BANGOR — There were a season-high 3,467 fans at the Maine women’s basketball game Saturday. But it felt like just one big family gathering at the Cross Insurance Center.

Eight Black Bear seniors who have engineered the rebirth of a program were the honorees, walking onto the court to glowing applause with friends and relatives in tow.

They were each given a bouquet of flowers by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins beforehand. They left with snippets of the nets afterward.

In between the fanfare was the small matter of dispatching the hapless visiting team, Binghamton, 69-37. That felt like an afterthought on an afternoon of high emotions.

Maine forward Liz Wood, the senior linchpin of all that has happened the past four years, summed it up best:

“Freshman year feels like an eternity ago and then it feels like yesterday at the same time,” Wood said after finishing with nine points and eight rebounds in what may be her final appearance as a player in this building. “We put our hearts and souls into this team and we’ve come together as a family and we always have each other’s back and that makes it even more special for me.”

What they shared was a 19th consecutive home victory and a 12th straight win overall. Maine (24-7, 15-1 America East) clinched at least a share of a second straight conference title (Albany can also go 15-1 with a victory Sunday over Hartford).

The 4-24 season of four years ago is just a painful prologue now. That’s when Wood was part of a multinational freshman class that included Chantel Charles (England), Mikaela Gustafsson (Sweden), Anna Heise (Germany), Milica Mitrovic (Serbia), Sophie Weckstrom (Finland) and fellow American Lauren Bodine. Bella Swan transferred in two years ago and felt the warm embrace immediately.

“It was the team first,” Swan said of her reason to travel all the way from Utah for her final two years of college. “I just felt like I connected with them immediately, and that was the No. 1 thing.”

It was Swan, the relative newcomer, who set the tone Saturday.

The 5-foot-11 forward manned the point of the Black Bears’ defense and helped hound Binghamton guard Imani Watkins into 2-for-15 shooting with four turnovers. Watkins scored a career-high 30 points in her last game; she managed only six Saturday.

Swan also achieved her first career double-double, with 10 first-half points to go with 11 rebounds.

Sigi Koizar scored 19 points to lead Maine. Gustafsson added 10. All eight seniors played, and seven scored. A group of five came out of the game en masse with 1:14 remaining, the white-clad crowd on its feet once again.

“They’re playing with a different confidence level,” Binghamton Coach Linda Cimino said after falling to 0-5 in two seasons against Maine.

A year ago, Maine tied with Albany atop the league standings with 14-2 records, but got bounced in the conference tournament semifinals by Hartford, missing out on the chance to host the Danes for a spot in the NCAA Tournament. This year, Albany holds the tie-breaker and would host that title game. The Black Bears are just itching to get there, a home victory over Albany two weeks ago fresh in their minds.

“I think we’ve been preparing for this for awhile. I know that I have,” Maine Coach Richard Barron said of the Senior Day celebration. “So we weren’t overwhelmed by that. And we still have basketball to play, so we weren’t thinking about this as an end.”