SMITHFIELD, R.I. – It’s ironic that Bryant would open its Division I tenure against Albany, which it did in Wednesday night’s 76-67 loss to the Great Danes. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that Albany was a program new to Division I and having to adjust the way Bryant has to now. And in the immediate, that experience certainly helped Albany head coach Will Brown, because he had an idea what to expect.
“We knew this was going to be a big night for Bryant,” said Brown, who was an assistant when the program first made the leap. “We knew they were going to play with great energy, we were going to get a great effort.”
There were some difficult times early for the Great Danes, who struggled to even put seven players on the floor at times. An already thin roster was further depleted by injuries, leaving them with perhaps the thinnest margin of error imaginable. It was basically a trial-by-fire for Brown, who spent the first year with the “interim” tag before having it removed. Though he may have been coveted for some jobs the last couple of years with the success the program has now had, it didn’t happen right away.
“I was one of those naïve 28-year-olds who thought he had it all figured out and thought we were going to win that year,” Brown reflected on his debut season. “Boy, did I have something coming to me.”
That wasn’t all, as his first call to a prospective recruit was a wake-up call to another key part of what the job would entail.
“The first kid I called, he said, ‘Hey coach, is Albany a state school in Georgia?'” Brown recalls. “And I’m like, no, it’s Albany in New York. That’s when I started recruiting nationally.”
The newcomers acquitted themselves well. While the game wasn’t quite as close as the nine-point margin suggests, the Bulldogs never quit and rallied late to make it a respectable game. With 16:05 left, Albany was fully in control with a 21-point lead helped by a strong start to the second half as they made four of their first five shots and Bryant made just one of eight. The Great Danes scored 12 of their first 15 second-half points in the paint, where the Bulldogs are quite undersized with no player taller than 6’7″.
But guards Chris Birrell and Barry Latham led a rally that got the Bulldogs within twelve a couple of times, and later into single digits before the Great Danes closed it out. Birrell was 4-6 from long range for his 12 points and added seven assists, while Latham posted his second career double-double with 20 points and a game-high 11 rebounds.
Both coaches had positive things to say about the effort of the newcomers.
“I was impressed with everything that went on tonight from Bryant’s standpoint,” said Brown, whose team already had two road games with virtually no break in between before this one. “I thought their kids played hard, I thought they were well-coached and they competed to the buzzer.”
“You want to win every game you play, but there are times you have to be realistic and appreciate the improvement when you see it,” said Bryant head coach Tim O’Shea. “I’ve seen a lot of improvement in these guys and I like the way they competed, I really did.”
O’Shea, who is taking a measured approach to evaluating his team, certainly saw the irony in playing the Great Danes. While Brown thinks Bryant has an added advantage in having a veteran coach to start off, his opposite number didn’t have to look far for an example.
“It’s interesting that we played Albany tonight because they’re a team that went through this process ten years ago,” O’Shea reflected. “You see what can happen ten years later, they’ve got a strong program.”
The Bulldogs got a nice crowd of students, as the student section was packed and lively all night long. The attendance was 2,167 for the opener, and players and coaches alike noticed it. The Bulldogs are certainly happy with the turnout and hope it continues.
O’Shea also noticed how appreciative his players are of little things that come with the move up. They like playing at the Division I level, which every kid wants coming out of high school, but even O’Shea was reminded of some of what comes with it earlier in the day.
“For them, this move to Division I is a whole new feel,” said O’Shea. “I’ve never been to a place that didn’t have a pre-game meal, but this is the first time they ever had a pre-game meal, and they thought that was the greatest thing going. It’s nice to be around a group of kids that are so appreciative of everything. At the Division II level, these kids used to pay a portion to get their sneakers, their practice gear and all that – they paid for that. Now that we’re Division I, they didn’t pay for that. It’s so nice to be around kids that say ‘thank you’ and appreciate that.”
There are a lot of new things that will happen for Bryant this season. In time, that will wear off, but they now have the first game under their belt, and they had a good example to look at on the other side in that game.
