so many weapons around him, a luxury that De La Rosa was successful without.

In his final collegiate game, Justin Fry led the Retrievers with 13 points and six rebounds.

The men’s basketball could not have had a worse showing to end their season in the play-in-game of the America East tournament against the Binghamton Bearcats. For a sixth-straight game the Retrievers came out without any sort of spark in the first half, which led to a 52-29 halftime deficit. After that it barely mattered what the Retrievers did the rest of the way, it was pretty much over.

Binghamton mad 13 three-pointers in the first half and set an America East tournament record with 17 three-pointers in the game, the most three’s ever allowed by UMBC. The Bearcats topped Drexel’s record of 14 three-pointers in a tournament game set in 1995. They also set a record for three-pointers in a half. The previous record was eight. Combined, Binghamton and UMBC made 23 three-pointers, which topped the 22 three-pointers made between Hartford and UMBC in the 2008 championship game.

Greer Wright and Moussa Camara nearly outscored the Retrievers themselves. Wright finished the game with 31 points and five three-pointers while Camara finished with 30 points and eight three-pointers.

UMBC’s defense was simply deplorable as the Retrievers fell, 91-65. Binghamton set the tone early when they went on a 25-6 run to open the game. They then ended the half with a 17-7 run. They pretty much completely took UMBC out with a 15-2 run early in the second half to take a 31 points lead with 13:08 left in the game.

The Retrievers end the 2010-2011 season with a 5-25 record.

The Retrievers were lead by Justin Fry, who ended his career with a 13-point, six rebound, and four assist performance. Laurence Jolicoeur scored 11 points in his final collegiate game and Travis King finished with 10 points in his.

<strong>Forget about the bad record, Chris De La Rosa should be the Player of the Year.</strong>

If the UMBC men’s basketball team could play at least a little decent in the first half they might not be so bad this year. For the sixth straight game the Retrievers either outscored or matched their opponent’s scoring total but it also marked the sixth straight game where the team had a double-digit deficit in the first half and for the fifth straight game, they lost.

UMBC fell to Albany in SEFCU Arena, 83-67, ending their regular season with a 5-24 record. Their 4 conference wins is tied with Binghamton for the fewest in the league, but the Bearcats have two more games left on their schedule.

The Retrievers will play in the play-in-game of the America East tournament on March 4 in Hartford.

UMBC went down by double-digits in only four minutes. After Brian Neller hit a three-pointers at 18:27 to make the score 4-3 in favor of the Great Danes, Albany went on a 20-2 run over the next seven minutes, taking the Retrievers out of the game early.

Even though UMBC made a respectable 43.5 percent of their shots, the defense was once again deplorable, allowing Albany to make 57.1 percent of theirs as the Retrievers went into the break trailing 44-28. The defense wasn’t much better in the second half as Albany again made over half of their shot attempts, but UMBC did match their 39 points.

Leading the charge for Albany was Logan Aronhalt with 19 points while Mike Black scored 18, Tim Ambrose had 17 points, 7 assists, and 7 rebounds, and Luke Delvin has 12 points and six rebounds. UMBC was led by non other than Chris De La Rosa, who scored a game-high 25 points in 38 minutes while Chase Plummer scored 10 points and had six rebounds.

No other Retriever in Division I history has gone 20-20.

In his final game in the RAC Justin Fry did something no other Retriever has ever done before. In 35 minutes of action Fry tied a career-high 20 points and recorded a career-high 20 rebounds, becoming the first player in UMBC Division I history to have a 20-20 game.

But despite his efforts the Retrievers suffered a 64-57 loss guaranteeing the Retrievers a spot in their first ever America East tournament play-in-game.

Once again the Retrievers came out incredibly flat and had a very poor first half. They shot only 20.8 percent from the field and trailed 33-17 at the half. Fry had 12 of those points and 11 first half rebounds.

Hartford’s first six successful shots all came from behind the arc and after a 14-point run from 12:21 to 5:05, they took a 15-point lead.

UMBC, though, did make things very interesting in the second half. The Retrievers shot 51.9 percent from the floor and outscored the Hawks, 40-31 in the second half. With 4:25 left to play Fry got a tip-in to get the Retrievers within three points but they couldn’t get any closer despite dominating the rebounding battle, 47-29.

UMBC turned the ball over 19 times, resulting in 19 Hartford points.

Adrian Satchell scored 10 points with nine rebounds while Jamar Wertz scored 11 points with seven rebounds.

Bakari Smith, Laurence Jolicoeur, and Travis King were all honored with Fry prior to the game as part of the senior ceremony.

For a third straight time the Retrievers put themselves in an impossible whole to come back from after a bad first half. Even though UMBC made a respectable 39.3 percent of their shots, Boston U made of half of theirs as they went into the break with a 42-24 lead.

But this time the Retrievers couldn’t even pick things up in the second half and were outscored 43-29.

Terrier senior John Holland led all scorers with 24 points while Darryl Partin scored 23 points and Patrick Hazel had eight points with a game-high 12 rebounds for Boston U as they dominated the Retriever inside, outscoring them 40-14 in the paint and outrebounding them, 44-29.

Seven minutes into the game it looked like it would be competitive as Chris De La Rosa, who led UMBC with 11 points, hit a mid-range jumper to make it a 14-11 game at 13:42, but a 13-point run over the next four minute gave the Terriers a 16-point lead and with two minutes remaining before halftime Matt Griffin hit a shot from deep to put UMBC in a 22-point deficit.

In the second half UMBC could never get close than 18 points away from the Terriers and as soon as they did Boston U scored 14 straight points for their first 30 points lead, 62-31, with 11:56. While they still theoretically had enough time for a comeback, it was really too big of a whole for any sort of comeback.