UAlbany women’s special streak
Great Danes enter NCAA Tournament field for 6th straight season
No Coach Abe. No greatest player in the history of women’s basketball in our area.
No record-setting point guard. No problem. Not for the UAlbany women’s basketball team, which heads to the NCAA Tournament for the sixth consecutive season after Friday’s 6650 demolition of Maine at Great Danes’ SEFCU Arena.
And, just when does the realization settle in that we’re watching something historical, something brewed to perfection by the women’s program located at the south end of the Northway?
Yeah, no Coach Abe. No Katie Abrahamson-Henderson, who righted what was once a floundering program and built it into a mid-major powerhouse that earned five straight NCAA Tournament appearances before her departure to Central Florida after last sea-
son.
And, no Shereesha Richards, the 6-foot-1 unstoppable inside force the likes of which our area had never seen before. She graduated last season not only with the school’s career scoring record (by 798 total points), but produced the highest career point total of any college player in our area’s history.
No Zakiya Saunders, either, who coach Abe took with her to Central Florida after Saunders set an Albany single-season record for assists last season and ranked sixth nationally in dishing out dimes.
No problem whatsoever, it seemed.
The Danes’ victory Friday night earned it yet another NCAA Tournament appearance. They find out the details when the national-championship event’s field and match ups get revealed Monday evening.
By now, Albany’s run of success almost comes with a ho-hum sentiment. It’s been happening with the regularity of a sunrise.
But neither is something that we should take for granted.
Here’s how special it is: No Division I women’s college program anywhere has an active sixyear run of stamping its ticket to the NCAA Tournament by winning a conference tournament.
Not even UConn, winners of 107 straight games and counting, can make that claim (the Huskies lost to Notre Dame in the championship game of the 2013 Big East Tournament).
Six straight. UAlbany, and no one else.
Green Bay, highly regarded as the standard for mid-major women’s programs, has only done it five of the past six seasons.
The finest mid-major program our region has ever seen, Marist College, once had a streak of nine straight Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament titles. But that run ended in 2014 and the Red Foxes haven’t won one since.
And, no other America East team, women’s or men’s, has won six straight tournament titles since the league was formed in 1979.
It’s not easy even winning one, let alone six in a row.
No one expected things to be easy after the loss of an all-time coach, an alltime player, an all-time point guard and one other starter from last season’s team.
And, probably, no one expected the streak to continue after this season’s revamped team started the season with a 9-10 record, a stretch that included a lopsided 84-71 loss at Maine in late January.
There’s also the resultant pressure to continue the streak, something Coach Abe’s replacement Joanna BernabeiMcNamee (Coach Mac, if you will) had to feel but doesn’t admit.
She spoke about a sense of relief after bringing in No. 6, but claimed it’s the same emotion she feels after every victory.
“I say it all the time: I’m the coach, but it’s not about the X’s and O’s ... it’s about the Brendas and the Chloes,” she said.
But, let’s give credit where it’s due.
Something kicked in after the 9-10 start, something that resulted in a 12-1 run since late January that includes Friday’s victory.
A new coach, new players, a new style of play ... it all took time to come together.
That sort of mid-season turnaround doesn’t come without a very good coach directing it all. A ship doesn’t go in the right direction without a good hand at the helm.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have the Brendas and the Chloes. Or, in this case, a player like senior guard Imani Tate, arguably the best America East has to offer, who had 19 of her game-high 21 points in the final three quarters after Maine had run out to a 16-6 first-period lead.
Someone asked Tate if any sense of panic was setting in after Maine appeared to have Albany reeling early.
“I didn’t even realize we were down because the scoreboard (which didn’t work during the game) wasn’t up,” said Tate. But, they knew. “I definitely knew the score,” admitted coach Mac.
And, as if to prove that, sometimes, it is about the X’s and the O’s, the Albany coach made a gamedeciding move.
Maine had designed a defense to limit the scoring production of Albany’s top three scorers Tate, and forwards Jessica Fequiere and Bailey Hixson.
The defense sagged off Albany’s starting point guard Khepera Stokes, effectively using five defenders to guard the Danes’ other four players.
After Stokes missed her first three shots, Coach Mac made the requisite adjustment, replacing Stokes with freshman Mackenzie Trpcic.
The strategic substitution keyed the Danes’ comeback. Trpcic, often left open on the perimeter, scored 15 points in 32 minutes — 12 of them in the second half — and made 4-of-8 shots from three-point range.
Brendas and Chloes, for sure. Albany still has some good ones.
But, X’s and O’s, too, as Coach Mac showed that losing Coach Abe hasn’t been a problem.
Despite heavy turnover from a year ago, there is still something special going on with the UAlbany women’s program. Something historical. Something our area has never seen.
And, with an active streak of six straight conference-tournament championships, something no Division I program anywhere can match.
Steve Amedio’s column appears every Sunday in The Record. He can be reached at hoopscribe1@ aol.com