Ualbany looks to simplify things
Coach opts to stay the course, letting young lineup gain experience
Having lost to arguably the best and worst teams that the America East basketball conference has to offer, the University at Albany finds itself looking for solutions.
One thing the Great Danes won’t do, coach Will Brown said Tuesday, is to make wholesale changes just to shake things up.
Ualbany (5-12, 0-2), following home losses to America East favorite Vermont and struggling Maine, will head on the road for the first time in conference play Wednesday night to take on Umass Lowell (9-9, 1-2)
“You don’t try to invent the wheel,” Brown said. “We were pleased with where we were at as the nonconference was winding down as far as the progress that we made. We ran into a buzz saw in the first conference game in Vermont. We were passive against Maine, and we allowed Maine to run their offense, and we struggled to make shots.”
Through two conference games, the Danes have led for a total of 5:25 of a possible 80 minutes.
They were never in the game against Vermont after the Catamounts opened with a 20-2 run en route to an 80-51 victory. Maine led Ualbany by 16 with less than three minutes to go before a Danes rally made the final score 66-62.
“At the end of the day we’re all problem solvers and we’re trying to figure this out together,” freshman guard Cameron Healy said, “but it’s disappointing having multiple losses in a row. We’re feeling like we can figure it out.”
Brown, who has started four freshmen for the past five games, plans no major lineup changes. He just needs the players he has to gain more experience.
“You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “You have to stay upbeat,
you have to stay positive, you have to look at what we’re doing well and what we’re not doing well. What I’ve tried to do the last couple of days is simplify things for our guys.
“Schematically we’re probably asking them to do a little too much. I’ve got to scale back a little, especially defensively. We’ve asked them to guard a ball screen one way, a handoff one way. We’ve spent a lot of time this week working on improving our ball pressure defensively.”
Ualbany is ranked sixth (of nine teams) in both points scored (67.6 per game, including nonconference) and points allowed (71.5). Lowell ranks first in offense and last in defense.
The River Hawks, who are 6-1 at home, average 89.2 points in the 2,000-seat Costello Athletic Center, where Wednesday night’s game will be played. (They play a handful of games at the much-larger Tsongas Center, where they’ve averaged 84.0 points.)
“They average 90 points at home,” Healy said. “We need to limit that. They play fast in transition. If we can work on defensive transition and limiting some of their
shooters, we give ourselves a chance.”
Offensively, the Danes are getting more than half their points from two players, Healy (15.4 points per game) and junior guard Ahmad Clark (18.6).
Brown said he wants his inside players to demand the ball more, but that side of the court hasn’t been the focus of recent practices.
“We’ve always defensively forced teams to beat us over the top,” Brown said, “but for the most part we were able to put you in a meat grinder and win ugly games when the offense wasn’t going well. We don’t have that mentality. We need to find two or three things that we need to get really good at, and we’re looking at those two or three things on the defensive side of the ball.”