BANGOR — It all looked so easy for Kevin Little and the Maine men’s basketball team early in Saturday’s game at the Cross Insurance Center.

The shooting guard scored 11 quick points and the Black Bears bolted to an 11-point lead against a Binghamton team that couldn’t hang onto the ball long enough to get a shot off.

“When we jumped on them, I thought that, ‘All right, we’re going to bury them and then let’s just get ready for the next one,’ ” Little admitted afterward.

“But they fought back.”

Maine ended up winning by that 11-point margin, 74-63, but it was far from easy.

Binghamton (5-16, 2-6 America East) slowed the Black Bears down, pounded the ball inside, and led for 15:47 before Maine did something it almost never does: Stop trying to dictate the pace.

“The last 12 minutes or so we made a decision just to guard them and rely on our halfcourt defense, and to be honest, we weren’t going to do it that long,” Maine Coach Bob Walsh said.

“We were going to go back to our pressure, but we showed a level of toughness and a defensive effort in the second half that I thought was terrific.”

Aaron Calixte drove for the basket to give Maine (8-13, 4-4) the lead for good with 6:25 remaining. The Black Bears kept the visitors without a field goal for the next five minutes and made eight consecutive free throws down the stretch to earn a hard-fought victory.

Little finished with 22 points. Issac Vann scored 15 of his 19 in the second half for Maine.

“We came out really fast and then it slowed down, so (Walsh) was telling us through timeouts and everything we’ve got to pick up our energy and our defense,” said Vann, who also had 11 rebounds, six assists and three blocked shots.

The freshman entered play 3 of 21 from the field in his past two games, but went 7 of 10 on Saturday, including a couple of rim-rattling dunks.

Binghamton, which had a two-game winning streak snapped, got 16 points from center Thomas Bruce. The Bearcats had 26 points in the paint in the first half but only 10 in the second, when they were held to 32 percent shooting (8 of 25). This despite establishing the deliberate pace of play they prefer.

“Our goal coming in here was to try to play the game in the 60s and I thought we had it there,” Binghamton Coach Tommy Dempsey said. “One-on-one in the post I thought we liked our matchups going in, but I thought they brought more help in the second half.”

Maine won only two conference games a year ago, and now sits in fifth place at the season’s midway point.

Little, a sophomore who scored 20 or more points for the fifth time in his past 11 games, was quick to dismiss any discussion of being .500 in the league.

“I don’t think it’s an accomplishment. We’re not too bad, not too good,” he said. “I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

But for Walsh, also in his second year, it was a signal of how far his team has come from last year’s 3-27 record, even if it’s not the ultimate aim.

“I told these guys in the locker room it means we’re middle of the pack. And our goals are better than that,” he said. “It certainly says that we’re making progress. We want to get to a championship level. You don’t get to a championship level by winning half of your games.”

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