The University at Albany men's basketball team is one of the most talented squads in the America East.

The Great Danes, however, are having major issues as the re

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gular season comes to a close.

On Wednesday, UAlbany played without its leading scorer, Gerardo Suero, who has shingles and didn't get any scoring from it's No. 2 offensive weapon, Logan Aronhalt, who has been dealing with a knee issue that has worsened.

On top of that, sophomore Luke Devlin went down in the first half, with a dislocated knee, so the Great Danes find themselves minus three-fifths of their starting rotation, with just two games remaining before the league tournament.

With those three players out or ineffective, the Great Danes still nearly toppled Vermont, a team that will win the regular season with win's in its last two games.

UAlbany turned its high-octane offensive style around completely and made Wednesday's game a race to 50 points.

“I think it just says a lot about our guys," said UAlbany coach Will Brown.

It was a perfect storm of sorts, as the Great Danes took the Catamounts out of their game. But the question has to be posed -- can this team compete for the America East's bid to the NCAA tournament, if not at full strength?

Suero, Aronhalt and Devlin will all likely miss Saturday's BracketBusters game against Rider. Will this team be able to score enough points without those players, who account for 42.6 of the team's 72.8 average (58.5%) per game?

This team has been built on offense, which was fine when they were scoring bushels of points. They are 12-2 this season, when they score 75 or more points.

While Wednesday's transformation was pretty incredible, you could also say that Vermont may have let its guard down a little knowing that Suero was out and Aronhalt wasn't 100 percent.

Rider and next week's opponent, Binghamton, will know what UAlbany is missing from its offense.

The Great Danes are limping to the finish line and they have to just hope they can get things figured out before March 3 (16 days), the date of the America East quarterfinals.

Here's a link to the game story, which I wrote and appears in Thursday's edition of  The Troy Record.

For more on UAlbany's basketball team check out my blog, which covers the team extensively.

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