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5 pointsNOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! No ifs, ands or buts. 4-11 record in conference tournament; never has won more than 1 game in 11 years of tournament play; never has even made it to the tournament championship game NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! No ifs, ands or buts. No credible, unbiased observer could conclude otherwise. Anyone who does, lacks credibility in my estimation. It’s stunning to me how anyone, with a straight face, could say an 18-12 regular season, over 13 years, with the postseason futility cited above, is acceptable. It’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH, end of story, full stop
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4 pointsThe long and short of it is Skerry is not a good basketball coach. He ahs had 13 years to win something, even if it is by accident. His offense is dribble for 20 seconds, throw up a bomb and send everyone to get the rebound. His defense is mediocre, but it is a story of keep telling everyone it is good and sooner or later they will believe it. His teams are good enough to beat bottom feeders and every now and then another mediocre team. Fundamentals are lacking and basketball IQ has not improved once the talented kids arrive. These are all responsibilities of a coach. These kids have potential, but it needs to be developed. During 13 years, the TU coach is overpaid and under productive. It is sad to see. When the hallmark of the 13 years is good coaching PR....you are in trouble.
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4 pointsYesterday was a display of coaching and execution. More importantly, it was a message to Towson…We have the biggest D*%#k in this conference. Ive watched Charleston overcome lesser athletic ability by out coaching and out executing their opponents. Yesterday was a prime example of how they do it.
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4 pointsToday was the largest glaring example of what works in college basketball and what doesn't. You can hang your shingle on defense and rebounding but you'd better have offensive weapons in order to do that. The years we won the conference regular season and advanced in the CIT, we had guys that could score. You have to go out and find more of those scorers and not just a bunch of brutes that look good in a weight room and can play defense and rebound. Kelsey took the job at Charleston and set about finding the type of players that work -- they're big, they share the ball, they hit open shots. Meanwhile, we plod along and run a low-post offense with zero movement and sometimes a wing and a prayer to get a decent look or a look before the shot clock expires. Twice today, the shot clock was running out and who had the ball? Mekhi Lowery. That can't ever happen. We were largely clueless on offense, finding zero ways to get Tejada open (1 shot in the first half) and showing very little interest in running anything that had ball movement to 3 sides of the floor. Meanwhile, Charleston is slinging it all over the floor and playing an orchestra on our defense (especially Thompson and Paar) with the pick-and-roll action. Charleston's the template of what we should aspire to be. They have D2 players just like we do but they found the offense while we went for the bruising fullbacks. With whatever time Pat has left on his contract, he needs to overhaul his philosophy to be more like Charleston. Otherwise, we've already hit our ceiling and it's never gonna get crashed through.
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4 pointsThe date was Dec. 28, 1996. Lefty Driesell came to the Towson Center and the Baltimore area (if I recall) for the first since getting forced out at Maryland in October of 1986. I was on the radio at the time with Stan the Fan on the Sports Exchange, doing mostly local college basketball reports, producing, and about 1-2 nights a week. When I knew that Lefty was returning to this area for the first time in at least 10 years, I was hoping to get the Towson Center sold out or at least get 3,000+ (4,000 was about as full as it could get) by talking about the game and putting a bunch of guests on to promote it. We lost the game 83-75 and drew just 1,900. Marketing was not great back then or even good. Terry Truax was the head coach at the time and I lost it off the air while calling for his firing. Then Stan brought it up on the air and I agreed with im. The slight irony of that statement was that both Truax and Lefty were fired after that season. But I've never felt worse about a firing though I don't think my statement had anything to do with it. For me personally, having to see Coach T a few weeks after that statement walking to the Towson Center with my head down, I've never felt worse. He had his flaws (saved all his timeouts like Dean Smith until the end, rarely stood up during games, not a yeller or screamer, etc.), but having to cover the team since 1989 and on message boards since 2001, I'm not going to ever push for firing the head coach. If his contract is expiring, then that's different assuming the success has dried up or never really was there. I felt embarrassed because I had covered him since 1989 and he only found out due to some minion. But either way, I was apologetic since he did approach me and was fairly intimidating. That's one of the main reasons I don't call for the firing of coaches on here. https://jmusports.