UA @ FAU

[Clickclack]

05-06 wilson and lillis had 1 year under their belts to learn the system, and zoellner as well being a transfer from bc. also i forgot to add iati to the bench between the 05-07.

 

my point really is that i want to see this team win every game they should. just like all the albany football fans, i want to see albany move up in basketball just like everyone wants in football. i understand that football is more for the ability to get more scholarships and a new stadium but basketball should be treated the same way. if you settle for .500 play season to season we are not going to go anywhere.

 

now i hate to bring this up again but i believe the high number of transfers has hurt this program since the end of the 06-07 season. although rafa left on bad terms this team would be a force if they still had him. he did avg about 12 pts a game before he was hurt.

 

 

Your points are disparate and have nothing to do with one another. Zoellner had 3 years of DI ball experience (travel, school, practice, etc) before he stepped foot on the floor for the Danes. All of us want to see UA at the highest level we can play at...and in the best conference. Right now, it is the AE. But to expect us to win all the time is just plain irrational. At least with the football thing--which by the way, not that he cared, but VINNY made a few of us eat our crow--we can point to a massive change in a key area as the lynchpin for losses (T/O margin). Here, there is no one thing to point to and you people are ready to jump off a bridge.

 

Transfers- not sure how that relates. I can honestly say that only one transfer, in my mind, has ever had an affect on the team...EJ Gallup. Not really sure how it happens. Guess Norm Roberts (with his 8 juniors) should jump off a cliff in two years when he has to give out 8 rides. Anthony Raffa was a cancer...and if you want the real truth...was selfish. I would put big money on it that the players, on a whole, were not too sad to see him go. I want you to explain how his 12 pts outweighed the most impt thing Raffa lacked- he didnt make his teammates better. He was compared oftent to JJB. JJB made his Northeastern teammates better...and that is the difference between the two.

 

Like I said early this year- I want to win them all, but if we are a .500 team this year that would be a success. Next year, if there is no improvement...I will have issues.

 

Take a breath people...you are grasping for straws and frankly...the only thing that matters is that they learn from mistakes...and dont repeat them in the Conference tourney.

 

.500 or under .500 is unacceptable! THREE years of .500 is not getting it done! I distinctly remember a similar conversation last year....."wait 'till next year (this year)" I'm sorry D....three years of .500 or god forbid two years under is not progress. Especially in a conference that is threatening to be one of the absolute worst in all of D1....on pace to finish 27th.

 

How many would be happy with a THIRD year of 15-15.... how does a program grow with that kind of mediocrity?

[purplehaze]

I'm not embarrased. A terrible game and FAU is ON FIRE from 3 tonight. This stuff happens. Learn from and build on it for conference time.

 

Spoken like true genius.

 

People...listen to this man and relax. When you play youth...and your star gets an early 2nd foul....it aint gonna help. Like I said a long time ago...this will be a learning year for a very young but talented team.

 

And UA '08....I have rarely NOT SEEN a coach bench a player with a 2nd foul in the first half. It is pretty standard. And yes, we are youthful...that is a FACT. URLI being a Junior is much different- JUCO ball and DI ball are two completely separate animals.

 

 

Relax people...this is all bull$iena until conference time. Let me say it like this; we are all upset we lost (as is the team and coaching staff, however it wont matter until tourney time. If you say to me Albany makes the dance this year...i would be happy. I could care less about seedings and play in games. This is a young but talented team that needs to learn how to win.

 

Tought loss...but unlike football where one or two losses kills you, these losses dont kill us. They will be horrific if we dont learn from them.

Amen

[Phoenix]

If someone would have told me that we had 3 players score at least 17 points..that we'd have 'only' 13 TOs..and that we'd out-rebound FAU by 7..I would've thought that a near guaranteed win..not a 16pt loss.

 

This team is so hit or miss right now..the 'bad' side..our 3 wins have come against teams who are a combined 1-20 (only Robert Morris has a win)..the 'good' side..we're 8 total points away from being 5-3 with wins against quality mids in Morgan State and UCF.

 

But as DanePound said..we were 2-6 to start the 05-06 season..so there's still plenty of time to right this ship..I'd much rather have these weaknesses identified now instead of the middle of January.

 

Bosiydid..just a friendly suggestion..maybe wait until the next morning to post comments..after exciting wins and frustrating losses..it certainly worked for me last night/this morning..as I read the comments in this thread it looks like the plot to 2012.

