UMBC finished in third place in the Commissioner’s Cup standings last season and there is plenty of reason to believe they will be more successful this season.

With the 2011-2012 athletic season starting in only a few days when the women’s soccer team plays their season opener here are five bold predictions for this upcoming year.

The women’s sports will break through

Ali Loynchan

Last season the volleyball team shocked a lot of people when they took an incredibly young group to finals of the America East tournament. Meanwhile, the women’s basketball team won their first-ever regular season championship and the women’s lacrosse team played in their second-straight championship game.

There is a lot of reason to believe that all three of those teams will again contend for a championship and while I’m at it, I’m saying at least two of the three will.

Last year the volleyball team had 14 players on it, 10 of them were only freshmen or sophomores, getting significant playing time. While losing Sabrina Hoeks and Bianca Sande is going to be tough both on the court and in the locker room there is plenty of leadership to be provided from their four upper classmen and plenty of talent on the roster. Ian Blanchard has also added an incredibly talented freshman class again, led by Hannah Schmidt, the Baltimore Sun and Varsity Sports Network 2010 Player of the Year.

The women’s basketball team returns three all-conference players, including two Player of the Year candidates. All three will be seniors with plenty of experience under their belts. While the team will have to replace two work-horses in Meghan Colabella and Michele Brokans, they have two eligible transfers capable of playing at a very high level while last year’s group of freshmen should be able to provide a lot in their sophomore seasons.

The women’s lacrosse team did lose a lot of talented offensive players, like Amanda Pappas, Erika Braerman, and Ashley Stodter, but there are still loads of talent left on the roster. First-team All-Conference Player Alicia Krause should once again lead the Retrievers while Emily Coady should bounce-back as a senior. The defense should also remain a solid unit with Lauren Mundell, Jessica Harkey, and Jamie Fahey all sticking around.

While I’m on the subject of women’s sports…

At least two female athletes will win Player of the Year awards

Michelle Kurowski

The only reasons the women’s basketball team did not have the America East Player of the Year last season was because Erin Brown and Michelle Kurowski were both so good that they split votes. Both should be in contention for it again this season and it might be the year one of them wins it.

Meanwhile, a member of the volleyball team will definitely be in contention of a significant award, which is what happens when you have a good team. Allie Spaay was in contention for the Setter of the Year award last year and she may have won it had she not missed significant time with an injury. Ali Loynachan should definitely be right there with the conference’s best hitters.

Alicia Krause will also be in major contention for the Player of the Year award in women’s lacrosse. Last season she was a major candidate for it after finishing with 35 goals, 15 assists, 29 ground balls, 32 draw controls, and 20 caused turnovers. With three of the team’s top five goal scorings having graduated she’ll have plenty more opportunities to score and the offense is definitely going to be going through here. Emily Coady could be a dark horse this season as well. She has a stellar sophomore campaign but was quiet last season as Erika Braerman ran the game behind the net, but now that position is open for Coady again.

Let’s also not forget about Abbey McKenney on the swimming team, who won the Most Oustanding Swimmer award after winning six gold medals at the America East Championship Meet, leading the Retrievers to a conference title.

Men’s Soccer will repeat as champions

Andrew Bulls

Whooh, that’s a pretty big prediction, especially since they lost a very talented group of seniors, including the nation’s leading scorer the past two seasons, Levi Houapeu, but the Pete Caringi lead Retrievers should once again be one of the best teams in the nation. With Andrew Bulls, Pete Caringi III, Nirav Kadam, and incoming All-American Kadeem Dacres the Retrievers should once again have a very potent offense. While John Paul Waraksa and Chris Williams will both be missed on the defensive end, the return of Sean Rothe should help bolster a defensive unit with Vince Savarese, Liam Paddock, and Daniel Welsh that played very well last season.

They team will once again be having a very interesting goalkeeper battles going into the season but with three incredibly talented players at the position, they’ll be in great shape no matter who wins it.

Caringi also brought in a very strong freshman class, led by Zach Wenger, who has been playing against top-notch competition his entire youth career as a part of the United Stats National Team.

Men’s Basketball will bounce back significantly

Chris De La Rosa

The last two seasons have been very difficult for the men’s basketball team, going a combined 9-51. But the team should definitely be much better this season. They probably won’t contend for a championship or anything but they very well could finish in the top half of the nine-team conference.

While the team does lose four players that saw significant time last season Chris De La Rosa may have been the conference best point guard last season and he’ll lead a group of guys that have finally grown up and have a lot of experience with them.

Last season four of the team’s major contributors were freshmen or sophomores but not that they know the ropes Jamar Wertz, Chase Plummer, Brian Neller and Adrian Satchell, who was an All-Rookie team selection two seasons ago, should be able to provide him with a lot of help while Randy Monroe’s incoming class is one of his most talented yet.

