No Peter Hooley. No Evan Singletary. No conference title to defend.
For the Albany men’s basketball team, the end of its 2015-16 campaign might have felt like the end of an era. Now, with the 2016-17 season looming, the Great Danes are on the hunt for a new top dog.
“I think the issue that we have is that we don’t have an established, vocal leader — somebody that is willing to hold guys accountable vocally,” said Albany head coach Will Brown. “There’s got to be a guy or multiple guys that are willing to step up and be vocal, and I think that’s something that we’re missing right now.”
Despite losing its point leaders in Hooley and Singletary, Albany is set to bring back sophomore guard Joe Cremo to the perimeter. As a freshman, Cremo came off of the bench in each of Albany’s 33 games, averaging 10.5 points and shooting a mark of .396 from beyond the arc.
Joining him will be freshman guard David Nichols, Albany’s leading scorer in each of its preseason scrimmages. With five more guards on the roster, including a 92 percent free-throw shooter in senior Jamir Andrews, it looks like the Great Danes can win big by playing small.
“The key for us is going to be perimeter depth,” Brown said. “That, ultimately, along with our defense, will determine our success this year.”
In the frontcourt, Albany is set to bring back key senior forwards Dallas Ennema and Mike Rowley. Rowley, an inside force, converted 58.1 percent of his field goal attempts last season while averaging 6.5 rebounds per game. Junior forward Greig Stire, a starter good for 192 rebounds in 2015-16, will also be a core big man for the Great Danes.
“Our frontcourt depth is a strength of ours,” Brown said. “Rowley and Stire started for us last year and they did all the dirty work. They’re terrific defensively; they’re really good on the glass, we need them to take the next step offensively. But, we have two kids off the bench that are very gifted offensively.”
Those two players are junior forward Jaraan Lands and redshirt junior forward Travis Charles. Both junior college transfers, Lands and Charles have proven to be legitimate scoring threats this preseason — a rarity in the guard-centric America East (AE).
Picked to finish third in the AE this season, an Albany team that has served as the league’s powerhouse for the better part of a decade is prepared to face a conference schedule with increased parity. And as the Great Danes work to define their game and the upstart AE, Brown will continue to put his players — and his team — in a position to score.
“We’re just trying to find a happy medium between running the team and scoring the ball,” he said.