Dane Pound

Firing a coach while the university is having financial problems probably doesn't put you in a great position in terms of offering more pay to a new coach. That might have been something he should have thought about last week. Firing a coach who was popular in the community and who many alumni/fans wanted to keep probably pissed off and alienated some of your donors. That might have been something he should have thought about last week. It's a fairly open secret that our AD is looking for another job. The game is, the same search firms that place ADs also place coaches. So, by firing the basketball coach, you get to hire the search firm that might place you in AD job. That might make the search firm happy and they might recommend you for the AD job you really want. I'm actually glad someone might have stepped in and said no to the search firm racket. It seems like it would be tough to hire a guy with previous D1 coaching experience because: 1. if they've been winning, they're probably going to go higher than us to something that pays more. 2. If they're a retread former head coach like say Geno Ford at Stony Brook or Cliff Warren who coached for 9 years and has a below 500 career winning percentage, someone might ask why you fired a guy who has a career winning percentage and 5 NCAA tournament apperances for someone with a losing record.

It takes a little luck sometimes. Next week I'd have Undercuffler do the punting. Not sure he can but I don't think that matters.

Our offense is so high powered they broke the sticks.

Walker was being held on that play too.

The guys you want to stay will leave and the guys you might want to leave are going to stay. We've all seen this movie before.

Great optics this week: -You fire the coach that a large portion of the fan base wanted to keep on the day he and his wife are honored by the American Cancer Society for their fundraising efforts. -You announce a college coaching search that'll cost 50-100K on the same day the university announces it has problems with debt. It's only Tuesday but you're really winning the flippin week UAlbany Athletics.

I know you're local. You would fired every coach a few times over by now. PS. that was a joke.

A solid No to this. The 5th place finish this year was not a result of coaching or players. It was at the whim of the AE conference schedule makers. The lousy part of this decision is that whatever issues I've had with recruiting in the past couple of seasons, they seemed to figure it out this year. Horton, Kelly, Champion and Doles were all good recruits. On paper, we would have had a lot of talent returning next year. Funny the way the arguments have gone. It seems like the alumni/fans furthest from Albany are mostly "OK" with the coaching change. While the alumni/fans closest to Albany aren't OK with it. The hard part for Benson and the Admins is that it's the people closest to Albany that go to games, etc.

I've liked Horton at the PG spot. It was a tough matchup with Carter whose experience won out tonight. He managed the game really well and his steal late in the game was a backbreaker. Also thought not having another big haunted us again Stafl.

To me it says Rizzuto had a really bad game and Healy has been off since coming back from the injury. I think it also says that was a pretty good recruiting class. Wouldn't have expected that we would have won easily with Rizzuto not scoring.

Hats off to Zach Cooks from NJIT. Every time I've seen him play he goes all out. We scored 76 points today and 71 of those points came from guys in this recruiting class - Horton, Doles, Kelly, Champion and Taylor.

Thanks. Missed the two fouls. Taylor was on the bench for a while in that half too. No complaints though of the guys on the floor though.

Speaking of, feels like Rizzuto has been out of the game for a long time.

A little of both, I think. Rizzuto has been playing really well as has Kelly and I don't think there's a ton of minutes left.

You can probably file this under "excuse making" but the unbalanced schedule made a difference this year. Vermont won 10 games and a #2 seed while going 4-0 against Bing and Maine - the bottom two teams in the league. Albany wins 6 conference game and the #5 seed while having games against Bing and Maine cancelled. There's no guarantees, but if we played those games we're probably a #2 or #3 seed and not having this conversation. What isn't excuse making is comparing Albany's results with peer institutions - SBU and Bing who have similar resources and are in the same conference. They have two combined NCAA tournament appearances and had several players arrested in both of those years. Albany has 5 tournament appearances over the same time and also set a record for number of all academic selections.

Great to see Rizzuto get the accolades. He really stepped up his game this year and I thought he put up first-team numbers - he was 5th in the conference in scoring. I thought CJ Kelly had an all-conference type year also. Part of the problem with the unbalanced schedule and him missing two games with injury is half the coaches in the conference didn't see him play.

I actually thought the staff did do a good job doing this year with Doles and Champion. The brutal thing about this season, with no preseason and very little practice is that it did no favors to teams built this way since they had no time to figure things out collectively. The teams returning the most experience had an advantage this year. It's no surprise that UNH, UMBC and Vermont had the most returning minutes coming into the season and finished in the top 3 spots. They all returned their PGs and usually their SG as well.

They can keep clogging the middle because we can't hit diddly from outside.

We'll see. I think it's 50/50 if they can pull off the tournament. I keep suspecting they'll just say the #1 seed is the conference rep for the tourney at some point. The way the numbers are going, it seems like it would have been better to change the NCAA tourney from "March Madness" to "May Madness" and had a better chance of having look a little more like a regular season with teams getting games in. That's Monday morning quarterbacking on my part.

With the number of games being cancelled there were bound to be some winners and losers with the conference schedule. Hartford looks like the winner - they played all four teams with a losing conference record and picked up 6 of their 8 conference wins against them while avoiding Vermont. Hopefully we can go into the tourney healthy.

A fun look at Amica. He made a couple of freshman mistakes (two fouls in his first minute) but settled down. Hopefully we seem some more of him because he looks like he has all kinds of speed. If he, Rizzuto, Healy, Kelly and Horton return next year that will be an entertaining backcourt. Probably one of the better outings from Sam Safer. Like NYSteve, I get frustrated watching Lulka miss shots inside. Then I look at the box and see he had a pretty productive day - 8 points, 8 rebounds a steal and an assist with no turnovers. I liked that he was pretty much the only guy UML couldn't push around in the paint.

We'd be talked about as recruiting Shane O'Dell at one point. He's a freshman at St. Rose. In his first game yesterday against one of the better D2 teams in the country - 23 points, 8 rebounds and 5 blocks. We could have used some of that a little further up Western Ave. last night.

A great night by Rizzuto and not many other people other than maybe Taylor. I'm guessing Doles and Kelly are out because of Covid protocol.

With all these teams "pausing" during the regular season, I wonder what will happen during March Madness. Do you "pause" and then head straight to the sweet 16?

So sorry to hear this.