Friday, January 2, 2009

Game 14: UAlbany vs. Hartford

Overview: With 13 games in the books, the Great Danes now turn their attention to America East Conference play for the duration of the season. 

Step one starts tomorrow in Hartford against the Hawks. 

Hartford has had a murderous schedule, which has included Penn State, Connecticut, Baylor and Stanford (oh and a 40-point loss to Niagara).

On top of that, the Hawks have played their last three games without junior Joe Zeglinski, who is the team's leading scorer and rebounder. 

The Great Danes have played some tough teams as well like Villanova, DePaul and Kansas.

This should be a good matchup and should tell a lot about UAlbany's chances in this league this season.  

Records: UAlbany 0-0, 8-5. Hartford 0-0, 4-9 

The Series: UAlbany leads the all-time series 13-6, including eight of the last night meetings 

X-factor: Rebounding. UAlbany is +7 on the boards and the best rebounding team in the America East, while Hartford is -7 and the worst team so far in the conference. If the Great Danes can exploit that advantage it will give them a great chance to win. If the Hawks can be competitive, that certainly favors them. 

Injury Note: Zeglinski (ankle) is questionable for the Hawks after missing the last three games. UAlbany senior Brian Connelly (heel) is questionable, while senior Jimmie Covington (shoulder) is out.   

Prediction: UAlbany 66, Hartford 61 (Both teams beat St. Francis (NY), but Hartford needed double overtime and that was with Zeglinski. My record 11-2)   
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With America East Conference play opening tomorrow with three games (Stony Brook at UMBC, Binghamton at Maine are the other two), I asked Connelly and Brown what they thought of this league and this is what they had to say. 

"I haven't really looked at the standings because I know in league play everything is different than in non-league play," Connelly said. "I've seen some teams have played some big schools pretty well. Like I said, it doesn't really matter at this point. I think our conference is probably the best it's been in a few years. I think everybody's pretty talented and it's up in the air." 

"I think that we have some good wins," Brown said. "In years past, we've had two or three teams that have had one or two wins in the non-conference and that has hurt the overall RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) because when you get into conference play, if you haven't taken care of business in the non-conference, you can't help your RPI at all. If a lot of teams with poor records are beating up on each other in conference play, your RPI is not going to improve. I think this league's has a lot of parity." 

He went on to say.

"This might be the year where one of the teams near the bottom can make a nice run in a conference tournament. That would not surprise me at all." 

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you gone mcnuggnuts?

January 2, 2009 at 11:24 PM 

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