College of Saint Rose coach Will Brown was hired five weeks ago. Coaching women’s basketball for the first time, he’s still finding his way around.

“Just trying to get adjusted and figure it all out,” said Brown, the former University at Albany men’s coach, who attended a recruiting event in Atlantic City last weekend.

At the same time, Brown moved quickly to add a pair of former Section II stars who were scoring machines at other local colleges last season.

Tamarac graduate Syrita Faraj and Schalmont alumnus Payton Graber each announced her commitment to Division II Saint Rose this month.

Faraj, a 5-foot-9 sophomore guard, entered the transfer portal after averaging 20.2 points per game last season for Division III Russell Sage. She was named the Empire 8 Conference Player of the Year.

“I always kind of wanted to challenge myself to play at the higher level,” Faraj said. “I challenged myself to get Player of the Year and once I received that, I was like OK, I’m more confident in the way I play basketball. … Coach Brown got the head coach job at Saint Rose and I thought it was a good opportunity to go play Division II at Saint Rose.”

Faraj also made Lebanon’s senior national team, but couldn’t play with the team in Australia because of issues with her paperwork and visa.

After leading Schalmont to a Class B state title, Graber spent one season at Hudson Valley Community College. Graber, a 5-8 freshman guard, averaged 24.8 points per game to rank second in the nation in the NJCAA Division III.

Graber said she planned to return to HVCC for another year before Brown got the Saint Rose job. HVCC coach Keith Danzy immediately reached out to Brown about Graber.

Graber and her parents toured the campus with Brown, who was a Saint Rose men’s assistant from 1995 to 1998. She committed a couple hours later.

“Everything just felt very right and very easy,” Graber said. “I wasn’t really hoping to restart my recruiting process until I saw Coach Brown was back at Saint Rose and I wanted to give it a shot. My parents loved it, I loved it. It felt like an easy decision and the right fit.”

Graber said she’s excited to play for Brown in his first try at the women’s game.

“I thought it was a good opportunity to get to know him,” Graber said. “Obviously, he’s a very talented coach and very well known in the area, so I’m super excited to be able to work with him and get coached by him.”

Faraj said she doesn’t see that adjustment as a big deal. Saint Rose also recruited Faraj when previous coach Whitney Edwards was still there. Brown’s son Jackson, who plays for Russell Sage, let Faraj know when his father got the job.

“He’s going to push us harder, and I’ve heard really good things about him,” she said. “I mean, girls and guys are different, but it’s going to be just as good, and we’re going to be pushed to our limits.”

Brown said it’s important to him to recruit Section II, a good area for girls’ basketball. He said he’s expecting another local commitment soon he couldn’t reveal yet.

He said he doesn’t expect Faraj and Graber to put up the gaudy scoring numbers they did at their previous colleges.

“The (Northeast-10) conference we play in on the women’s side is the best in the Northeast,” Brown said. “It’s normal that as much success as Syrita had, she’s jumping up to a higher level. Do I expect her to have success? Absolutely. Do I expect her to average 20 a game, as she did this past year? I think that would be unfair. … Payton did so much for Hudson Valley, so my job is to make sure when she comes to Saint Rose, she doesn’t have to do as much as she did in junior college.”

Faraj and Graber played against each other in high school but don’t really know each other. They’ve texted to set up workouts together.

“I feel just her vision on the court and my ability to score is going to work together pretty well,” Faraj said.

ALBANY — A preseason poll is a guessing game, according to University at Albany quarterback Reese Poffenbarger.

He believes the Coastal Athletic Association head coaches are way off this year.

“I feel like they’re just bad at guessing,” Poffenbarger said.

The Great Danes were chosen 11th out of 15 teams in Tuesday’s CAA poll. William & Mary is the favorite to win the league, which recently changed its name from “Colonial” to “Coastal.”

