ualbany wbb 2023-2024 UAlbany Womens' Basketball Schedule Announced

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I guess if want to catch more of the Broadview Center and sooner, you need to catch opening of Broadview Center on November 12 (Sun) with UAlbany WBB playing Rosemont.   The WBB team has six non conference games at home.

Women's Basketball Announces 2023-24 Schedule

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Do you know any current UAlbany students, preferable male with basketball experience looking to practice with the WBB team.  In addition, the WBB is looking for student managers, the need was posted in an Instagram posting.

 

🚨🚨Calling all UAlbany Students🚨🚨

We are looking for managers and male practice players for the upcoming season!

Please contact Coach Cassidy for more information at ccassidy@albany.edu

#UAUKNOW

 

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From today's Times Union:

UALBANY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

 

Karpell looks for title with Danes

 

By Mark Singelais

UAlbany Marketing Services/

UAlbany graduate point guard Sarah Karpell, a Fordham transfer, said she transferred to the Great Danes partly to capture a title that eluded her with the Rams.

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.

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UALBANY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

 

Loss in final game still drives Danes

 

By Pete Dougherty

Jim Franco/Times Union

UAlbany senior Kayla Cooper, left, led the Great Danes in scoring and rebounding last season.

ALBANY — A two-point loss to Vermont in last season’s America East championship game still torments the University at Albany women’s basketball program, but any retribution in 2023-24 will be accomplished by a roster that has only six returning players.

The Great Danes, 22-12 a year ago and 45-22 over the past two seasons, launch the sixth campaign of coach Colleen Mullen (74-72, .507) on Monday night at Merrimack. UAlbany has lost four of its top seven scorers but is bolstered by the 11th-hour return of graduate forward Helene Haegerstrand and the addition of three transfers and five freshmen.

 

“If that would have been a win or a loss,” Haegerstrand said of the 38-36 loss to Vermont, “it’s something you either want to avenge or you want to do it again. That’s a motivator either way.”

The Danes were picked third of nine teams in the preseason America East coaches’ poll, behind Vermont and Maine. Senior Kayla Cooper was selected to the preseason all-conference team.

“When you get there and you lose by such a little amount, it’s so deflating,” Mullen said. “They took the time to process that, and now we have a new face, a new energy.

“We have a lot of new players, but that core of those players, knowing how that feels, how much work you have to put in to get to that point, they’ve instilled that type of standard in all of our freshmen and newcomers here. There’s an edge to want to get back there.”

For now, according to Mullen, the Great Danes’ immediate focus is on improving each day and getting the new blood integrated with what’s returning.

UAlbany lost six players to the transfer portal: graduate students Morgan Haney (Akron), Grace Heeps (Canisius) and Taniya Hanner (Radford), junior Freja Werth (San Francisco), and sophomores Karyn Sanford (Tarleton State) and Taylor Moffat (Williston State). Haney and Heeps, an East Greenbush native, were starters.

In addition, senior mainstays Ellen Hahne and Lucia Decortes have graduated.

“Nobody left under bad terms,” Mullen said. “They’re all graduates of UAlbany. They’re all alums that I hope come back and continue to feel that pride to the university and our program, and I wish them well. I feel like our staff helped provide them a positive experience, they got better as players, they were part of championship programs, and they were empowered to take a chance and see what another program was like.”

The cupboard is far from bare, especially considering the fluidity of college rosters these days. The Great Danes, who won the America East in 2021-22, have 55 percent of their scoring and 45 percent of the rebounding from last year’s team returning.

The incoming transfers should help offset the experience lost. Meghan Huerter, a 5-11 guard from Clifton Park, arrived after two seasons at Providence, where she averaged 3.4 points and 1.5 rebounds last year. Graduate transfer Sarah Karpell, a 5-7 guard, was a four-year player at Fordham, starting 67 of 109 games. Sophomore Gabriela Falcão, a 6-1 center, left La Salle after averaging 1.5 points and 1.2 rebounds as a freshman.

“We learned a lot from the veterans that came and went last year,” said Cooper, who averaged 15.2 points and 8.3 rebounds last season, both tops on the team. “We’re very young, so we’re still learning, but we have a lot more speed. We’re quick and hungry.”

The freshmen on the roster are 5-11 Selina Monestime from Framingham, Mass.; 6-2 Deja Evans of Conshohocken, Pa.; 5-11 Hailee Ford from Perry Hall, Md.; 6-0 Jessica Cooper of South Plainfield, N.J., and Ida Allberg of Stockholm, Sweden, the same hometown as Haegerstrand.

Haegerstrand was working as a student assistant and nursing a leg injury when she decided less than two weeks ago to return. She is sixth on the school’s career scoring list.

“It’s just the opportunity that I was given by Coach,” she said. “She had this scholarship, and I’m grateful that I had the chance to come back and for helping the team. I feel like we have a good season in front of us, and I’m just happy to help.”

[UAalum72]

The game vs. LCC has been moved to 5:00 due to the Football playoff game