Luke Devlin had some extra motivation to shoot the ball on Friday night at the Purple/Gold scrimmage.

University at Albany coach Will Brown told his freshman from Australia that if he didn't shoot, Brown would make the whole team run laps.

"Our expectations for him a very high," Brown said. "The problem with Luke is he's unselfish to a fault."

Playing for Team Purple, Devlin finished with seven points and five rebounds (from my count - see below) and one missed halfcourt shot at the buzzer of the first "half."

I was very impressed with Devlin, although the 6-foot-8 forward did tweak his elbow in the second "half" of the scrimmage.

When Logan Aronhalt missed a last-second shot, Purple escaped with a 38-36 victory.

I tweeted (@AndrewSantillo) that Purple was my 3-point favorite, once I saw the rosters and in my defense, I was pretty close to hitting it on the head.

Anyway, I was impressed with Devlin, Aronhalt's shooting and the long-distance shooting (the two teams combined for 10 three's).

I wasn't as impressed with Derrek Tartt, who seems to have slid down the depth chart after coming on towards the midseason point last season. He only took two shots, making one.

Sophomore Mike Black and Aronhalt each scored 14 points.

"I'm just going to play my game," Black said. "Every day, I'm going to try to make a name for myself and improve every day."

Black is one of six sophomores, who got a lot of playing time last year and are looking to make experience turn into wins this year.

"Last year was a tough season, but we got a lot of experience," Black said. "That can only help us this year."

The team did have a two-hour practice, earlier in the morning and Brown said he could see that his team was tired.

"When you get tired, I think it's easy to settle for jump shots," Brown said. "I think we did a little too much of that today."

I was also impressed with Jacob Iati's play.

At 5-10, he may not be the biggest kid, but he played pretty well, opposite Black at the point.

"Jacob makes open shots," Brown said. "He's tough as nails and every time we walk into the gym, I know what type of effort I'm going to get from him. He never ever wavers on his effort and he's a gym rat."

Iati canned two 3's early in the game, bringing back not so far away images of older brother Jon doing the same thing for the Great Danes.

"His brother was a tough cookie, who had a great career for us," Brown said.

On the injury front, Brown said that Ralph Watts had missed 5 1/2 weeks, but somehow between rushing all over the place, I neglected to ask what for.

Senior Tim Ambrose looked pretty good, scoring 10 points, considering he didn't do anything in the weeks leading up to the start of practice because of a groin injury.

UNOFFICIAL STATS (so unofficial that I somehow have purple scoring 39 points)
Purple
Billy Allen, 11 pts, 4-9 FG, 1 reb.
Mike Black, 14 pts, 5-11 FG, 2-3 FT, 2 reb.
Luke Devlin, 7 pts. 2-5 FG, 2-2 FT, 4 reb.
Blake Metcalf, 1 pt. 0-5 FG, 1-4 FT, 6 reb.
Russell Moore, 4 pts, 2-7 FG, 0-2 FT, 1 reb.
Ralph Watts, 2 pts, 1-4 FG, 2 reb.

Gold
Tim Ambrose 10 pts, 2-6 FG, 5-5 FT, 6 reb.
Logan Aronhalt, 14 pts, 5-10 FG, 2-2 FT
Theo Hatcher, 0-3 FG, 2 reb.
Jacob Iati, 6 pts, 2-3, 2 reb.
Jake Lindfors, 0-3 FG, 3 reb.
John Puk, 4 pts, 1-4 FG, 2-2 FT, 3 reb.
Derrek Tartt, 2 pts, 1-2 FG, 1 reb.