The Men’s Lacrosse team will return to the nation’s elite

Scott Jones

From 2006 to 2009 Don Zimmerman has the men’s lacrosse team in the upper echelon of the collegiate lacrosse world, reaching rankings as high as fourth in the nation at some points. But the last two years the team has had losing seasons and has missed the NCAA tournament. That what losing 17 All-Conference players and nine All-American in a four year span does to teams, especially when those players have to be replaced by 27 freshmen and sophomores on a 35-man rosters.

The men’s lacrosse team was incredibly young last year and it really showed. But this year Zimmerman, who is already regarded as one of the best coaches in the history of the game, really bolstered his coaching staff by getting Ed Stephenson back after an incredibly successful stint at Binghamton and has some experience to work with. Now those 27 freshmen and sophomores are seasoned players and will be joining a very experienced group of five seniors.

Scott Jones developed into an elite scorer as a sophomore while Rob Grimm continued his yearly-improvement as a junior. Players like Scott Hopmann, Dave Brown, Joe Lustgarten, Zach Linkous, Greg Korvin, Neill Lewnes, Matt Gregoire, and Ryan Johnston all showed a lot of promise last season and could make for a very dangerous and deep offensive unit while Brian McCullough, Aaron Verardi, Lucas Wood, Sam McKelvey, Riley Hansen, Breck Merritt, Nathan Klein, Ethan Murphy, and Tony Spada are all returning on the defensive side of things.

Voting Ends June 5 at midnight. Winners will be announced on Monday, June 6 with the Yearly Awards

Top Coach

Phil Stern – W. Basketball

Picked fifth in the preseason coach’s polls, the women’s basketball team, led by Phil Stern, won the regular season championship with a 13-3 record against America East opponents. This season the women’s basketball team had their best season in their Division I history, as for the first time ever, not only did they win a regular season championship, but they had a winning record against Division I opponents.

Male Freshman of the Winter

Johan Rohtla – M. Swimming and Diving

At the end of a stellar first season Johan Rohtla stepped up even more at the America east championship meet. Rohtla was named the conference’s Outstanding Male Rookie after medaling four time while breaking and re-breaking a school record in the 200-yard backstroke.

Female Freshman of the Winter

Kirsten Jones – W. Track and Field

There was not really one particular female freshman that completely stood out but Kirsten Jones definitely had the best season. At the Gulden Relays, the indoor track and field team’s second meet of the season, Jones won the 500-meter dash and then later won two bronze medals in the 200-meter and 400-meter dash, respectively. The bronze in the 400-meter dash came at the America East championships.

Best Male Performance

Justin Fry gets 20-20 on senior night

Justin Fry could not have had a better performance to go out on in his last game at the RAC. There is a lot of emotion that goes into a players senior day but instead of letting that emotion get to him and making him play uncontrollably, he settled down and became the first Retriever ever to grab 20 rebounds in the same game he scored 20 points.

Best Female Performance

McKenney wins five at AE Championships

How can winning five gold medals to lead your team to a conference championship not be the best performance of the year? Abbey McKenney was absolutely unstoppable, winning 50-yard free, 100-yard free, and 200-yard free individually while anchoring the winning 200-yard and 400-yard free relay teams.

Best Moment

Swimming sweeps America East championships

Maybe it is just expected at this point that the swimming and diving teams are going to win the championships but every time they do it is more and more impressive. The America East conference has really improved since UMBC joined and the competition is getting so much tougher, so the fact that this dynasty is so strong makes it so impressive and having the women’s team join them makes it so much sweeter.

Most Improved Male Athlete

Steve Gallagher – M. Swimming and Diving

For the first two years of his career Steve Gallagher showed some decent potential but as a junior he stepped up and became the team’s top short-distance freestyle swimmer behind all-time great Eric Jones but what made him so much better was that he completely redefined his role and became one of the team’s top relay swimmers.

Most Improved Female Athlete

Tope Obajolu – W. Basketball

Two years in a row Tope Obajolu has earned this award, and for good reason. Last year she became a full-time starter as a sophomore after barely seeing the floor her freshman year and became a key piece in the team’s success but this year she took her game to a whole new level and after averaging 10.6 points and 4.3 rebounds she was a third-team all-conference player and one of the league’s top defenders. More importantly though the team really ran through her, when they won, she was on the top of her game and when they lost, she was disappointing and this year, the team had way more wins than losses.

Unsung Male Athlete

Bakari Smith – M. Basketball

With the men’s basketball team’s record as bad as it was and Bakari Smith not putting up sexy numbers, he really didn’t get the respect that he deserved. Smith was not the reason the team lost. No, he didn’t score much, but he wasn’t supposed to. His job was to play defense, and he was one of the best on the team, and move the ball around as a second point guard on the floor next to Chris De La Rosa, which he also did very well.

