Albany State men’s basketball team looking ahead to next season

ALBANY — The Albany State Rams men’s basketball team faced a different challenge of sorts in their season-ending 80-63 loss to Tuskegee late Tuesday night.

After struggling all season to find a post presence, Chris Wheeler came up big with 19 points, but in a cruel twist of fate, the Rams couldn’t get anything going from the outside.

Interim head coach Michael Moore said his team shot 1 for 13 from the 3-point line and 20 for 43 from the free throw line and “didn’t shoot well in the second half.” With their proverbial bread-and-butter taken away, they saw a two-point deficit at the half swell to double digits.

The Rams finished the season 9-18 overall and 5-14 in the conference, and Moore said he felt his team made the most of a difficult situation as well as showed what the program needs to focus on moving forward.

“I think that under the circumstances, the difficult situation that they played up under, I thought they responded really well … it’s just that size, we didn’t have any size this year,” he said. “1998 is the last time I’ve seen this type of size in the SIAC across the board. It would usually be one or two teams with size, but this is the first time I’ve seen the SIAC this big.”

He thought guard play was exceptionally well, but they didn’t have inside scoring when they got into outside drought.

While their needs in the middle are confirmed, the status of their head coach is still unsettled. Moore, who was brought in when former coach Chris Cameron unexpectedly resigned just before the start of the season, said it is not his decision to make.

“It’s whatever they see fit,” Moore said. “I’m just a servant and I’ve always said that. Whatever direction they want to take the program. I can’t speak on that, nor do I really think about that. I just want to serve my institution to the best of my ability.”

ASU will lose five seniors from their roster this year — Larry Bullock, Darshtyn Baker, Demetri Wheeler, Douglas Storey and Elijah Jordan.