Sarah Karpell won at Fordham. Just not as much as she wanted.

Her four seasons with the Rams produced four straight winning records and three consecutive Women’s NIT appearances, but no championships.

With the option of playing a fifth year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Karpell decided to make the University at Albany women’s basketball program her final stop.

“Last one best one!!” Karpell, a 5-foot-7 graduate point guard, tweeted in May when she chose to transfer to the Great Danes.

“One of the biggest reasons why I decided to take my fifth year was because I had never won a championship at Fordham before,” Karpell explained Thursday. “With the coaching change happening there, I kind of felt my best option was to look for somewhere else that I could do that, and Albany was a great option. Their past success, and obviously their track record, speaks for itself. It was truly an easy decision for me and I do believe it’s going to be my best one, and I hope it is.”

The Great Danes were picked third in the America East Conference preseason coaches’ poll that was released Thursday. UAlbany senior guard Kayla Cooper was chosen to the preseason all-conference team.

Karpell is one of three transfers brought in by coach Colleen Mullen to reinforce a team that lost at Vermont in the America East championship game last season.

Vermont is the preseason choice to repeat, followed by Maine and UAlbany. The Catamounts received seven first-place votes and the Black Bears got the other two.

UAlbany didn’t return five of its top seven scorers from a year ago because of graduation, injury and transfer.

“Now it’s kind of turn the page to a new era of UAlbany women’s basketball,” said Mullen, who won the America East title two years ago. “Sometimes change is really good and it’s exciting. Having a nice core back, adding a terrific player with the woman sitting next to me, Sarah, amazing point guard, somebody that makes everybody around her better, and just really having some nice pieces that people don’t know about yet.”

Karpell, from Holmdel, N.J., started 67 games and played in 109 over her Fordham career. She averaged 2.5 points and 2.1 assists per game playing for two head coaches, Stephanie Gaitley and Candice Green.

She won’t have to wait long to face her old program. UAlbany, which opens its season Nov. 6 at Merrimack, plays its second game Nov. 10 at Fordham’s Rose Hill Gymnasium. Fordham has a new head coach in Bridgette Mitchell, a former Siena assistant.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Karpell said. “Obviously, I played there for four years, so I’m used to the gym. Hopefully, I’ll shoot well, but I’m really excited. My friends and my family are all going to be there and it would be great to beat the Rams, so looking forward to it.”

Karpell’s mother, Dawn, is a former Fairleigh Dickinson and Sacred Heart point guard who coached Sarah in high school and AAU.

“It’s definitely been extremely helpful and I feel like I understand the game really, really well and I kind of owe a lot of that to my mom,” Sarah said.

UAlbany faced Fordham once when Karpell played for the Rams, who blew out the Great Danes 71-42 on Dec. 22, 2020, in the Bronx.

“I’m happy that she’s on our side now in purple this time around,” Mullen said.

At first, Sebastian Thomas wasn’t interested in transferring to the University at Albany men’s basketball program. He wouldn’t return head coach Dwayne Killings’ phone calls.

Thomas had 23 reasons for his indifference. The Great Danes went 8-23 last season and finished last in the America East Conference.

“Just looking at the record last year, it was kind of hard,” Thomas said Wednesday with a laugh. “I’m here now, so hopefully we can turn it around.”

Killings is counting on Thomas, a 6-foot-1 junior guard who played the past two seasons for the University of Rhode Island, to be part of a big turnaround. The Great Danes open Nov. 7 at UMass.

“I think he’s got a chance to be the best point guard in the league,” Killings said. “My standard for him is really high and I think there’s some days where, it may not be his favorite thing, but I think he’s got a chance to have a perfect game. When I’m saying that, 10 assists, no turnovers. He has the ability to impact the game on offense and defense. He’s got a gift. He makes players better.”

Even with UAlbany’s addition of Thomas and four other transfers, the America East coaches don’t expect the Great Danes to be much better than last season. The Great Danes were chosen seventh of nine teams in the preseason coaches’ poll announced Wednesday.

“I don’t agree with it,” Thomas said. “I think we’re better than that, but it is what it is. Being picked seventh, I think on the positive side, nobody expects us to do good, so I feel we can prove a lot of people wrong in our conference and hopefully this season we’re higher than seventh.”

Vermont is the preseason favorite to win its third straight league title, followed by UMass Lowell in second.

Unlike some who might transfer down from an Atlantic-10 school, Thomas did not ride the bench at URI. He played in 32 games as a sophomore last season and started 13 — the first six and final seven. He averaged 22.8 minutes, 5.8 points and 2.8 assists per game. Thomas had an assist/turnover ratio of 1.6, which would have ranked 10th in the league if he’d qualified.

The lefty Thomas shot only 34 percent from the field, 25 percent from 3-point range.

The Rams went 9-22 under new head coach Archie Miller. Thomas, a Providence native, decided to enter the NCAA transfer portal after the season. Killings’ initial attempts to contact Thomas were met with silence.

“To be honest, when I first entered the portal, I wasn’t that interested in Albany,” he said. “I wasn’t answering DK’s phone calls at first. It took a while to warm up. But then ultimately I got down here on a visit, going into the visit with the mindset that I can’t picture myself here and ended up loving it. One thing that stood out to me was the relationships built here, how open everyone is, how DK is with his players. I feel like I really need that personally. That’s something that attracted me to come here.”

Killings credited UAlbany assistant Ryan Daly with being persistent in his pursuit of Thomas. He said Thomas had “impressive” offers from other schools, including within the America East.

When they first sat down, Killings said, Thomas didn’t seem open to the idea of coming.

“We were resilient with him,” Killings said. “The second meeting, we sat down and I thought his mind was open to the program because we talked about, ‘We didn’t have the success we wanted this past year, but here’s our plan for you and here’s an example of things that we’ve done within our program.’”

Killings and Daly sold Thomas on the renovated Broadview Center, previously known as SEFCU Arena, and the chance to play with sophomore forward Jonathan Beagle, the America East Rookie of the Year.

“He started to see the potential,” Killings said. “I know the threat we are to this league and any team we play. A lot of it’s going to be because of the young man to my left (Thomas).”

Notes: Redshirt sophomore forward Justin Neely, coming back from an ACL tear, is “progressing really well” and has a Nov. 2 appointment with his surgeon to be evaluated for a clearer idea of his return, Killings said. … Sophomore guard Marcus Jackson, who fractured his left wrist, will be evaluated in early November. Killing said it’s “not super serious.”… Beagle is day-today with a rolled ankle.