By Jack Weiland

BROOKLINE – Its last-minute, last-ditch effort having fallen just short, the Northeastern football team entered the postgame press conference with sullen faces for the fifth time in a row Saturday.

“Growing pains are damn painful,” coach Rocky Hager said after his team’s 14-10 Atlantic-10 loss to visiting Maine (4-5).

No kidding.

The Huskies fell to 1-8 overall, 1-5 A-10 and are just a game shy of equaling the worst start since 1999, when the team went 2-9. They gave up back-to-back touchdowns to a team that, entering the game, hadn’t scored to open any half all year. Their last-minute drive to win the game faded away with a routine dropped pass.

It’s been that kind of year.

“I’m sure you’re tired of hearing the fact that we have a lot of young players, but the truth is we have a lot of young players,” Hager said. “I’ve been told and taught that in those situations the only thing you really can evaluate is whether or not they’re playing hard. I have no question that they played hard. Our young guys played hard, our veterans played hard.”

To be fair, Northeastern recovered well from Maine’s game-opening scores, a four-yard run by Montell Owens that capped a methodical 13-play, 71-yard drive and a one-yard plunge by quarterback Ron Whitcomb.

While their defense struggled, the Huskies offense got on the board with 29 seconds left in the first quarter. After a lengthy kickoff return from Alex Broomfield and a pair of 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalties gave Northeastern the ball on the Maine 30-yard line, redshirt freshman quarterback Anthony Orio (16-for-27, 155 yards) advanced the crew to the Maine six-yard line. A third-down slant pass to Cory Parks, however, tipped off the senior’s outstretched hands.

They settled for a 23-yard Miro Kesic field goal.

After a sack derailed the next Northeastern possession, Orio led the Huskies to the end zone just before halftime. He finished a nine-play, 55-yard drive with a two-yard quarterback keeper with just 55 seconds left in the half.

Maine coach Jack Cosgrove barked at his defense on the sideline, “that’s it for them today, that’s it for them.”

He, too, was not kidding.

Despite an impressive second half in which he threw for 111 yards, Orio couldn’t close the gap. On his last crack, he deftly led the team downfield in its “two-minute drill offense.” On a 2nd-and-10 from Maine’s 28-yard-line, though, an Orio pass slipped right through the hands of senior receiver Patrick Graham at the 16.

Two shots at the end zone later, Maine had the ball back and ran out the clock.

“The bottom line is we had an opportunity to throw a touchdown pass,” Hager said. “We did not. We’ve gotta finish that. It was encouraging to see the way we ran the no-huddle offense down the field. That catch happens, and who knows what happens? We’ve got to make those kinds of plays. People have to rise up.”

Despite the loss, there were some positive signs for Northeastern Saturday.

Namely, Orio’s continued maturation. Maine was sufficiently impressed.

“We had recruited him, or tried to recruit him,” Cosgrove said. “I’m impressed with him because he’s a guy that can do a lot of things. He’s a tough kid. You know what offenses are like now, everyone is orchestrating things under the 25-second clock and switching personnel and there’s one guy that’s gotta handle it all. It’s not as easy as when this old guy played quarterback, I can promise you that.”

“He had the type of game that you’d want a freshman to play,” Whitcomb said. “He played the exact same game I played two years ago, and I lost by three. I think Northeastern has a good quarterback in him. I said to him [after the game], ‘You put your team in position to win, I think you made plays and didn’t turn the ball over.’ That’s something to say for a freshman.”

“He’s pretty tough,” linebacker Jermaine Walker said. “He stuck in there. Not to take any credit from him, he played a little better than I expected him to.”

Hager and the rest of the Huskies, however, felt the job wasn’t quite done. Asked if, with a year of growth under his belt, Orio would finish the final drive next year, Hager had a quick response.

“Next week,” the coach answered.

The Huskies host Hofstra Saturday at 12:30 p.m. before traveling to Rhode Island in its season finale for a noon game Nov. 19.