The head coaches were nearly on target a year ago, picking UAlbany to finish 12th. The Great Danes went 3-8 overall, 2-6 in the CAA to finish in a tie for 10th. They’re 6-20 overall, 4-16 in conference over their last 26 games since getting to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs in 2019.

But head coach Greg Gattuso, entering his 10th season, said he feels good about this group.

“I just think it’s impossible to pick whose team got better, who managed the transfer portal the best, who has the most returning players back,” Gattuso said. “Preseason things tend to go off of last year. We look forward. We always have. We’re not concerned. All-conference stuff means nothing right now. We have a group of players here that are deserving. I don’t think it’s a motivational thing but it’s certainly something that we should take it and we have something to prove, there’s no question about it. We have a good football team. I’m very confident.”

The Great Danes had no one selected to the CAA all-conference team. Three UAlbany players earned honorable mention: Poffenbarger, linebacker Dylan Kelly and defensive lineman Anton Juncaj.

Poffenbarger was very impressive as a redshirt freshman in his UAlbany debut a year ago. Joining the program after spring practice last year, the Old Dominion transfer threw for 2,999 yards, completing 61.5 percent of his passes, with 24 touchdowns and four interceptions.

“We’re very internally motivated,” Poffenbarger said. “We know we have more than enough talent. It’s really just focusing on the things we know we need to do well and do it better than we did last year and finish games.”

UAlbany must find a way to win the close games it surrendered a year ago. The Great Danes lost their first four CAA games by a combined margin of 15 points in 2022.

“For us, it’s just finish,” Poffenbarger said. “Execute in the times we need to. I feel like it’s not even a pressure thing. We’d be down and come back when the pressure was on, but we’d make little mental errors, or stupid penalties, or we wouldn’t finish a drive when we’re up 12 points against Fordham (in a 48-45 loss last season) or whoever it was.”

UAlbany opens this season Aug. 26 against Fordham, the Great Danes’ first opener at home since Gattuso’s debut Aug. 30, 2014 against Holy Cross. Then the Great Danes play Sept. 2 at Marshall and Sept. 9 at Hawaii before getting a bye week. They play their final nonleague home game Sept. 23 at Morgan State before launching into CAA play Sept. 30 against Villanova at Casey Stadium.

“Nobody sees what we go through on a daily basis, or we put in so much work, the countless hours,” safety Larry Walker Jr. said. “As long as we prove it to ourselves instead of the outside noise, we’ll be just fine.”

Lewis moves on

Former NFL running back Dion Lewis, who was added to the University at Albany football staff in March as a volunteer assistant coach, is no longer with the program, head coach Greg Gattuso said Tuesday.

Lewis, a former Albany High and Albany Academy star, was banned from Nite Moves Gentlemen’s Club in Latham after a June 11 incident.

“He was just volunteering, so he was coming when he could come and we just decided that he got what he wanted out of it and we moved on,” Gattuso said. “So he’s not going to be with the staff this year.”

Lewis was with the Great Danes as an assistant running backs coach during spring football practice.

Sarju Patel, who played on the University at Albany men’s basketball team last year as a graduate student, will compete in “The Basketball Tournament” on Wednesday.

TBT started in 2014 as an open-invite, single-elimination basketball tournament. The 2023 edition will see 64 teams compete for a $1 million cash prize. Players at the tournament include former NBA players and NCAA Division I college stars.

Patel, an Indian-American, c, a first-of-its-kind basketball team featuring players from the Indian subcontinent and diaspora. India Rising will face the one-seeded “Red Scare” in its first game, an opponent that made the semifinals of the 2022 TBT. The game will tip off at 8 p.m., Wednesday on ESPN+.

Patel said that while he hopes to win the game, he also values how India Rising can work towards increasing Indian representation in basketball.

“Winning and all that is important, but it’s also the message and the platform and the thing we’re building,” he said. “Honestly for me, that’s the most important thing: it’s just that message. Just having ‘India’ across your chest is awesome.”

