Danes can’t Win Defensive Slugfest, lose to Holy Cross

It was an ugly game, to say the least.

There were multiple scoring droughts. 27 turnovers. Neither team scored more than 55 points. There was lack of an atmosphere.

And UAlbany was responsible for most of those.

The Danes put up only 45 shots and had 18 turnovers in a sloppy loss to Holy Cross by a score of 55-49 Wednesday night, a “disappointing” loss UAlbany Head Coach Will Brown put it bluntly postgame.

Holy Cross, energized coming off a three point loss to preseason MAAC favorite Monmouth, used their three point shooting and well executed zone defense to keep the Great Danes off balance on both sides of the court all night.

“We’re just not where we need to be,” Brown said afterwards. “Two things have killed us all season: our defense and valuing the basketball. In an ugly game like that, you can’t have 18 possessions where you don’t get shots.”

While the Danes did shoot a respectable 46.7% from the field on the evening, they only made one three on nine attempts. That one three came with 29 seconds left.

The Crusaders made sure to take advantage of the opportunities the Danes handed them, scoring 14 points off turnovers (compared to eight for UAlbany), and had triple (six to two) the fast break points.

The victory did not have it’s lack of timely scoring from Robert Champion however, as the senior scored 13 of his 22 and 13 of his teams final 19 points to bring his team from four down with 6:20 to go to six up when the final buzzer sounded.

“They are seniors (referring to Champion and Malachi Alexander- the forward had 17 points and 7 rebounds), they should come through,” Holy Cross Head Coach Bill Carmody said postgame. “And they did.”

Champion and Alexander combined for the final 26 Crusaders points.

The lack of energy was obvious from the home side, playing in front of a crowd of 2,518 people after selling out the SEFCU Arena just days ago when they hosted Siena for the Albany Cup.

David Nichols led the Danes with 14 points, while Greig Stire and Joe Cremo each had 10. Mike Rowley had a team-high 10 rebounds to go with his 6 points.

The 49 points are the fewest the Danes have scored in a game dating back to December 2013, when they put up 47 points in an 18 point loss at Niagara.

Albany heads to Yale on Saturday for an early afternoon matchup with the Bulldogs before returning home next Wednesday to host Marist at 7 PM.