By Brandon Vanenburg | September 13, 2021
The University at Albany Great Danes took the field at Casey Stadium in front of a packed home of 8,144, the 6th largest crowd in stadium history, but suffered a loss to University of Rhode Island Rams in a 16-14 in a heavily contested battle that went down to the wire.
The Great Danes offense had a great start on the first drive. Wide receiver Mike Gray had two catches for 58 yards including a seven-yard touchdown pass to get the scoring started.
Following that, however, the offense was very stagnant throughout the game, only scoring seven points in the first half and struggled to find their rhythm throughout the game. Quarterback Jeff Undercuffler was 19 for 35 on 166 passing and one touchdown and the team was only able to come up with 269 yards of total offense. The offense gave five sacks including a crucial sack to end the game in the fourth quarter on UAlbany’s last drive of the game.
Running back Karl Mofor talked about the struggles on offense saying “We just were not executing like we wanted to, we had some missteps along the way,'' said Mofor. He also said that a win before the bye week will put them in an excellent position in the season.
Special teams were another substandard aspect of the Great Danes’ performance. UAlbany had missed huge opportunities by fumbling the snap on two separate field goal attempts which proved to be crucial at the end of the game. UAlbany also gave up a 50-yard punt return to Rhode Island’s Coby Tippet.
“You can't win in this league playing the type of football we played.” said UAlbany head coach Greg Gattuso "It's a shame... we lacked discipline, and we've got to be better.”
The defense played extremely well for the Great Danes and was the main reason they had a chance to win in the closing second. They only allowed three points in the second half and 16 overall. Although they did give up 141 yards rushing, UAlbany limited the Rhode Island Rams to 147 yards passing the entire game.
UAlbany linebacker Danny D'amico spoke on his frustrations from today’s game. “There is nobody to blame but ourselves.” said D’amico “They scored more points than we did so we obviously did not do a good enough job. Both sides of the ball have a lot of sharpening up to do.”
The Great Danes have a very challenging task ahead of them as they have a long three-game road trip which starts at Syracuse to take on the Orange who are 1-1 for the season.
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