Unsung Female Athlete

Michele Brokans and Meghan Colabella – W. Basketball

I can’t pick between the two. Both of these players were simply amazing in terms of their mindset of the game. Neither one cared about stats, they just wanted to win. Michele Brokans was not much of a scorer but if she was she would have been at Tennessee playing for Pat Summit because the rest of what she did was that good. She was a great defender, great leader, and great point guard, constantly putting her teammates in the best position to succeed. Colabella on the other hand had plenty of offensive ability but care more about her rebounding numbers than her scoring totals. Colabella also took on one of the team’s top offensive players each and every night and did all of the dirty work that most players don’t exactly like to do.

Fan’s Choice Male Athlete of the Winter

Chris De La Rosa – M. Basketball

Plain and simple, Chris De La Rosa was fun to watch and probably should have been the Player of the Year because he was that good. The team’s record kept that dream from coming a reality but a league high 6.0 assists, second-most 15.5 points per game, and 3.9 rebounds per game show just how impressive he was.

Fan’s Choice Female Athlete of the Winter

Michelle Kurowski – W. Basketball

What’s not to like about Michelle Kurowski? Stepping in to fill a role of one of the best scorers in conference history is hard to do but Kurowski looked natural doing the job and the first-team all-conference guard averaged a team-high 14.6 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.9 steals, and 1.3 three-pointers per game as she led the women’s basketball team to their first-ever regular season championship.

Male Athlete of the Winter

Eric Jones – M. Swimming and Diving

Having a year better than Eric Jones is impossible because he did not have a blemish on his record. Erin Jones was undefeated in the 200-yard freestyle his senior season. Jones went 11-0 in dual meets and won the event at the America East championships.

Female Athlete of the Winter

Abbey McKenney – W. Swimming and Diving

Five gold medals in the America East championships to lead the team to their first title in three years says it all. McKenney not only won five medals though, she broke four records that weekend and broke six records this season, four of which were as a member of a relay team.

*The photos in the post were taken by either me, Harish Trivedi, or UMBC Athletics

Polls end, March 31, 2011 at Midnight. Awards Will be announced on April 2, 2011

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.

<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.

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.

Travis King scored 15 points in the second half.

UMBC couldn’t have played a worse first half against Vermont. While they shot a respectable 37.5 percent they went into halftime down 45-23, trailing by as many as 25 point in the 20 minute period.

After a three-point play by Chris De La Rosa, who led UMBC with 20 points and six rebounds, three minutes into the game made the score 10-9, the Catamounts went on a 12-point run over the next five minutes, giving them a 22-9 lead. Freshman Chase Plummer broke the streak after a timeout with two of his six points in the game and Bakari Smith, who scored a career-high seven points, followed that with a three-point play to give the Retrievers a modest 5-point run.

But Vermont got back to what they were doing very soon and scored 13-straight points, extending their run to 25-5 over an 11 minute span.

The Retrievers turned the ball over eight times in the first half, managed only one offensive rebound, were hammered in the paint, 24-6, and outscored 21-2 on hustle points (second chance and fast break points).

The second half was a completely different story. UMBC outscored Vermont 44-35 in the second half shot 53.1 percent from the field, 45.5 percent from three-point range, beat Vermont 18-6 in the paint, and 17-2 on hustle points.

But the the time the Retrievers started to get everything together it was way too late. After another three-point play by De La Rosa put the score at 51-31 Vermont went on a 9-point run, giving them a 29-point lead, their largest of the game.

In the final nine and a half minutes the Retrievers outscored 31-14, not enough to get back in range of a victory, but enough to make the final score of 80-67 not look quite as one-sided as the game was.

Travis King made three of his four 3-pointers in the second half of his 18-point performance while Justin Fry scored 10 points with seven rebounds.

All five of Vermont’s starters scored in double-figures, led by freshman Brian Voelkel with 19 points and 10 rebounds while Brendan Bald also scored 19 points, Matt Glass scored 13, Evan Fjeld scored 11 with seven rebounds and three blocks, and Sandro Carissimo scored 10 points for the Catamounts.

Chris De La Rosa

Junior point guard Chris De La Rosa has been having a Player of the Year type season, at the very least a first-team All-Conference type season. Last week De La Rosa powered UMBC to back-to-back victories after a loss on Monday. Against Maine, which was half a game out of first place in the conference going into their match, De La Rose scored 17 second half points to give him 24 points with 13 assists and six rebounds. This, only a few games after he scored 10 points with eight assists and six rebounds in a win over Binghamton. So far this season De La Rosa ranks second in the conference, averaging 16.7 points per game while leading the conference with 6.7 assists per game.

Stat Lines:
Stony Brook – 12 points, 5 assists, 3 rebounds
Binghamton – 10 points, 8 assists, 6 rebounds
Maine – 24 points, 13 assists, 6 rebounds