Tim Ambrose led the Purple team with 20 points and Mike Johnson scored 17 to lead the Gold team in the University at Albany's intrasquad scrimmage on Saturday afternoon.

It was interesting for me seeing a lot of new players playing for the first time.

I was impressed with freshmen Gavin Glanton and Derrek Tartt and I think a lot of the others have some promise.

The team will scrimmage tomorrow, but without Johnson who was suspended by coach Will Brown for both scrimmages and the first two games of the season for an incident over the summer.

I was also impressed with junior Louis Barraza, who is finally healthy and made three 3-pointers in the second half.

I was a little shocked with how thin senior Will Harris looked.

Harris was the Great Danes player who was hit with the flu and has lost 10-12 pounds.

Brown says he is leaner and Harris said he feels faster.

"I definitely feel lighter," said Harris, who also sported a headband, after the scrimmage.

Some of the big plays from the final 30 minutes of the scrimmage (I was late coming from a RPI football game).....

• Senior Scotty McRae had a nice dunk over junior college transfer Fran Urli on a pass from Ambrose.
• Harris blocked Barraza on a 3-pointer and went coast-to-coast for a lay-in

The play of the scrimmage was definitely when Johnson lost freshman Mike Black with a killer crossover and then spotted up and canned a jumper.

That brought oooh's from the crowd and a smile from Black.

"I told him I made him dance a little bit," Johnson said. "Just a little friendly fire."

Here are some more comments from Brown after the scrimmage.

"I thought we did some good things. We have a lot of guys that can put the ball in the basket and do some different things, which is nice to see, but again the real test is tomorrow, when we scrimmage."

"The two guys that have been playing the best out of all of our new guys leading into this afternoon were Derrek Tartt and Fran Urli. Those guys have been playing the best and Blake Metcalf has been rock-solid for us and other guys have shown consistent flashes. Gavin Glanton gets better every time he steps on the floor and he plays so darn hard."