Danes playing catch-up
Ualbany opening vs. Hofstra as it tries to shake rust from pauses
Barring further COVID -19 interruptions, the pause turns to paws Friday afternoon for the University at Albany women’s basketball team.
The Great Danes, who have twice had their program on pause because of pandemic concerns, are scheduled to get their 2020-21 season underway Friday afternoon with a nonconference game at Hofstra.
“It’s going to take us some time to shake some rust off,” said guard Kyara Frames, the lone active senior on this season’s squad. “We’re behind a couple of teams at this point in terms of going on and off the pauses, but I have full faith in my team. We’re capable of going in and playing to a high level.”
Coming off a 9-21 season and
22-39 in Colleen Mullen’s two years as head coach, Ualbany already was playing catch-up before the pandemic hit.
Gone are three full-time starters from a year ago. Alexi Schecter, the leading scorer, and Amanda Kantzy, the top re
bounder, have graduated. Khepera Stokes, a redshirt senior guard who was second behind Frames last season in minutes, will miss the season because of hip surgery. Patricia Conroy, a junior guard who started eight
times, has transferred to Division II Southern Connecticut.
In all, the Danes have six returning players and seven newcomers. They will need to replace 75 percent of the scoring, 58 percent of the rebounding and 59 percent of the minutes from last season’s squad.
“It’s going to be a learning year, it’s going to be a rebuilding year,” Mullen said, “but we’re going in the right direction. We have players on this team that are really bought in. In the past we have, too, we just haven’t been able to put it all together.”
The focus this season is likely to shift from inside scoring to outside shooting. Eleven of the 16 players listed on the team’s official roster are guards, although three of them won’t play: Stokes, Providence transfer Fatima Lee (who will be required to sit out 2020-21) and redshirt freshman Morgan Haney (who during rehabilitation reinjured the ACL that she tore after playing seven games — all starts — last season).
Two Division I transfers who are eligible are Swedish national team member Ellen Hahne (Wake Forest) and East Greenbush native Grace Heeps (Massachusetts).
“Ellen has made me
better as a player for the hard and intense way she plays every single possession,” said fellow Swede Helene Haegerstrand, a sophomore who was a part-time starter last season. “Down at the defensive end she’s definitely going to contribute a lot.”
Two freshmen who figure to be in the playing rotation are Kayla Cooper from Frederick, Md., and Stella Popp from Vienna, Austria.
“We’re definitely a bit more guard happy this year,” said Frames. “We definitely had a strong post presence last year, so we’re going to be a little bit more fast-paced and with the additions to our team. We have some good shooters and we’ve added some good basketball IQ.”
Of course, the biggest factor for college basketball teams this season may not be how much size there is on the roster or how much experience returns, but how they react to a fluid situation concerning COVID -19 protocols.
“Those setbacks challenge you in different ways,” Mullen said. “They create adversity that you’re going to have during the season. It’s almost like good practice to handle being resilient and handling things that are thrown at you that you have no control over.”
Notes: The Danes announced Thursday that they have added a home game at 1 p.m. Sunday against Saint Peter’s. The Wednesday home game against Marist has been canceled. ... With Ualbany playing Friday, only two America East teams have yet to open: Vermont (Dec. 19) and Hartford (Dec. 22).