ALBANY - University at Albany senior Will Harris made no bones about saying how important Saturday's game is to get off the America East schneid.

"We need to win every single game that we have left," said Harris, the Great Danes leading scorer. "We're o-fer right now and we're trying to bump that up one tomorrow night."

UAlbany (0-3, 5-13) has had an uncharacteristically bad start to conference play, losing their first three games - two of which were at home - and shooting less than 37 percent in all three.

"It's kind of frustrating knowing that we have talent and we have a lot of good things going for us," Harris said. "We just have to put it all together at once."

The Retrievers (0-3, 1-15) are off to an even worse start.

After winning the conference in 2008 and then losing to Binghamton in the championship final last season, UMBC isn't used to this kind of start recently either.

The Retreivers are being led by a player familiar to the Capital District, Siena transfer Chris De La Rosa.

De La Rosa is tied for second in the conference in assists (4.8 per game) and is now averaging 10.4 points per game.

UAlbany is too busy looking for answers of their own to worry about what is ailing other teams.

"We're not good enough right now to get down 12, 13 points every game, fight back and sit there and say if we had another minute or two we'd be okay," said UAlbany coach Will Brown. "We have to get off to a better start. We have to sustain it and we have to make some shots."

The other thing the Great Danes will have to do is rebound.

UMBC is the worst rebounding team in the conference, while UAlbany is the toughest team in the league to rebound against.

"We have to exploit them, that's the biggest thing," said senior center Brett Gifford. "We have to hit the offensive boards hard, get easy baskets."

While Coach Brown has said he hasn't stressed any game as being "must-win," they can't allow themselves to lose too many league games out of the gate.

"The biggest thing we can control is our effort," Gifford said. "I feel like if we bring that the entire game, we'll be fine."

Despite the fact that this UMBC team is the one that ended UAlbany's season last year at SEFCU Arena, Brown said his guys would and should be already motivated enough.

"I think the fact that we're 0-3 in league is all the motivation that these guys need," he said.

So UAlbany didn't play well tonight and it showed as Syracuse hammered them 75-43.

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim picked up win No. 800 and as the clock was running out, he said Derrick Coleman was ringing his cell phone.

“He probably figured that I was going to answer it,” Boeheim joked after the game.

That was about the only joke from this game as UAlbany coach Will Brown said his team must take the day off tomorrow (well, I guess technically today) because of NCAA rules, but vowed they would play better on Friday against Morgan State.

“I’m very disappointed,” Brown said. “I’ve got a very disappointed team in that locker room.”

The Great Danes had a tough time getting inside the Orange's 2-3 zone.

“They stretch it out so far it basically becomes like a 2-2-1,” Brown said. “It really bothered us. We don’t have the personnel to consistently score at the rim against them.”

In fact, Brown said he got a chuckle from this exchange with his freshman point guard.

"I said to Mike Black, 'Mike, you have to get the ball to the high post,' and he said, 'Coach, I can't see the high post," said Brown.

The good news is UAlbany won't see a team this big for quite a while, if ever this season.

The bad news is they have to take some positives out of this game and get better before playing Morgan State, a team that made the NCAA Tournament last year.

"We know what we have to work on in practice and we know what we have to do to get better," said senior center Brett Gifford. "We have to be tougher with the ball and mentally tougher."

The University at Albany men's basketball team announced on Monday their three captains for the 2009-10 season and it will be seniors Brett Gifford and Will Harris and junior Tim Ambrose.

Gifford started 28 of 31 games last season and averaged 2.5 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, while blocking a team-high 24 shots.

Harris earned a spot on the All-America East Conference third team in his first seaosn with the UAlbany prgoram last year. The Corona, N.Y., native averaged 12.9 points and 6.5 rebounds per game.

Ambrose is the first junior captain since 2005-06. The 6-foot Brentwood, N.Y., native averaged 14.3 points and was voted to the all-conference third team.

I guess I know why that motto comes from Kansas.

The Jayhawks come into Tuesday's game against the University at Albany with a 30-game winning streak at historic Allen Fieldhouse.

"Since I've been here, we've tried to play some tough teams on the road in some tough environments," UAlbany coach Will Brown said.

Check and check.

While Kansas, isn't ranked currently, the Jayhawks are the defending national champions and 8-3 on the season.

Last week, I asked Virginia transfer Will Harris what it's like when a mid-major comes in to take on a power school.

"Usually the typical mentality is we're playing against Albany tonight, they're in the America East Conference and we're going to play hard and we're going to get a 'W,'" Harris said. "You never really doubt yourself at all and that's probably how they feel right now."

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The game will be on ESPNU and here's what Brown and senior co-captain Brian Connelly had to say about that.

"It's good for your program and good for your university," Brown said. "It's one of those things where you're excited that you're playing on TV and you let all your recruits know, the kids that haven't signed with you and you hope you put your best foot forward."

"That's always fun because your family gets to watch you play without going, your friends call you up after the game and tell you how you got dunked on," Connelly said. "That's always fun to get that kind of exposure for our school and our program and help put Albany on the map a little more than it already is."

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I wrote a little bit in today's game advance about Cole Aldrich, Kansas's 6-foot-11 big man.

UAlbany's big man Brett Gifford played against him in an AAU Tournament at Allen Fieldhouse and the two know each other well.

Here's what Brown had to say about Aldrich, who is averaging 13.6 points and 9.9 rebounds per game.

"My assistant Pat Filien, who has the scout said to me, 'I noticed that Aldrich has struggled against guys his own size,' so I said sure, we'll take the two or three guys that are 7-feet, 290-pounds and just rotate them in to beat him up."

While Gifford is 6-11 and 260-pounds, he is by far the biggest player on the UAlbany staff.

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Louis Barraza is available after dealing with the flu and missing the past couple games.