The women’s basketball program at Maine has undergone a tremendous turn-around over the last three seasons. In 2012-13, the Black Bears finished in last place in the America East, finishing with a 4-24 record and just three conference victories. After a 17-15 campaign last year, Maine captured 22 victories this season, tied for the AE regular season crown and earned the number one seed into the conference tournament this weekend.

Engineering the turn-around of Maine women’s basketball is head coach Richard Barron. Barron — who is now in his fourth season at the helm — took a program that had finished in the bottom two of the conference every season from 2007-08 to 2012-13 and guided it to a first-place finish, its first regular-season championship since 2005.

“We want to do this on a more regular basis — that’s the goal,” Barron said. “We want to have sustained success, but [to] sustain success is the hardest thing to do in sports. So we have our work cut out for us.”

Maine will begin its pursuit of the tournament championship this weekend, when they take on eighth-seeded Binghamton in the first round. Despite finishing in first, Maine will hold no home-court advantage, as BU is set to host the first two rounds of the AE tournament. Therefore, despite being the higher seeded team, the Black Bears have to travel to take on the Bearcats on their home floor. However, Maine isn’t letting this affect its mindset.

“It is the way it is,” Barron said. “It doesn’t really matter how we feel about it. We are just going to play the games that we have in front of us and try to do our best.”

Integral to Maine’s postseason success will be sophomore guard Sigi Koizar and junior forward Liz Wood. Koizar, who started just four games as a freshman, developed into a dangerous scoring threat for Maine. The sophomore started all 29 Black Bear contests this season while shooting 47.1 percent from the field — including 32 percent from behind the arc — and averaging 14.2 points per game.

Wood emerged as a star as a sophomore and continued her stellar play this season. She finished third in the AE with a 50.8 shooting clip from the field and led the conference in steals at 2.8 per game. Wood finished the regular season averaging 14.2 points and 7.3 rebounds per game, which sizes up as sixth and fifth in the America East, respectively.

“Liz is amazing,” Barron said. “She is, in my opinion, the best player in the league. She led the league in defensive rebounds, led the league in steals, one of the top five in [many] other categories … She can guard any position on the floor as well. She really does everything … She is as well-rounded of a player that you’ll find in college basketball.”

The Black Bears will look to build on their regular-season success in the postseason. If they defeat the Bearcats, they will then face the winner of the game between New Hampshire and Hartford on Sunday in the semifinal. If the Black Bears advance to the championship, they will host the final automatically on Friday, March 13, as home-court advantage goes to the highest remaining seed in the title game.

“It is a culmination of a lot of hard work, certainly,” Barron said of his team’s regular-season success. “It is gratifying but at the same time, the way they award our NCAA tournament bid is by winning the conference tournament. So the next three games are what are really most important now. We have to put what we accomplished in the regular season behind us and stay focused on what we are trying to do here in March.”

Tip-off for the Black Bears quarterfinal game against BU is scheduled for noon Saturday in the Events Center.