After five road games, the University at Albany basketball team opened the home portion of the schedule on Friday evening.

The Great Danes posted a 69-62 victory over Navy, in front of 3,037 fans at SEFCU Arena. The victory evens their record to 3-3.

UAlbany has now won eight of 13 home openers, as a Division I program.

“It was nice to be playing a home game,” said sophomore forward Luke Devlin.

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UAlbany raced out to a 20-point lead, midway through the second half, but had to hang on for the win.

“I thought for the most part of 31 minutes, we did a lot of good things,” said UAlbany coach Will Brown.

The Great Danes did give back some of the lead to the Midshipmen, but they held on to win, something they might not have been able to do last season.

"These guys are a year older," Brown said. "Logan (Aronhalt) and Mike (Black) are juniors, Luke is a sophomore, so another year experience, I think helps. They've been in those situations."

Brown can live with an ugly win, but he knows his team has to learn to put teams away consistently.

“We've got to put games away,” Brown said.

The Great Danes got 97 percent (67-69) of their scoring from Aronhalt, Black, Devlin and leading scorer Gerardo Suero.

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Brown said he wasn't concerned with the bulk of scoring coming from just a few players because they were scoring a lot of points.

Even without the students on campus (most were gone for Thanksgiving), their was a very good crowd on hand. If the Great Danes continue to play well, the momentum should continue throughout the year.

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