ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — It’s one of the great rivalries the capital region has to offer. The UAlbany and Siena women’s basketball teams wrote the newest chapter on Sunday, battling it out for the Albany cup.

It had been two years since these teams met up, with Siena winning that matchup. The Saints were looking for their first win of the season after an 0-7 start.

UAlbany jumped out of the gate with a 17-4 run and didn’t look back, staving off multiple Siena runs throughout the game to bring the Albany Cup back to UAlbany with a 64-44 win. Helene Haegerstrand led all scorers with 23 points.

It was the first Albany Cup win for UAlbany head coach Colleen Mullen, in her second try. “It feels great to bring the Albany Cup back here to UAlbany and it’s just a great game for the community,” said Mullen. “So proud of the team. This game is really important, I think, for the energy, for the crosstown rivalry, and I try to explain to the players what that feels like, to be part of a rivalry and now they got a taste of that. It’s an exciting thing for our program and the Capital Region.”

Meanwhile, Siena head coach Jim Jabir and his players continue to search for their first win, falling to 0-8. “When you take over a losing program, you need to change the mindset and the culture,” said Jabir. So if they won six games last year, you can’t continue to behave the way we did last year. We have to do things differently. So if that means, ‘I need to get in the gym and work on certain things on my own then that’s what I’m going to do’, and apparently, looking it at it statistically, we have not been doing that. We’ve been preaching it, but its not happening.”

UAlbany, now 4-4 on the season, will host Canisius Wednesday at 7:00 PM. Siena is off until December 20th, when they host Rider at 7:00 PM.