I've been a little under the weather the last day and a half, so I apologize for this entry, which will be short and is being posted only six hours before tip-time. 

Here' s my story from today's paper about freshman point guard Anthony Raffa. 

The Great Danes come in on two consecutive losses, and on Monday surrendered a 15-point second-half lead in a road loss at Lehigh. 

"We choked," senior co-captain Brian Connelly said. "We dug ourselves this hole and we have to get out of it."

The youth and experience are starting to show themselves a little bit. 

"Like we've been saying pretty much since the beginning of the season, this team is young and inexperienced," Connelly said. "Maybe that was a good lesson. It stinks we had to learn through a loss, rather than maybe a close win, but it happened and we have to get over it."

The UAlbany players admittedly didn't have great energy in the first half against Siena are the second half on Monday, but they keep saying the right things about how they must continue playing hard, regardless the score. 

"What this team needs to understand is there's a common theme," UAlbany coach Will Brown said. "We're not making shots. When you're not making shots, you need to have longer possessions offensively, you can't settle for a decent shot or take a quick shot and then two, you're defense and rebounding needs to be that much better."

That brings us to today's game against MAAC opponent Canisius. 

This is a return game from the BracketBusters event from last season. 

UAlbany had a 18-point first-half lead in that game in Buffalo, before the Golden Griffins came back to post a 64-60 victory. 

"We slipped up against them last year," Connelly said. "This year, we get to play them at our building, so it would be nice to get a win."

I think revenge should be on the UAlbany players minds and even though this Canisius is better than the 5-21 team that beat the Great Danes last year, I think UAlbany will come out on top.