Dane Pound

Solid effort by Columbia against Miami. They lose by 11 but it was a tighter game than it looks.

Hopefully everyone can find their Ivy League Network passwords from the Yale game. The Lions are coached by Jim Engles formerly of NJIT. Some decent road wins against Stony Brook and Q so far this year. They play @ Miami on Wednesday night before heading home to play us. Luke Petrasek is their big man who shoots threes, the kind of player that often gives us problems. If I remember correctly, we recruited him to some degree when he was in high school. The Columbia message board: http://boards.basketball-u.com/showforum.php?fid/39/

I think it's just decision-making for Nichols at this point..realizing he's still just a sophomore..and is playing what's really his first season. You need someone who's never afraid to take a shot..but will need to learn when it's ok to force it and when it's not. He's got a good mid-range game..but I thought he took many contested long two-pointer jumpers in traffic when his drive got cut off. Lowest scoring shot in basketball. We need his outside shot to start dropping too..as I'm sure it will open the lane just a bit for him. Totally agree. It's a fine line for a point guard on when to call your own number and when to run more offense. Nichols has tended to be more aggressive but I'm sure he'll temper it. By the time he's all done he's going to be a terrific player. On the other hand. The more I see Grayson play the more he looks like he has all the tools to be an all-conference type guard. He seems to fade into the woodwork a little too much. I'd like to see he and Nichols meet somewhere in the middle on the aggressiveness scale and we'll have a heck of a backcourt.

Canisius with a nice road win tonight over St. Bonaventure. They've won 7 of their last 8 with the only loss coming to a really good Monmouth team.

Hard to believe Ojeleye didn't get playing time at Duke. 28 points on just 15 shots tonight. That zone they threw at us cost us a couple of wasted trips and then we stopped running our offense for a while. Learn and move on.

Unless you went to Duke.

Good coaching by SMU. We take our PG out and they go right back to that zone.

He's going to be a great player for us but he forced a couple in a row.

Lame intentional foul on Nichols.

Hope so. SMU shot 50% from the free throw line against Stanford.

He's the transfer from Duke. Tied with rebounds.

Dallas is playing like he has his name on the floor. Oh, wait, he does have his name on the floor.

Get this out of your system tonight SMU,

sports reference and team rankings always a sick job with free info on teams https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/team/albany-great-danes https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/team/albany-great-danes/projections They give us a 51% chance of making the conference finals. I'll take those odds in a year with so many new faces. I don't think we're anywhere near peak with this team yet.

Weird scheduling for SMU. The Stanford game is on ESPN2, our game is on ESPN3 at 8 locally. SMU has good wins over Pitt and TCU already. Hopefully their Stanford game goes to five overtimes tonight. I thought we'd see one of the top rated Australian recruits, freshman Harry Froling who signed with SMU but he recently announced he's leaving the school to play elsewhere. The SMU message board - http://www.ponyfans.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=3

Hopefully the Nichols situation sorts itself out. It didn't seem like a popular decision considering the first 10 minutes or so of the game. Grayson played pretty well getting more minutes than usual.Great to have Charles back!

Costa Anderson was out sick for a while too but sounds like he's going to be back for this game. Hopefully we can get everyone back over New Years. Those weeks when there are no classes are a great opportunity to get better.

Just saw today that the TUC was booked for Siena's game against Bucknell so they're playing today at the Glens Falls Civic Center. I wonder if they offered to let them play at Sefcu. It would have been a shorter drive for their fans.

A report on Healy from the DMVelite showcase - http://www.dmvelite.com/news/dmvelite-prep-showcase-top-performers

As a fan I don't care how it gets into the hoop. What's boring is losing the same way every game. It gets very old when you keep hearing every loss is because the other team got hot from three. Exactly, it's idiotic to suggest you enjoy teams who run an offense and lose vs teams that can hit 13 threes and drill you by 17. Hit 12 threes and I'm OK if they don't run offensive sets on every possession. People are destroying UA with a volume 3's game but hey, at least we run plays. And shoot 41% from the field like in this game against one of the worst defenses in the country. Canisius wasn't chucking threes. They actually ran some good stuff I thought. Their big guys who can shoot from the outside were especially annoying. That's how it's going to go sometimes. When we shoot 18% from three and they shoot over 40% we're not going to win very often. We don't notice when it's the other way around and we win games. I thought they did a nice job against us on defense and we didn't have an answer. They made Dallas put the ball on the floor and that's not his strength. We could really use another guard to emerge. I keep think Grayson isn't going to be the guy some games and then there are games like this. I'm not worried about conference play just yet. This team is going to grow as the season goes on and especially when we get some weapons back that are out now.

Pretty good game plan by Canisius on the defensive end. Meet Nichols at halfcourt with a double team and make someone else run the offense.

Shooting 14% from three and down by five isn't so bad.

The Griffs board - http://www.voy.com/30982/

From today's TU story:

Albany-signee Cam Healy's stat line yesterday: 32 pts, 12-15 from the field and 5-7 from three. He's having an amazing year at Montverde Academy.