UMBC men’s basketball junior point guard Ace Valentine tied a career high with 23 points and set a career high with five 3-pointers in the Retrievers’ 84-69 win against New Hampshire in the quarterfinals of the America East playoffs on March 7.
UMBC will face UMass Lowell in the semifinals in Catonsville on March 10 at 6 p.m. The Retrievers defeated the River Hawks by 23 and 24 points during the regular season but now have to beat them again to earn a trip to the league championship game on March 14.
It’ll help if Valentine plays the way he did in the quarterfinals, when he scored double-figure points for the ninth time in ten games and had at least four assists for a sixth straight contest. The final figures for the 6-foot-3, 195-pound guard: 23 points on 7 of 11 shooting and 5 of 8 from deep along with five rebounds and four assists.
Valentine had a feeling a good one was in store before tip-off.
“I kind of felt it in warmups. I had a good rhythm in my shot. My follow-through was feeling good and stuff,” he said. “And then I was just taking what the defense was giving me. They have a tight-knit defense where they don’t really allow people to attack the paint … but I was just being ready to shoot. They started going under ball screens and stuff like that, so just taking what the defense was giving me and just playing off how I see what would work.”
A native of Columbia and graduate of Mount Saint Joseph, Valentine had a lot of family and friends in attendance for his big game.
“It’s always good to have your support group that you grew up around,” he said. “They want to see you play and they support you and everything you do. It’s a great feeling to put on a show in front of them.”
Valentine is enjoying the best season of his three-year stint at UMBC, averaging 11.4 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game in helping the Retrievers go 22-8 overall and earn the No. 1 seed in the America East playoffs. That process, according to Valentine and his coach, began at the end of last season.
Valentine appeared primed for a breakout year in 2024-25, but the season fizzled for the player and his team. Valentine averaged 8.0 points, 2.6 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game for a Retrievers squad that went 13-19 overall and 5-11 in the America East. Head coach Jim Ferry turned over much of the roster last offseason, but Valentine stayed after a come-to-Jesus meeting with Ferry.
“Ace and I had a very strong conversation at the end of last year where I didn’t think he had played to his potential. I didn’t like his body,” Ferry said. “I challenged him — just told him the truth and challenged him. Ninety-five percent of the kids these days would’ve left my office, walked down the hall and went into the portal. Ace took it like a man and was just like, ‘If this is what I’ve got to do, this is what I’ve got to do.’ He never flinched.”
Valentine worked on his body, fixed his shot and became the leader of the program. After shooting 33.3 percent from 3-point range as a freshman and sophomore, he is shooting 40.8 percent from distance this year. He is also having the best year of his career from the free-throw line (74.3 percent).
Valentine took Ferry’s tough love to heart, and it has paid off this season.
“I love Coach. He stuck beside me. He didn’t make me feel like I was not worth it. He wanted me back and I wanted to be back,” Valentine said. “I wanted to try to turn this program around and stuff like that. Just sticking to it, everything he told me was true in that meeting. I knew what I needed to work on. I tried to do my best to stick to it and work on that every day and get better.”
UMBC is two wins away from earning the America East’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Retrievers have been to the Big Dance twice in program history, most recently the historic run in 2018. If they beat UMass Lowell on March 10, they’ll host the America East title game for the first time since 2008.
The quarterfinal matchup against New Hampshire featured what Ferry called the best environment of the season (an announced crowd of 2,652). That crowd included UMBC’s swimming and diving team, which made life difficult for the Wildcats’ free-throw shooters in the first half.
Ferry is hoping his players will again have the backing of the students and community against UMass Lowell.
“What it leads to is instead of it being a run of six points, it turns into a run of 10 or 12 points because the crowd gets behind us,” Ferry said. “The guys are really locked in. Hopefully we can get everybody back here again for Tuesday night because I thought that was electric.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of UMBC Athletics