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.

Derrek Tartt, who played so well on Friday night and Mike Black were both suspended for the first half by UAlbany coach Will Brown.

That hurt the Great Danes in two ways, it forced Mike Johnson to play all 20 minutes of the first half and it kept the two young guards in their seats.

“Now this guy (pointing to Johnson) has to play all 20 minutes at the point in the first half and we don’t get a chance to play him and Tartt together,” said Brown.

Johnson played 31 minutes in the game and it'll be interesting how much he'll be able to play on Sunday against Robert Morris.

“Later in the game, I didn’t feel like I had the explosiveness that I should have had,” said Johnson, who scored nine points and dished out three assists.

Brown said that one of the two freshmen was three minutes late for the 5:30 p.m. film and the other was five minutes late.

“If I were those kids, I’d sleep in the locker room tonight,” said Brown, who usually wants his players to be 15 minutes early to things in what he calls "Albany time."

Brown was impressed with Detroit and thinks they'll do well this year in the Horizon League.

“They’d win our league,” Brown said. “They’re going to win a ton of games this year.”

Brown said his team will pick back up and be ready for Sunday's game.

“We’re not down,” Brown said. “We lost to a good team.”

Okay, I couldn't resist with the title, but UAlbany freshman Derrek Tartt had clearly his best performance of the year in Friday's 71-55 victory over Alcorn St at SEFCU Arena.

“When he plays hard, he’s very good,” said UAlbany coach Will Brown. “When he’s in chill mode, he’s just okay.”

In fact, he had so many points (13) that senior Will Harris was pointing it out to him in the box score before they both spoke to the media, following the game.

“I was looking at the points, but I wasn’t looking at my points, I was looking at his points,” said Harris, who also chipped in with a team-high 15. “I thought that he was aggressive and making shots and it makes me happy because everyday in practice, I’m in his ear, 'You have to be aggressive' and he came out tonight and he was aggressive, so that makes me happy. It makes me feel like a proud uncle.”

Tartt has a nice lanky frame at 6-foot-3 and 175 pounds and Brown likes him as a perimeter defender and may also consider playing him more at the two or three as opposed to the point guard position.

“I think he’s much more comfortable as a wing and being a secondary ball handler,” Brown said. “When he’s played at the point, he looses his aggressiveness. When he plays on the wing, he’s more in attack mode and he’s more aggressive.”

While Brown was happy with the win, he wasn't totally thrilled that the game got close in the second half.

“The difference between a 15-point win and a 25-point win is executing the scouting report and not helping off (Jonathan) Boyd at all,” Brown said. “We left him a couple of times which is disappointing.”

Brown said that Mike Johnson left Boyd, who hit four 3-pointers, to help on defense, when the report was to stick with him.

"He's trying to be aggressive and trying to be a good team defender, but we needed him to be a smart team defender," said Brown.

Brown also wasn't happy with the team's 21 turnovers.

Alcorn State committed 19 turnovers, which didn't thrill their coach, Larry Smith.

“We have to play mistake-free basketball, for the most part,” said Smith. “We can’t continue to turn the ball over. We're averaging more than 20 turnovers a game and that’s killing us. We have to value the ball more.”

This is the first of three straight games and Brown tried to limit some players minutes so that they would stay fresh throughout the weekend.

Harris said he has his own measures to stay relaxed and refreshed - bubble baths.

Harris said he has some salts to put in the bath and he will be taking a nice soak tonight, I'm sure while reading the scouting report prepared by assistant Jeremy Friel on Detroit.

“That’s what I’m going to be doing,” said Harris about taking a bath. “I have to take care of these legs.”

ALBANY - Senior forward Scotty McRae didn't even make it to the end of the 2008-09 season as he was kicked off of the University at Albany men's basketball team.

This year, after gaining his spot back on the team, McRae is ready to try and make some significant contributions.

“Once you get accustom to something, it’s a lot easier, so I feel like I’m going to do a lot better this year,” said McRae, who averaged 4.7 points and 3.4 rebounds in 21 games last season.

McRae said coach Will Brown told him he has a clean slate this year and will be treated just like every other player.

The Eastern Wyoming transfer said that the team feels better this season with more players returning from last year.