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/1996-97/towson/boxscore/5136 After Terry was fired in 1997, he bounced around a lot and was never back in Division I which was sad. He was a pretty good basketball coach despite the average record. He had won 3 ECC Tournaments (2 NCAA's) and two Big Sout titles. I think the constant moving of conferences from ECC to the Big South to the North Atlantic/America East wasn't helpful for recruiting. He probably deserved another year or two to get things right, but recruiting in Baltimore was starting to dry up. We weren't getting the Devin Boyds, Kurk Lees or Scooter Alexanders anymore. The guys we were getting from B-More were fine, but not in that class and the step up in competition didn't help. I saw Terry Truax right before he passed away in 2015 when he was at the only Towson game he attended at SECU against Drexel. Unfortunately, it was right before he had suffered a stroke and passed away, not too soon after his mentor Dean Smith died. I was able to walk with him to his car where the "regular" people parked and he appeared to be in bad shape, but I didn't see him passing so soon at 70. He did lose his wife Pam a few years before that. She was a Flight Attendant who those who may remember, was at every game with their very young daughter Annie (his second wife) dressed at a cheerleader in every game. I was happy that I was able to get a chance to speak with Coach T. one final time. I didn't talk about the JMU game and I felt bad for him that he wound up not really in coaching at the end. The bottom line was that I realized that once I called for Terry's firing, there were going to be repercussions. I couldn't have a professional relationship with a coach and call for his firing so I've never really done that since. Guys, you can do what you want here, but I'm also getting older and impatient. Some things cross the line. Not talking about PS and y'all wanting him gone or Steve Eingenbrot or whomever. I've just had enough of the bullshit. Call me sensitive, call me a bootlicker, but the biggest reason I wanted to moderate this board was to bring Towson people together. I don't give a rat's ass if you have different opinions about the head coach or any head coach. If that person likes PS, he shouldn't be dragged through the mud and vice versa. If people are afraid to post here and I know some have left for various reasons, then there will be actions taken if that is continue. Now, I'd also like people to actually constructively criticize. Everybody thinks they are Red Auerbach or Erik Spoelstra or Pat Riley and some just take shots without giving info.. Kudos to Tiger93 for coming up with salient points and numbers. But here goes my middle age BS opinion about this team. I needed two days to get my emotions in check. 1)Push the effing tempo. We're not going to get much better than shooting 41.6% from the field and 32.8% from beyond the arc. This is who we are with 4 games left, but we don't have to be 359th in pace for the rest of the year. Push the ball off every rebound, steal, block, etc. We've been pressing full court lately, but more of a mild press. If Lowery is in the game, use him to trap. Nobody can really throw the ball over his 7-2 wingspan. 2)I've been watching Towson basketball for nearly 35 years so I've seen some of the shittiest offenses, but when they were home and I was there for basically every game in 16 straight losing seasons, I couldn't just walk out. The 10 or so minutes against W&M (not Hampton) nearly drove me away for the first time from Flo SPorts. The offense was so boring and predictable and we just did nothing to really alleviate it. Maybe our intensity needs to be ratcheted up because talent isn't going to overwhelm the other team and playing bully ball can get us so far. 3)Yes, defense can be a problem at times, but a lot of that is effort. Lowery, May, Tarke, Sulaiman and Charles are all capable defenders. We can't shoot the ball on the road lately, and defenders aren't going to just defend if they can't make shots. Our overall road numbers aren't terrible, but in the last four games, we are shooting 37.4% from the field and 26.7% from long range. Time to do something other than run the offense through CT. It's fine to go to him down low or go inside out. But mix it up. 4)What I noticed against Hampton was how unathletic we are. Yes, Lowery is and Williamson in transition, but nobody was getting to the basket against them. Not Tarke or Williamson, who are decent drivers. Tarke is stocky, but a bit heavy legged. He doesn't explode past guys and some quicker point guards get past him. BTW, Tarke has been brutal. I don't expect great shooting numbers, but 36% from the field and 31.5% from beyond the arc is brutal and worse than expected. Last season, he shot 42.6% from the field and 32.7% from beyond the arc. My biggest issue with Tarke was his FT shooting (54% LY) and he's done pretty well (72%), but isn't getting to the line a ton. You do have to wonder when your two top transfers Tarke and Jones are shooting much worse at Towson than last season with other teams. Even Messiah Jones was at 57.2% last season and is now shooting 47.8%. Something is wrong when your players are shooting worse and it's mianly twos. 5)With a bunch of guys that are graduating, but may have a year left, I have to wonder who many if any of those guys return. It's a business and we need better players. More skilled, length, better guard play, etc. Better free throw shooters. Charles has the most attempts at 116 and is shooting just 58.6%. May is second at 69 and is shooting just 62.3%. Maybe adding a bigger Gibson-type of player would have helped. Personally, I don't know about everyone else, but I want to see them respond well against Monmouth, who is a very dangerous team with Xavier Rice. I love this program and I know what it's capable of, though in this era of NIL, we have to be creative with D2s, NAIA, Euros, juco, etc.
