New-look Great Danes vibing as summer practices conclude

Thursday marked the final day of summer practices for the UAlbany women's basketball team. With a group that's got nine new faces, the summer session is as much about teambuilding as it is putting in work on the court.

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- Thursday marked the final day of summer practices for the UAlbany women's basketball team. With a group that has nine new faces, the summer session is as much about teambuilding as it is getting time in on the court.

Great Danes head coach Colleen Mullen expressed her excitement with the work her team has put in in both of those areas. It's not easy for a group with four transfers and five freshmen to really start gelling in such a short time frame, but it appears the Danes have managed to do so.

"The biggest encouragement right now is just the way they've connected and built relationships," said Mullen. "With nine new players, you really have to fast-forward the relationship-building process; the trust process. And in order to win championships and be successful, you have to have a connected team. You have to have an engaged team that wants to play for each other. They've done a lot of team-bonding things; not just practice. And when you have that culture, and those newcomers setting the stage of what our standards are - you know, you got players that want to follow suit and they wanna win; there's a lot of players that came here that want to win. So, that winning mentality and that unselfish teammate culture that we have - I'm really excited about."

UAlbany will break until the new semester starts, and ramp activity back up after Labor Day.