Patel said he started training camp with his India Rising teammates on Friday. He noted that, before Friday, he had never played alongside another South Asian player.

“It’s honestly been the biggest part of my identity as far as basketball goes,” he said. “It’s gotten better and I’ve seen more South Asians hooping now than when I played in high school. Regardless, it’s always been such a big part of why I want to play and what I want to represent — it’s just anybody that’s doing something that is off the norm for whoever they are or however they identify.”

For Patel, joining India Rising caps over a decade of playing basketball. He started playing recreational basketball in third grade while growing up in Virginia. The six-foot-three guard then played Division I basketball at Virginia Military Institute and Cornell University before using his final season of college eligibility at UAlbany last year. As a captain at UAlbany, Patel averaged 7.8 points per game including a season-high 25 points against the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

When asked how he felt about the opportunity to play in TBT, Patel said he welcomes the chance to continue playing basketball.

“My plan (until last year) was to play pro. But after reanalyzing things with what I wanted to do outside of basketball and my other passions, I decided I was gonna be done after Albany,” he said. “It’s dope that I still get to do this TBT thing — get one more run at it.”

After TBT, Patel said he plans to work for “a year or two to get some experience” before entering law school to pursue a career in sports and entertainment law.

ALBANY — A federal judge will permit former men’s basketball player Luke Fizulich to continue his lawsuit against the state University at Albany for allegations that school officials planned to fire basketball coach Dwayne Killings for attacking Fizulich, then reversed course because the coach is Black.

Fizulich contends Killings “viciously grabbed him, threw him up against a locker and struck him in the face, drawing blood” Nov. 24, 2021, in a locker room at Eastern Kentucky University. His attorney initially filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Albany in November. Three months later, they filed an amended complaint against UAlbany alleging breach of contract and discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The school, in turn, asked the judge to dismiss the claims.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd, who is based in Utica, issued a 13-page decision that dismissed the breach of contract claim. But Hurd’s ruling allows Fizulich’s lawsuit to move forward against the university for alleged civil rights violations.

Hurd found plausible arguments in the civil complaint that UAlbany discriminated against Fizulich, who is white, following pressure from business and civil rights leaders, including Alice Green, executive director of The Center for Law and Justice, to not fire Killings. The judge said at this stage in the case, a plaintiff such as Fizulich need only show “minimal inference of discriminatory motivation” to continue the litigation. Hurd found the amended lawsuit met that burden.

And Hurd determined Fizulich, as a white male, is a member of a protected class. Hurd said UAlbany’s promotion of Killings’ interest over Fizulich’s interests could constitute an adverse action for Fizulich. By Killings retaining his position, the judge stated, Fizulich had little choice but to “resign from his beloved sport” while studying at UAlbany. The judge said Fizulich offered no explanations for his treatment as opposed to other white players, but said such a question could be answered after both parties share evidence.

Fizulich’s amended lawsuit, which dropped UAlbany’s athletic director as a defendant, detailed how UAlbany investigated Killings and, under the school’s violence policy, decided to fire the coach. But allegedly following pressure from business and civil rights leaders who protested the firing of a black male, UAlbany chose to retain Killings, who was suspended five games and fined $25,000 fine, according to the lawsuit.

In a news release, Killings said at the time: “I realize that the physical contact I had with the student-athlete during the pre-game hype circle was inappropriate, and not communicating it to the UAlbany administration was a mistake. Neither action will be repeated, and the pursuit of success within my program is of paramount importance.”

Killings pleaded not guilty in January to a related assault charge filed in Monroe County, Kentucky, that accused him of pushing Fizulich against a locker and slapping him across the face with an open hand before the 2021 game at Eastern Kentucky University. In March, a judge approved a deal reached with prosecutors calling for the charge to be conditionally dismissed in one year pending the coach’s completion of a “corrective thinking” program.

The Great Danes won the game over Eastern Illinois, 64-62, Killings’ first win as a head coach.

