From our stringer in Baltimore.

By Harvey Valentine
For The Record

Catonsville, Md. – As they were walking off the court trailing by 12 points at halftime Wednesday night in what University at Albany coach Will Brown stopped just short of calling a must win game, Brown pulled aside senior guard Tim Ambrose, who had scored 16 of the Great Danes’ 27 first-half points.

“I told him to go in and blast them,” Brown said of Ambrose, the team’s lone senior and the only Great Dane who didn’t look sluggish during the first half against the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

While Brown waited outside the locker room for several minutes, Ambrose did just that and his teammates responded by rallying for 66-63 win over the Retrievers at the RAC Arena.

“I told them that we had to go out there and have fun, that we don’t have any fans here and we have to bring more energy,” Ambrose said in providing a newspaper friendly account of his message. “I told them it’s on us. The coaches can tell us what they want us to do, but it’s on us to come out and execute. The second half everybody came out with energy and we pulled it out.”

Sophomore guard Logan Aronhalt led the Great Danes with 28 points, tying a career high with six three pointers, and Ambrose finished with 25. Sophomore guard Mike Black scored all eight of his points in the second half, including to go-ahead basket with 21 seconds remaining.

“Logan’s a rhythm guy and when he gets a lot of shots he gets a confidence,” Brown said of Aronhalt, who scored 20 points in the second half. “Earlier in the year we were relying on our Big Three as we call them, Ambrose, Aronhalt and Black. The past couple of weeks we’ve been getting great balance from everybody else. Well today, everybody else struggled and Timmy carried us in the first half and Logan and Mike kind of carried us in the second half.”

In winning their third straight game for the first time since January of 2009, the Great Danes improved to 4-4 in the America East Conference and 11-12 overall.

“I told the team this was a separation game for us,” Brown said. “We want to get into the top four in the conference and separate ourselves from the other teams. I didn’t say it was a must win game, but I told them it was very important.”

Trailing 49-36 with five minutes gone in the second half, the Danes went on 14-2 run to cut the deficit to one. Ambrose started the run with four straight points on a pair of free throws and a driving layup.

After a UMBC basket, Aronhalt scored eight straight points, sandwiching two three-pointers around layup off an offensive rebound.

“Logan is Logan. He can knock down shots from anywhere on the floor and once he gets going he’s tough to guard,” Ambrose said.

Sophomore Blake Metcalf’s layup got UAlbany to within one, 51-50 with 10 minutes left. Minutes later Ambrose tied the score at 55 with a three-pointer, but UMBC soon went back up by four points with six minutes left and appeared to have weathered the rally.

Then, after three minutes of neither team being able to hold on to the ball consistently much less score, Aronhalt hit a three pointer to pull the Great Danes to within one at 61-60 with 3:09 to play.

The teams then traded baskets and then with about 30 seconds left, UMBC’s junior guard, Chris De La Rosa, missed a jumper, the Danes came away with the loose ball rebound and Black converted a fast break layup to put UAlbany ahead, 64-63.

The Retrievers were able to get De La Rosa an open look with less than 10 seconds to play, but his long jumper went off the rim. Freshman John Puk grabbed the rebound and after Aronhalt hit two free throws with 1.3 seconds left, the Retrievers were unable to get off another shot.

De La Rosa, a former Siena Saint, led the Retrievers with 15 points. UMBC falls to 2-6 in the conference and 3-18 overall.

UAlbany led 14-12 midway through the first half, but UMBC went on a 12-0 run and led by as many as 15 points.

“We just came out flat, maybe we were tired I don’t know, but we didn’t play our best in the first half,” Aronhalt said.

The Retrievers entered the game last in the conference in scoring defense, surrendering an average of 80 points per game, but the Great Danes shot just 26 percent (10-of-39) over the first 20 minutes.

Ambrose, who now sits in seventh place all-time on the UAlbany scoring list with 1,425 points, kept the Danes close, hitting six of his 13 attempts and adding three free throws.