BIDDEFORD — Field hockey convention holds that it’s darned near impossible to be the same opponent three times in one season.

However, UNE would love to turn convention on its ear.

The Nor’easters will get an opportunity to do just that, this afternoon at 4 p.m., when they’ll host No. 3 Nichols in a TCCC playoff semifinal tilt at the Big Blue Turf.

UNE, which under first-year coach Dani Ryder is coming off the best regular season (17-2) in school history, is looking to add a successful NCAA post-season run to its list of accomplishments.

The Nor’easters made their first-ever NCAA appearance last year under former coach Jane Hurt, bowing out in the first round.

“As a team, we all want to get back there,” said sophomore midfielder Hannah Tavella. “And we all know how it feels. But I think we’re good at taking (matters) one game at a time. We want to get there, but we have to beat this team first.”

That team would be Nichols, whom they defeated twice this year, by scores of 4-0 and 2-1.

“The great thing about our conference,” said Ryder, “is that every game we played a team a second time, they had made adjustments. And we had, too, which is why we continued to be successful.”

“We were able to adapt to the changes they threw at us,” said senior co-captain Bree Tupper.

The first of those wins came Oct. 8 at home, during the latter stretches of UNE’s season opening 17-game winning streak, which netted the team a No . 19 national ranking, the first such ranking of any Nor’easter team.

The second came Oct. 25 at Nichols, which will be the site of the NCAA Division III championships later this month.

“I think it’s extremely hard to beat a team three times,” said sophomore forward Casey Clark. “I think that might be our hardest (task). We’ll just have to focus on everything we did the past two games to beat them.”

That would mean taking care of business at both ends of the field, something the Nor’easters did well throughout the season.

UNE enters the conference tourney as the TCCC’s top offensive team, and its stingiest one, too.

One secret to the Nor’easters’ success has been the ability to rely on the full roster for production.

Nine players recorded at least one goal, with Clark (13-5-31), Michelle Oswald (10-9-29) and Tavella (9-3-21) leading the point parade.

“Day by day,” said Tupper, who has played for three coaches during her four years at UNE, “we don’t have a starting 11. We have a deep bench. Which is really nice. Other teams can’t say that.”

Successful playoff teams usually concern themselves more with their own game than that of the opposition.

The Nor’easters are confident they’ve got more than enough game to make it through the long post-season haul, beginning, of course, with Nichols.

“If we execute our game,” said Tavella, “we’ll be fine. We’re both very good teams. We (have) to keep up the intensity. It is extremely hard (to win three times), but I think we can beat them.”

Should the Nor’easters prevail, they’ll meet the winner of today’s other semifinal, which pits No. 1 Endicott and No. 4 Gordon.