Hurd said the UAlbany retention of Killings had a detrimental effect on Fizulich, who told the school that he could not play for Killings following the assault. Hurd said the college disregarded Fizulich’s concerns and its own policy, showing preference to the coach. The judge said that construing such statements liberally, the amended suit stated a claim under Title VI of the Civil Right Law, which safeguards that no person in the U.S. should be excluded participation, denied benefits or subjected to discrimination in any activity receiving federal financial aid on the grounds of race, color, or national origin.

“As alleged, the university’s choice to retain Killings, despite his assault of plaintiff, one of its students, represents highly questionable decision-making,” Hurd stated. “So questionable, in fact, that it plausibly supports a minimal inference that the decision was colored by discriminatory motivation. Accordingly, Fizulich’s Title VI claim against the university survives dismissal.”

Fizulich is being represented in the case by Manhattan attorneys Stuart Bernstein and Janine L. Peress and UAlbany by assistant state Attorney General Mark Mitchell. Killings’ attorneys are William Dreyer and Lauren Owens of Albany.

ALBANY — The University at Albany men’s basketball team is probably the only Division I program in the country that has the following sign in the entrance to its practice gymnasium:

“NO SWIMMING unless Certified Guard is on Deck Duty.”

The Great Danes are holding their summer workouts in a drained pool converted into a basketball court. It’s the same arrangement they had last season because SEFCU Arena is still undergoing its $12 million renovation. So is the PE Gym, located in the adjacent Physical Education Building.

UAlbany played its home games about 10 miles off campus at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. The Great Danes seldom practiced there.

But those days will come to an end next season and the Great Danes can’t wait.

UAlbany athletic director Mark Benson said last week he’s still targeting November for when the team will be able to practice again inside SEFCU Arena.

Benson estimated the first game will be in early December.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I got here and I’ve been excited about the renderings, excited about the meetings and it’s even better than I hoped for,” Benson said.

The renovations include reorienting the direction of the court, new locker rooms and the addition of hospitality areas.

SEFCU Arena will be under a new name. An athletic department spokesman said Broad-view will be in the name in some capacity because of a recent rebranding.

By any other name, the players are just happy to have a real home court again.

“We’re super excited to get back in there,” UAlbany forward Jonathan Beagle of Hudson Falls said. “Obviously, Mr. Benson, the whole athletic office has done a great job letting us get a new arena, so we’re really excited to get back in there.”

UAlbany’s temporary practice court has its limitations. While it’s regulation size, there are low ceilings at both ends that make it difficult to practice baseline out of bounds plays. Junior guard Ny’Mire Little, coming back from a hip injury, also noted the hotter temperatures inside the former pool.

There is some benefit to the heat because UAlbany coach Dwayne Killings said he’s trying to improve his team’s conditioning from a year ago. Players rode exercise bikes on the side of the court to build their stamina after a basketball workout.

“I definitely can’t wait,” Little said. “Just a new arena. I know all our fans are going to come out to support. I can’t wait to see that place packed. It’s definitely going to be a huge experience. … Every (home) game (last year) we’d get on a bus to go 15 minutes. We’re not getting our home crowd. We’re not getting our home feeling.”

UAlbany went 5-6 at HVCC last year during an 8-23 season. The Great Danes had almost no student attendance off campus. Certainly, UAlbany had other issues besides the arena renovation: injuries and terrible defense were among them.

“Playing in a foreign gym is playing in a foreign gym,” Killings said. “I thought that disrupted us. But to be honest we weren’t as good as we needed to be defensively. But that’s behind us.”

Neely on the mend

UAlbany junior forward Justin Neely, the 2022 America East Rookie of the Year, is back with his teammates at summer workouts. Neely, eight months removed from an ACL tear suffered against Siena, has spent time at home in Miami with his lifelong trainer.

He didn’t speculate on whether he’ll be ready to play in the season opener in November.