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4 pointsI was one of those 1900 in attendance that night and I remember that JMU seemed to have more people rooting for them than we did people rooting for us. Truax's teams were at least entertaining even though they could be frustrating as hell. He'd schedule anybody anywhere and the majority of the time, they'd hold their own. Just in my time of Towson awareness, they beat St. John's (year before I got there), West Virginia, and Louisville and they went to places like Arizona, Tennessee, and Virginia and didn't embarrass themselves. That was a product of the type of ball that he ran. I wasn't a fan of his firing and that seemed to be the result of a new AD wanting to put his stamp on the program. That led to one bad hire after another that culminated with the abyss that Pat Kennedy put us in. So there's a small history lesson for those young enough to not have had to suffer though the Jaskulski/Hunt eras. What Pat Skerry has done with the foundation he was given is very commendable. At some point (and that point could have come as soon as 5-7 years ago), the level has to improve. Since the last time we went to the Tournament, we're one of 18 teams that haven't even played in their conference championship game (the others -- Army, Central Arkansas, Citadel, Incarnate Word, UMKC, UMES, UNH, Presbyterian, Sacramento State, SIU-Edwardsville, UC Riverside, UTRGV, Utah Valley, Brown, Columbia, Rice, Dartmouth). In Skerry's time, we've had 2 teams that were beyond capable of not just advancing to the Final but also winning it. But as happens in conference tournaments, a bad shooting night can sink your entire season and we've lived that. Rather than being able to continue to raise our level from those teams, we regress and it seems that we don't want to adjust our systems. It's ok to make your mark on defense and rebounding but you'd better have offensive tools to back that up. With the exception of the Benimon team and the 2021 team, we've failed to cultivate any offensive skills. Thus, we win games via smoke and mirrors that may not even crack 60 on the scoreboard. That's entertaining, huh? But the biggest mark against us is the lack of improvement with players who obviously have talent but they're either held back by lack of minutes or lack of continued development (or both). If you didn't know anything about us and you saw a potential frontline of CT, Sulaiman, and Messiah, you'd think that we could be a pretty formidable offensive team in the lane. Nope, far from it. The potential that May showed us at the end of last season only comes in bursts this year. We have the potential to have a point guard that can engineer a transition game but the governor gets put on because we don't like to push the pace. There's 4 regular season games left. There's zero reason why we shouldn't go 4-0 in those games. This conference doesn't have that dominant boss at the final screen that it's had in past seasons. If Elon can win at Trask, we certainly can too. Somehow, we need to flush last week's offensive effort and use these last 4 games to ramp up for the tournament run. But I've also been beaten down by decades of failure so winning games in a big spot are more of a surprise. I let myself believe that 2021 was finally going to be the year and I was treated harshly for the belief. TL;DR -- I'm annoyed that we're living the Groundhog Day of college basketball.
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3 pointsI’m perfectly fine in California. I’m the ultimate optimist and I do like PS but I watched the preview and our coach is reaching for loose branches right now. I don’t want to hear about past accomplishments. Win now!
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3 pointsJust watched.. I appreciate his efforts but no one cares we’ve won 18 games or more 9 of the past 11 seasons if we win tomorrow night. Sustainability of a program is great if you know bigger things are ahead but we don’t know that. Have some nice parts but nothing indicates we will win the CAA anytime soon.
