Danes’ Campbell putting in work
Senior tries to shake slump and help team end four-game skid
Belfast, Northern Ireland, was a wonderful place to be the week after Thanksgiving, the University at Albany basketball team insists.
“It was a great team bonding experience,” according to co-captain Devonte Campbell.
From a basketball perspective, there weren’t a lot of positive memories from the Belfast Classic. The Great Danes (2-6) lost both games to teams ranked below them in the power rankings and now take a four-game losing streak into Saturday night’s home game against winless Monmouth.
Campbell, perhaps more than others, was haunted by his play. He scored just two points in each of the games, shooting a combined 1-for-12 from the field. His only points in a 91-77 loss to Dartmouth
came from the foul line.
“There were a lot of things that went wrong during that trip for me,” said Campbell, a 6-foot-6 forward. “If you love this game, you’ll find a way to get better and make sure it doesn’t happen again. If you love this game, you’ll get in the gym and you’ll shoot your way out of it.” So Campbell, the lone senior starter for Ualbany, has been trying to rectify his lack of scoring the only way he knows how. By shooting. A lot. Outside of scheduled practice.
Before the Belfast trip, Campbell was scoring a career-best 10.5 points per game. That average is now at 8.4. As soon as the Danes finished with their 8 a.m. weightlifting sessions this week, Campbell has retreated to the gym to fine-tune a skill that he knows he has.
“I’ve been in here on the gun, trying to get my rhythm back in terms of my 3-point shooting, just knocking down shots,” he said. “Typically some of the (officiating) calls I get here I didn’t get there. Some of the shots I usually make here I didn’t make there.
“It’s a mental barrier sometimes, but you’ve got to learn to get through that. If you love the game, you’ll find a way to get through that. You’ve got to keep going, especially being a senior in this program for so long. Guys look at you and how you adjust to things. I can’t have my head down.”
Ualbany is looking for offense from Campbell and others as it tries for its first home victory against a Division I opponent. Guards Ahmad Clark and Cameron Healy are averaging a combined 37 points per game on a team that is producing 71.5.
“We’re not pretty offensively,” coach Will Brown said, “but when you’re averaging over 70 points a game, it’s enough points to win.”
The Danes have slumped defensively, although they don’t worry about Campbell on that front. He was on the America East’s all-defensive team last season.
Before Dartmouth, they had not given up more than 90 points in a game since a 94-90 overtime loss to Ohio University in a College Basketball Invitational game that ended the 2015-16 season.
In fact, Ualbany had not allowed 90 points in a game that ended in regulation since 2000-01, when Scott Beeten was head coach. Brown replaced Beeten eight games into the following season.
“We’re the gift that keeps on giving,” Brown said. “We gave that game to LIU (87-84 loss in Belfast). I don’t know what to chalk that Dartmouth game up to. We weren’t ready to play. We had an LIU hangover, and Dartmouth came out like a team that was absolutely desperate.”
If misery loves company, Monmouth (0-10) is an appropriate opponent. The Hawks, who beat an experienced Danes team 81-73 last season in New Jersey, are coming off a 75-73 loss at Hofstra.
Monmouth is getting outscored by nearly 18 points per game. Only two of its games have been decided by fewer than 11 points.
“It doesn’t make you feel good that they’re coming in here with the record they’re coming in here with,” Brown said. “It’s a program that’s used to being successful.”
“We need to have an entitlement to winning,” Healy said. “A team can’t come in here and take a game from us. It’s ours until a team takes it from our hands after the final buzzer.”