Track team comes up big; basketball teams don’t

 The University at Albany men's track team won the IC4A Championship, earning its second consecutive title and becoming the first program to win consecutive titles at the competition since Georgetown did it in 2000.

   The IC4A is comprised of teams from across the East Coast, from as far north as Maine and south as North Carolina.

   In addition, the women's track team came through with their best-ever finish at the ECAC Championship, which is the women's equivalent to the IC4Ass, recording a 12th place finish with runner Fey Adaramola leading the way.

   The men went into the final three relay races of the day in a three-team fight for first with George Mason and Cornell. George Mason pulled ahead by 2.5 points in the final standings after the first race but Albany responded in the 4x800 relay, winning with a final time of 1:49.7 to take regain the lead going into the final race of the day, the 4x400.

   The relay team consisting of Alie Beauvais, Peter Rowell, Jonathan Santana and Jeffery Barnes was able to finish fourth, high enough to secure the victory for the Danes, sending them home with a second prestigious title to add to their collection. Albany finished with 68.5 points to George Mason's 65.

   Tyler Fogarty became the first Albany runner to win an individual event at the meet since 2006, winning the mile run with a time of 4:09.72.

   For the second straight year the Danes took the victory in the competition, a meet that closes out the indoor track season by pitting the top 52 teams in the eastern half of the country. Albany finished ahead of many big-name programs including Syracuse, Connecticut and Duke.

   The women achieved their best-ever finish at the ECAC's thanks to Adaramola, who tallied 14 of Albany's 20 points on the day.

   She won the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.55 seconds, matching the program record set in 1998. In addition, Adaramola recorded points in the 200-meter dash to add to Albany's banner day.

   The team last finished that high in 2007, when they recorded a 13th-place finish.
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   The seemingly never-ending season for the University at Albany men's basketball team finally came to a close on Saturday, with the Danes losing in the quarterfinals of the America East tournament to Stony Brook, 68-59.

   The women's team also lost in the conference quarterfinals on Friday to Vermont, losing by a score of 61-39.

   The men's team was originally supposed to play in the play-in game, but that changed when Binghamton dropped out of the tournament in a self-policing move in response to various scandals. That decision moved Albany up a seed and automatically into the quarterfinals, after they were originally slated to play UMBC.

   However, the result of that game was not the spoiler they had hoped for as the Danes could not keep up with the stronger Seawolves. Despite their success in being able to stop Stony Brook's Muhammad El-Amin, whom earlier in the week Brown called the conference's Kobe Bryant, the Danes were unable to stop the Seawolves' team effort.
 

  The Seawolves had four players in double digits in points including Tommy Brenton, who had a dominating day recording a double-double with 15 points and 16 rebounds. The Danes were able to hold El-Amin to just 5-for-16 shooting on the day.

   For Albany, Mike Black had a nice showing in his first conference tournament game, scoring 17 points, while Will Harris had 15 points and seven rebounds in his final collegiate contest.

   In the women's game, the Catamounts jumped out to an early 16-3 lead, scoring 15 straight points to put the Danes behind early. Albany was brutal shooting from the field all game, recording a tournament record low of 16.9 percent mark from the field. The team was 0-for-17 shooting to start the second half.

   Senior Charity Iromuanya led the Danes with 11 points, the only Dane to record double-digits. .