[I rock(ed) the Cape]

so ive been on a hiatus the past few days since i had a 50 page paper to write, but i finished it and now im back. While this loss is very dissapointing (as was the Saturday loss as well) I think we are crazy if we start jumping off the deep end. This is a 1 bid conference, and ultimately as long as we are playing well come March, not much matters. Would I like to have seen us win this game? Absolutely. Should we have won this game? Probably. Am I going to beat myself up over this loss? Not at all. The season is young, and everybody is 0-0 come January. Let's hope to see some progress Saturday vs LCC

[bob87]

 

 

.500 or under .500 is unacceptable! THREE years of .500 is not getting it done! I distinctly remember a similar conversation last year....."wait 'till next year (this year)" I'm sorry D....three years of .500 or god forbid two years under is not progress. Especially in a conference that is threatening to be one of the absolute worst in all of D1....on pace to finish 27th.

 

How many would be happy with a THIRD year of 15-15.... how does a program grow with that kind of mediocrity?

 

Bosiydid

 

I follow just about all the UA teams. I am an Islander fan as well as the Mets and Giants.

I understand where you are coming from but it is all perspective. If you asked me in 1983

if I would be happy with 3 straight .500 years for the Isles , I would obviously say no. Now I would obviously take it in a heartbeat. I would take it for the women's hoops team in a second, would be disappointed if the volleyball team had those seasons,etc.

As far as the men bb team, it is a long season. Very few mid majors stay up for long and it takes time to cycle back. Look how good of a run Princeton had for a while and Bucknell more recently. It is not easy to stay on top of any league. Try not to get too up after early season wins or too down after losses and we will see how it plays out.

I expect I will always be watching some UA games in March. Some years it will be the basketball team in the nacaas and those years are special and to be appreciated as they will never happen every year. The rest of the years I will have a little extra time to watch lacrosse, baseball and softball.

15 wins, contention and improvement from the young players as the season goes along would not be the worst thing in the world.

[Clickclack]

 

 

.500 or under .500 is unacceptable! THREE years of .500 is not getting it done! I distinctly remember a similar conversation last year....."wait 'till next year (this year)" I'm sorry D....three years of .500 or god forbid two years under is not progress. Especially in a conference that is threatening to be one of the absolute worst in all of D1....on pace to finish 27th.

 

How many would be happy with a THIRD year of 15-15.... how does a program grow with that kind of mediocrity?

 

Bosiydid

 

I follow just about all the UA teams. I am an Islander fan as well as the Mets and Giants.

I understand where you are coming from but it is all perspective. If you asked me in 1983

if I would be happy with 3 straight .500 years for the Isles , I would obviously say no. Now I would obviously take it in a heartbeat. I would take it for the women's hoops team in a second, would be disappointed if the volleyball team had those seasons,etc.

As far as the men bb team, it is a long season. Very few mid majors stay up for long and it takes time to cycle back. Look how good of a run Princeton had for a while and Bucknell more recently. It is not easy to stay on top of any league. Try not to get too up after early season wins or too down after losses and we will see how it plays out.

I expect I will always be watching some UA games in March. Some years it will be the basketball team in the nacaas and those years are special and to be appreciated as they will never happen every year. The rest of the years I will have a little extra time to watch lacrosse, baseball and softball.

15 wins, contention and improvement from the young players as the season goes along would not be the worst thing in the world.

 

Bob,

 

I understand what you are saying about perspective....As a long time Jets, Knicks and Mets fan (yes I'm a glutton for punishment)....I know it's all about perspective...Knicks haven't been .500 in close to a decade.

 

Having said that we were coming off back to back NCAA appearances. I understand that mid-major/low-major hoops is cyclical, teams have great runs and then have to reload/rebuild. I get it! I really do...but we are now on year three of this cycle. I understand that the season is still very very young, we've played 8 of 31 games....LONG LONG way to go yet. What troubles me is the notion that we are young as if that's an excuse....(the bench has youth but also veterans) and that .500 season will be OK. I believe I said it in one of the earlier discussions with DoggyS....I'm not OK with a third season of .500 ball. I'm not expecting a 25 win season....but three years of .500 is not progress in my opinion. Especially consider how absolutely WEAK the AE this year. Let's face it...the AE is decidedly low major this season.

 

What else troubles me is the notion that OOC doesn't matter....it's all about the conference portion of the schedule. I STRONGLY disagree....we may be 0-0 once conference schedule starts but the fact of the matter is that you can't build a strong program/following by continually going 2-13 in OOC. Not that we've done that but the point remains...every game on the schedule is important. It's time to move past the....'just happy to go to the dance' mentality....I don't know about you but I'd like to actually win an NCAA game at some point and to do that you have to put yourself in a position to have a favorable seed...how do you do that? Have a stellar OOC performance.

