After battling through hunger and nasty weather conditions against the University at Albany on Wednesday night, the Boston University women’s basketball team hits the road again to take on the University of Maine on Saturday.

In the teams’ first matchup, the Black Bears were able to hold off BU’s late comeback effort to win, 78-73. Sophomore guard Kristi Dini led BU scorers with 17 points on 5-of-6 shooting from 3-point range, with tri-captain Cheri Raffo adding 16 of her own.

In that game, BU had a tough time holding off 6-foot-1 Maine forward Bracey Barker, who scored 22 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the field. Guard Ashley Underwood also netted 50 points on 5-of-9 shooting from the field and was 7-of-8 from the free throw line.

Barker and Underwood always come up big for the Black Bears, as they are the only Maine players averaging more than 10 points per game. But the surprise last time out came from senior forward Lindsay Hugstaad-Vaa (8.0 ppg on the season), who scored 14 points in 29 minutes of play.

When the teams take the court Saturday, BU’s ability to make defensive adjustments to stop these players will be key to a Terrier victory.

“In the last 10 minutes of the game we made some adjustments to shut down their inside game, and that’s when we made our nice run,” said BU coach Kelly Greenberg. “We’ll do that. We’ll use our zone press defense and keep switching up the defenses to keep them on our toes.”

Maine’s success getting to the charity stripe also made the difference the last time the teams met. The Black Bears were able to get to the free throw line 32 times, converting on 22 attempts, compared to BU’s 10-of-12 performance from the line. The 32 free-throw attempts were well above the Terriers opponents’ average (about 21 per game).

“That was definitely the difference in the game. When you put a team on the line that much it’s tough to beat them,” Greenberg said. “We will talk about how they need to beat us on field goals and not from the line in practice.”

The Terriers hope to count on freshman Aly Hinton to come up with another big game, as she’s averaged just more than 20 points per game in the last four contests. BU also may see junior Kasey Devine step up as she did against Albany on Wednesday (14 points, 5-of-9 from the field), but that might depend on her playing time.

“I really hope to see Kasey and Jesyka [Burks-Wiley] come off the bench and help us, but it all depends on how the game goes and who is playing well with who,” Greenberg said.

With a win and a Binghamton loss this weekend, the Terriers will move into fourth in the America East standings. Any upward movement in the standings this late in the season is good news for any team, but it’s something Greenberg tries to avoid addressing to her squad.

“I still don’t bring up the standings a whole lot,” she said. “I believe every game is extremely important

. . . if you go out there no matter what, you go out there to win,” Greenberg said.

Although Greenberg said she doesn’t look at the standings, they are becoming more and more important as the America East tournament approaches.