“I don’t really have a timeline right now,” Neely said. “When I’m ready to play, I’ll be back playing. But I’m progressing pretty well, so I’m looking forward to the season.”

He said he just began more running about two weeks ago. He has not been cleared for contact and playing. Neely wasn’t wearing a brace or sleeve on his knee, but said he will when the contact begins.

“I’m feeling really good,” he said. “I’ve been running well. I’m able to get some shooting in, a little bit of working out. It’s a different time now. ACL injury doesn’t mean the end of your career now. A lot of guys professionally have had the same injury and bounced back that are All-Stars. So I’m blessed to be in the position I am.”

The NCAA is looking into making the summer more eventful in college basketball.

Siena and the University at Albany aren’t sold on the idea.

The Division I men’s and women’s basketball oversight committees are discussing an initiative that would allow limited competition in the summer. Each school could play a Division I opponent in up to two exhibition contests, two scrimmages or one tournament-style event that doesn’t exceed two contests.

Those exhibitions and scrimmages could be open to the public.

After getting feedback from membership, the NCAA announced last week the committees will continue reviewing the concept and don’t expect to propose legislation during the 2023-24 governance cycle.

“I am not for it,” Siena men’s basketball coach Carmen Maciariello texted. “I feel we ask our student-athletes to do a lot during the year. They need to do less in the summer, not more.”

Maciariello already has three players, Giovanni Emejuru (Italy), Michael Evbagharu (Canada), and Killian Gribben (Ireland), playing in international competition this summer.

College teams are allowed up to eight weeks of summer workouts during which players develop their individual skills and build chemistry with their teammates in preparation for the regular season. The NCAA said it is considering adding summer games “since an emphasis on summer competition currently exists at every level of the game.”

UAlbany men’s head coach Dwayne Killings and women’s head coach Colleen Mullen were more receptive than Maciariello to playing opponents during the summer. But both also expressed caution.

“You have a game in the summer against a program like Colgate, it’s a couple of hours away, that’s played in the NCAA Tournament, it could be really fun to have the game,” Killings said. “I think you’ve got to look at a lot of different dynamics. Obviously, for us, there’s budget restrictions we’ve got to think about. But ultimately, the question is, how do the kids feel? Sometimes we forget to ask the student-athletes. We just come up with these ideas and, boom, they’re doing it. But how do they feel about playing in the summer? If our guys say they want to play, let’s play.”

Asked if he was interested in summer contests, UAlbany sophomore forward Jonathan Beagle responded, “I think just working on ourselves and getting better every day.’ ”

“Since we have so many newcomers I think that’d be our main focus,” point guard Sebastian Thomas added. “If we find a game, I’ll play. I would like to see where we’re at, but it is what it is. Doesn’t matter to me.”

The NCAA said a survey of all 32 Division I conferences showed 69 percent of men’s players and 63 percent of women’s players strongly or somewhat supported summer competition. Men’s basketball coaches are evenly split at 47 percent each, while 59 percent of women’s coaches weren’t supportive of the idea.

UAlbany women’s coach Colleen Mullen pointed out she holds four weeks of summer workouts for her players, while the NCAA proposal would only allow games or scrimmages in weeks five through eight.

“There’s pros and cons to it,” Mullen said. “I think it’s exciting for the players in terms of, if you do a summer session, you get to play against somebody else. But there’s a lot of implications in terms of injury, spending more money on summer school. We have four weeks of summer sessions and we do that on purpose because I think the season is very long and it’s really important players have downtime with their families and recharge their batters and have some sort of balance in their life.”

UAlbany women’s teammates Meghan Huerter and Lilly Phillips said they were receptive to playing other teams in the summer, but were more concerned about themselves and their teammates.

“I think the summer is very team-focused,” said Phillips, from Cambridge. “It’d be very fun (to play games) for sure, but I think it’s definitely the most important to build the team up with relationships and chemistry, for sure.”