 

I will agree with who ever said that my posts from last night read a bit like the plot to 2012......it is what it is...maybe at some point I'll get to a point where I'm more even keeled. Perhaps it's my youth...I don't know. More to the point of why I was so upset last night. We were coming off arguably our best overall game of the season against UCF, we defended and closed out with determination, our offense was flowing, we were solid. Then the second half of this game...mind you I thought we started the game extremely well, at one point going up 10. How did we end up losing by 16...a 26 point swing still to some extent baffles me...not technically why it happened (three point shooting by FAU) but how did this team allow it. We weren't physically over matched like we were against Cuse, we simply fell asleep. Time after time after time...long rebound and kick out for an open 3. How many times did we get beat down the floor in this one in transition? The other team simply wanted it more then us....we can try to sugar coat it all we want....that's the truth. I'd rather hear the bitter truth then a sweet lie....when we play well even in a loss like UCF I'll tip my hat to the team, when we play hard like in the Cuse game and still get our clock cleaned....I'm not gonna rip the team or the coaches. But what happened last night was simply put....not good!

 

I understand that the season is a marathon and not a sprint but I don't like some of the things already being kicked around.....500 is OK, we are young...to me it sounds like paving the way for another BLAHHHH season. You know the kind....neither really good nor really bad just ehhhhh.....

 

Having said all of this, it's not personal. I know the people on this team are working hard, I've heard about the practices, I've seen the games where they play hard. I know that CB has their attention and most of all there is a significant amount of talent and camaraderie on this team. No one is a cancer nor a distraction from what I hear....I'm not bailing on this team. If I have to I'll sit through 10 more season of .500 ball or even worse I will. You'll never see me call for the head of any UA coach as I trust the people who run the Athletic Dept. will make the right call...but I want a bit more then .500 and a 5th place finish in the AE. Maybe I'm completely unrealistic.....

[Patch]

Very ugly game - when 8 guys combine to shoot 3-20 your usually going to struggle.

 

When you shoot 1-7 from 3 in the second half while your opponent is going 7-9 you're going to struggle.

 

On the up side the rotation is starting to look like it's taking shape with (7 players) Harris, Ambrose, Johnson, Urli, Gifford, McCrae and Metcalf getting the major minutes.

 

If Urli can get untracked we may have some inside presence - at this moment offensively we get very little out of the 4/5 spot

 

It appears CB is still trying to figure out who his next 2 or 3 will be between Allen, Aronhalt, Black, Lindfors amd Tartt. All of them are 1st year players except Allen who is a 2nd year player. As would be expected none in that group has shown any consistency yet and all at times have shown glimpses of promise.

 

The 5 teams we have lost to have a combined 22-8 record and of those 5 losses 2 were by 4. With some luck we could be 5-3.

 

None of this makes the FAU game any better but I always believe things are never as good as they seem and are rarely as bad as they seem.

[olddog71]

Just a couple comments on last night's game from someone who witnessed it personally.

 

On second half rebounding, FAU was, simply put, very lucky in many instances. Yes, they shot a good percentage for the game, but at times their shots and shot selections were horrible. When they were horrible, the rebounds invariably went back to them. Our guys were doing a good job of boxing out - you'd see four black uniforms around the rim, but when one misses the hoop badly and the ball bounces far back into the hands of the offense just standing on the perimeter, there's little the defense can do. I kept saying to my wife all during the second half how lucky FAU was to get the offensive rebounds that kept falling into their hands.

 

FAU was also guilty of putting up several air balls. Horrible shots. I think UA had maybe one air ball all game.

 

As for Urli, I was impressed with him in the game. I think he shows a lot of desire and leadership. I saw him communicating several times - not bad if your first language is Serbo-Croatian. He also fought hard for rebounds and second chance points, but he was either overpowered for position or got called for some "unusual" fouls. On offense, he had a variety of shots, including some drives to the hoop. I don't know how much more we fans can expect from him.

 

Yes, I'm disappointed with the result. In contrast to most of you fans, I won't probably have another chance this season to see my Danes play in person, so I wish I could have witnessed a victory. I'll still be following this team, and I hope to see good progress made by conference time. Who knows? Maybe UA will get sent to an NCAA regional down south.

[uofalbany]

Thanks olddog for the insight.

 

Hope the Florida weather is treating you well!