Team improving as tourney nears

In just five days time a team with a 4-12 America East Conference record could be known as the America East champions.

   The University at Albany women’s basketball team (11-18, AE 4-12) started the season off well going 7-6 in non-conference games but hit a wall when they reached conference play dropping their first nine conference matchups.

   The Great Danes have since stopped that skid winning three out of their last six America East games, a stretch in which senior guard Charity Iromuanya averaged 21.7 points in the three wins.

   The Danes first tournament game will be Friday at noon when they take on the Vermont Catamounts (23-6, AE 13-3) whom they lost to 92-47 and 72-63 this season. The tournament will take place at the University of Hartford’s Chase Arena at the Reich Family Pavilion.

   Now the Danes are looking to build off their recent wins and put the early losses behind them heading into the tournament.

   “I’m not really concerned about [the losses],” Iromuanya said. “That’s in the past. I think those games kind of prepared us, and if you see in the second-half [of conference play] we’ve done a lot better because we’re growing as a team. I’m just excited.”

   Sophomore guard Felicia Johnson too believes the wins have helped heading into tournament play.

   “I think they’re very important because going into the tournament you need momentum,” Johnson said. “Although we haven’t necessarily gotten the wins that we wanted, we have played well, and I think that will help us with getting wins in the tournament.”

   During the recent wins, with the exception of a 51-40 loss, UAlbany points per game has increased as they averaged 62 points compared to the 55.6 points the team averaged over its first nine conference games.

   Coach Trina Patterson credits a lot of this success to the team’s better play against zone defense which it didn’t face much of during the non-conference portion of the schedule.

   “We’ve been able to shoot people out of the zone,” Patterson said. “Our players have been able to hit open shots. They’ve been comfortable; they’re getting offensive rebounds. We really believe that we’ve attacked some of the things that were hurting us.”

   Even with the recent wins Patterson believes the team can take a lot out of its recent losses against the conference’s top two teams – a 63-57 loss to conference best Hartford and a 72-63 loss to second-best Vermont.

   “The wins have helped, but even the losses have helped,” she said. “The loss to Hartford was a good loss. The loss to Vermont was a good loss. It gives us confidence that we can play with any team from first to last place. It’s also helped that the second time around teams that had blown us out, we were able to come back and get them.”
 

  Patterson believes that the team’s success in the tournament relies on making plays.

   “These teams have seen us two or three times,” she said. “They will have seen us three times, so it’s about the players making plays when plays are needed.”

   Iromuanya believes that taking care of the little things is what’s going to determine the Danes’ tournament success.

   “I think the main thing is just going to be playing hard, playing defense, and rebounding is always important,” she said. “And I think if we stick together as a team and continue to do what we’ve been doing, we’ll be fine.”

   One advantage that the Danes won’t have in the tournament – just like every other team other than Hartford who is hosting the tournament – is home-court advantage which the team was 7-7 this season compared to a 3-11-road record.

   “Well any road game is tough,” Iromuanya said. “It’s tougher to play on the road than it is at home, but again, we can’t use that something to hinder us. We have to be focused and go into the game looking to get a win.”

   Patterson agrees with Iromuanya believing that it will be tough, but the team can’t let that get in the way.

   “It’s going to hurt because our team is comfortable here. They play their best here,” Patterson said. “I think every team plays its best at home. We won’t be the only team in the boat except for Hartford. Our opponents will feel the same, so there’s really no advantage.”

   The Danes will head into the tournament as the seventh seed after having a couple of things go their way this past weekend. The team was staring down its second-straight play-in game but did their job to avoid it, and so did New Hampshire.

   UAlbany needed, first, to defeat Maine on the road Saturday. The team did just that maintaining its five-point lead it held at the half, defeating the Black Bears 62-57. The Danes then needed New Hampshire to lose to the conference’s third best team Boston University. The Terriers helped the Danes with a decisive 79-65 victory which awarded UAlbany the seventh seed in the tournament.

   The help from Boston University may be bittersweet; however, as the Terriers sent UAlbany home last year with a 77-75 overtime loss after the Danes blew out Maine in the play-in game 63-43. Patterson said that was last year, and the team is solely focused on their first-round matchup with second seeded Vermont but that it did give some of the players good experience.

   “We won the play-in game last year and played Boston well but lost in overtime by two at the buzzer,” Patterson said. “[This year] we have players that know what it takes. Pretty much the player that [most] knows what it takes is Charity Iromuanya. If she can get the team to know that you have to lift your game in the tournament and how serious every possession is, it’s going to be an asset. There is going to be some room for error because we have three freshmen on the floor, [however].”