“We have a lot of freshmen (this year) who are really attentive and listen to everything we say,” said McRae.

McRae also sounded very mature with his talking about this being his last collegiate season.

“Not only is it our last chance, it’s the end of our college careers,” McRae said. “No matter what happens after we leave Albany, this will be our last 31 or 32 games to play as Great Danes. That’s really important for all of us. It’s our last chance to play for Coach Brown and getting to play for this whole community, so it’s really important that we bring everything we have every single game because it’s not going to be promised to us anymore.”

The point guard position is very up in the air for the Monday's game against Syracuse.

Senior Mike Johnson is serving a team-imposed two-game suspension and freshmen Derrek Tartt and Mike Black are both suffering from injuries.

Tartt has a sore lower back, which was sustained during the team's first scrimmage and initially extended all the way down to his legs, not a good sign.

“I think any time you’re talking about lower back, it’s serious,” said Brown.

Black has what Brown called "severe tendinitis" in both of his knees.

UAlbany will be looking at junior Tim Ambrose or senior Louis Barraza (see below) playing significant minutes at point guard against the Orange on Monday.

Barraza has injury issues of his own.

The shooting specialist was wearing a brace on his right ring finger at Media Day on Wednesday.

Brown said the ligaments in that finger are shredded, but he hasn't taken a day off from practice yet, fighting through the pain.

“We’re banged up pretty good right now and I saw that with a smile because I guess if we’re going to be banged up, we want it to be now,” said Brown.

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."

University at Albany men's basketball coach Will Brown announced Monday that senior guard Mike Johnson will be suspended for both team scrimmages and the first two games of the season.

The team imposed suspension comes after Johnson was cited for harassment and resisting arrest after an illegal Fourth of July fireworks show on the University's campus.

"We have high expectations for student-athletes in our program," said Brown on Monday. "I talk to my guys all the time about making smart choices and making the right decision. Unfortunately, Mike used some bad judgement and made a poor decision and was in direct violation of team policy."

Brown said that Johnson is in good standing with the University, set to graduate in the Spring and that he only received community service from the courts.

"I'm a big believer in second chances and I think Mike really has learned his lesson," Brown said. "But, I need to send a message to every kid in our program, kids that we're recruiting, that you come to the University at Albany, you're going to work hard to get a degree, become a better basketball player and do the right thing."

Brown said that he felt there needed to be punishment because of the negative light cast on the University, the team and Mike, himself.

"Again, a lot of people look at it as Fourth of July fireworks, but to me, it's bigger than that," Brown said. "It's about decision-making and Mike not doing the right thing at the right time.

Johnson will miss the opener against Syracuse (Nov. 10) and then UAlbany's home opener against Morgan State (Nov. 13).

"He's remorseful and he's looking forward to getting back with his teammates, working hard and having a good senior year," Brown added.

Brown also said that Johnson is not a shoo-in to be the starter at point guard for the Great Danes, who will have newcomers Derrek Tartt, Mike Black and Ralph Watts, who Brown said reminds him of Brian Lillis in that he can play a variety of positions.

Brown added that what was a weakness in 2008-09 at the point, he feels will be "much improved."

The University at Albany announced the signings off Mike Black, a 6-foot-1 guard from Chicago and Derrek Tartt, a 6-foot-3 guard, also from Chicago. Both Black and Tartt played prep ball at Oak Park Fenwick High School in Chicago before Tartt went onto Brewster Academy.

Here's what UAlbany coach Will Brown had to say on both.

"Mike is a talented point guard who can both run a team and score," Brown said. "He is athletic and a tremendous on-the-ball defender. A quality student-athlete, Mike comes from arguably one of the best academic institutions in the state of Illinois."

"Derrek is a versatile player who we anticipate can work at all three perimeter positions," Brown said. "He can attack the rim with the dribble and has the ability to consistently knock down three-point shots. His year at Brewster will be of great benefit as he had an opportunity to play with and against some of the best players in the country."

More on what this means and the rest of UAlbany's 2009-10 class in a bit.

Also, forward Scotty McRae was reinstated today.

"I have reinstated Scotty McRae effective immediately," Brown said. "We had some very productive conversations since the end of the season and I believe Scotty fully understands what he needs to do in order to be successful."