Danes come off pause, prepare for Saturday
Ualbany set to return to action with 2 vs. NJIT this weekend
After a 10-day pause, the University at Albany women’s basketball team has returned to practice and hopes to play its first game of 2021 on Saturday.
Ualbany had games Jan. 2-3 at Vermont and Jan. 9-10 at home vs. Stony Brook postponed during the pause. Those games have yet to be rescheduled. The Great Danes have an America East series Saturday and Sunday at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a new conference member.
“We have to have three negative (COVID) tests for the week,” Ualbany coach Colleen Mullen said Monday after the second practice since the pause was lifted. “If everything else goes well, we’ll be playing on Saturday, which is crazy because this is only our second practice in 19 days.”
The Danes (2-4 overall, 1-1 America East) have not played since Dec. 22, a 49-43 nonconference loss at Fordham.
Ualbany’s program initially was shut down on Nov. 10 as part of a campus-wide pause of all athletic activities. A second pause was invoked on Dec. 3 when “pre
sumptive positive tests” arose in the men’s and women’s programs.
“We knew it was bound to happen,” Mullen said. “You just have to respond the right way, but still it’s really hard. It’s hard to come back and get back in peak condition, having been in quarantine and no access to any workouts whatsoever. It’s a challenge. I’m really proud of them, and we’re going to focus on competing the best we can.”
The Danes have by far played the fewest games within the America East. Three teams have played as many as eight conference games, and only Ualbany and Stony Brook (3-1) have played fewer than six.
One of the two postponed series likely will be played Feb. 20-21, currently an open weekend for the Danes. The conference and school administrators will try to schedule the other series as mid-week games, perhaps sliding other conference series from Saturday-sunday to Friday-saturday or Sundaymonday to help alleviate the congestion of games in a short period.
“We’re going to have to play a lot of players,” said Mullen. “We’re going to have to deal with some kinks in our offensive chemistry and knocking down shots. We’re going to have to focus on working the ball around to get high-percentage shots. Our focus is going to be defensively, our communication and our ability to defend. If we can defend, we can compete with anybody in the league.”