On Will Brown And The End Of An Era At UAlbany

The rumors were true. University at Albany men’s basketball coach Will Brown has reached the end of his two-decade run with the Great Danes. In the last year of his contract, Brown’s team lost in the America East quarterfinals Sunday, and he told reporters afterward he didn’t know when his status will be addressed. By Monday morning, he was history. 

The situation has me reflecting on the Brown era, what it has meant to UAlbany, and what it has meant to me. 

Brown was in his 20s when he became interim head coach in late 2001, at a time when the uniforms were standard-issue and the lights in the arena (then the RACC) were louder than the fans. There were few reserve players and even fewer wins. 

Soon Jamar Wilson and Levi Levine and Lucious Jordan and Jon Iati blossomed, capped by that clash with top-seeded UConn in 2006 when the Danes nearly slayed Goliath. Another title followed. Then came some more mostly fallow years. But the Australian recruiting pipeline Brown established helped UAlbany get back on top, with a 2012 non-conference win over Washington presaging three straight America East championships. If you pay attention to sports in the Capital Region, you no doubt remember the third one best: the Hooley shot, that storybook ending and the international goodwill it engendered. 

My first UAlbany basketball games were as a sports intern in 2002 under Rodger Wyland, the voice of the Danes who broke the news of Brown’s departure, and producer Scotty Mac. A year later I wound up at UAlbany myself, soon writing for the Albany Student Press and gabbing on WCDB. My timing as sports editor couldn’t have been better: UAlbany was about to become a contender for the first time. Late in the 2005 season, the Vermont juggernaut that would weeks later upset Syracuse came to town and batted UAlbany down, but it felt like a changing of the guard moment. And it was.

By 2006, UAlbany was hitting all sorts of milestones — the first sold-out game, for the Big Purple Growl, the first time hosting the America East championship early on a Saturday, the first trip to the NCAAs in Philadelphia. I had a front row seat for all of it: the downtown clashes with a rising Siena program, the battles with UVM and BU, the playoff run through Binghamton when the Danes survived what Brown called “the Albany lull.” Who can forget the coach bringing doughnuts to the students camped out for America East championship tickets, or buying the kids playoff tickets to ensure a home court edge? 

By now I’ve covered several NCAA tourneys, but I got there way ahead of schedule in my own career because I hitched a ride on the Dane train. Right place, right time. We tried to make the most of it, too, putting together special sections and filing features as fast as we could write them. I’m not sure the writing holds up, but if anything we recognized that it would only be UAlbany’s first time once. We wanted to make it count.

I had that same seat a year later at the greatest college basketball game I ever covered, the 2007 conference title at Vermont, when Brent Wilson smartly floated the ball into the frontcourt to run out the clock on UVM by a point. Days later we drove through the night to cover the team’s NCAA dud against Virginia in Columbus. It was a blowout, over, really, by the first media timeout. I wouldn’t have missed it.

It was after that season that Brown looked likely to leave for the first time. He interviewed at St. Bonaventure and there were days of little intel and lots of speculation before he eventually re-signed with UAlbany. I ducked out of a magazine journalism class to cover the happy press conference. It was one of the last sports stories I covered before graduation. 

Back in those years Brown would openly talk about his dreams of coaching for a national championship one day, of escaping the high-wire act of a one-bid conference. His stock was probably highest then: young and winning. But he stayed and his family grew and his former players came back to be assistant coaches. His (state) salary ballooned. He just kept at it, signing extensions in 2013 and 2016. Now his first born is on the roster himself.

I didn’t cover the team as closely after graduation, but the Associated Press had me staffing games for a long while, and still does when it’s a big enough matchup. At the radio station, I would find an excuse to do an interview with Brown or go cover Selection Sunday.

Long the dean of the conference, Brown wasn’t a kid anymore, and I wasn’t either. By the time the second title run started, I was teaching the next generation of sportswriters at UAlbany and had become a season ticket holder. I would always trade the bleachers for press row for the conference tournament, like in 2014 when UAlbany stunned Vermont in the 1-4 game. It was always more fun around here when UAlbany was good.

What am I getting at, recalling box scores of long ago games in the middle rungs of college basketball? It’s this, I guess: sports fans measure their lives in wins and losses, triumphs and heartbreaks, and I’ve been doing that for the entirety of the Brown era. Twenty years is a long time to do any job, especially in a zero sum field like sports. There have been so many exhilarating games and seasons, as my alma mater reached new heights and then struggled to stay there. Brown has been the constant.

His run has been far from perfect, of course. He’s had player suspensions and more than a few unexplained transfers, minor NCAA violations, losing seasons and bad recruiting classes. He saw two stars leave for better programs after falling just short of a sixth America East title in 2018. Sometimes we would file out of SEFCU, like in the woeful 12-20 season that followed, and dread the next tipoff. 

In other ways, Brown and his program were a mid-major model. His players graduated at a high rate. He raises money and awareness as part of Coaches vs. Cancer. From a media standpoint, he was almost always approachable and personable. After all this time, he was an important community figure in the Capital Region. 

Basketball-wise, it’s inarguable that he built the program from nothing after taking over in its Division I infancy. He’s gotten to five NCAA tourneys and won 20 games eight times. That regular success helped justify renovations to SEFCU Arena, where attendance naturally followed winning. He won plaudits from Danes fans for forcing crosstown rival Siena to play at SEFCU Arena, then refused to budge when the series sadly ended.  

Once it became clear that Brown really did want to stay at UAlbany, you could start picturing his banner hanging near Doc Sauers’ and his 702 wins someday. Brown finishes halfway there in years and wins.

Someone else could coach the Danes back to the tourney, sure. Someone else could run a more up-tempo offense. Someone else could bring fresh eyes to the recruiting trail. Someone else could be luckier, too.

Now, someone else will coach the Great Danes. Will Brown’s time at UAlbany is over. It’s the end of an era. 

And not just for him.