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3 points(1) After 13 years, I think it’s highly unlikely Skerry is changing his philosophy anytime soon; (2) I can’t explain how we occasionally pull off a W vs C of C or UNCW, but what I am confident in saying is that our players are far less athletic and skilled than these squads and Hofstra & Delaware, for that matter. An outlier W here and there isn’t going to suffice to get us where we want to be; (3) I don’t know about the players needing a good shrink, but after 13 years of this, I think maybe I do
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2 pointsAmen to this. It's one thing when you can see the game and you have to endure his soundtrack. But for those of us that go audio only, it's nearly impossible to follow the game. If you run a drinking game for all the names he drops, you'll have to call the ambulance by the under-12 timeout in the 2nd half. As for this game against UNCW, it can be considered a 'big game' due to the top 4 being at stake. We know what our history is in these type of 'big games'. It would be nice to buck our trend and play a complete 40 to get what we need for the CAA Tournament.
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2 pointsJimmy has a world of knowledge but comes off as a jabber jaw. Chuck Lightning was perfect. Spiro solo still does an excellent job despite all the technical difficulties in broadcasts through the years. We will miss Spiro when he retires but let’s not hope soon.
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2 pointsI know I'm going to be ostracized for defending PS, but I don't give a f-ck. Yes, the 18-win season or whatever isn't a big deal anymore. Neither is 20 wins. Beating Drexel, UNCW at home and Charleston on the road doesn't count apparently. Those are good wins. Delaware on the road. Not bad. And yes, the Hampton loss was beyond terrible, I'm not into the regular season doesn't count bullshit. It does. Seedings and double-byes matter in this league. Tournament performances have been bad. No defense for that other than the first Benimon season because they were ineligible. Who knows what the team could have accomplished? After that, it's been one or two and done as has been mentioned 8 million times. The offense has been atrocious this season and the player they missed the most was Holden, because he ran the offense and helped Timberlake get good looks. Is that on the coach and his staff that the offense has been so stagnant this season? I criticize the offense basically in every loss so of course I think it is. Next off-season, something needs to change and I say it every season. It starts with pace, but when you watch the great ball movement of Charleston, the ball never sticks. I don't care how good your defense is, when you move the ball that quickly and that well, you can beat a good or average defense. Every coach in the CAA gets criticized. It's part of the job. The UNCW fans after the Campbell game were not thrilled. Siddle should win Saturday against us, but he's 1-5 against Trowson. My biggest problem is when I watch the CAA this season and last and see a player I'd love to have in a Towson uniform: Trazerian White, Shakeim Phillips, Tyler Thomas, Jameer Nelson Jr., Darlinstone Dubar, Aaron Estrada, Kobe Rodgers, Justin Moore, etc. It's a guard league and a wings league. Can Tejada, Lowery, Williamson or Cole become one of those guys? I'm not seeing it, but I can see one or two of those guys becoming very productive players in the future. We just need that freakin' star and we probably can't get that guy in the portal due to our NIL situation. So we have to develop it. Staff change? Recruiting more shooters? Recruiting less bullies and more athletic and lengthy players in the portal as well? If you told me during the summer after the legal situation with Conway and the ACL injury to Watson, they'd we'd have a longshot of getting a top four seed in the final weekend, I'd probably be ecstatic, not thinking that we'd lose to Hampton on the road and beat Charleston on the road in the same season. Not trying to make this season half-full, but also trying to put things in perspective.
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2 pointsEasy to win 18 games a year when Goucher comes across the street to get an annual ass beating! Then sweep Morgan, Coppin, and umbc to pad the stats even more! Gotta win in the tournament, nothing else is good enough at this point
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2 pointsYou are in the minority....VAST MINORITY......pretty easy to schedule your way to extensions. WIN A GAME THAT MATTERS........SOMETIME......ANYTIME....WIN A GAME THAT MATTERS
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2 pointsUNCW’s loss means we get a top 4 seed if we go 2-0 this weekend, regardless of what Hofstra and Drexel do. A tall order, I know, but within the realm of possibility.
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2 pointsThe court storming resembled a Johnny U field storming after a win against Villanova 10+ years ago
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2 pointsWhat a great game. Campbell shocks UNCW in double overtime 105-100. Blew a 15-point second half lead. All 100 students charge the floor. Trazerian White was amazing with 35 but not a lot of D
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2 pointsTejada named Freshman of the Week https://x.com/towson_mbb/status/1762145784018210987?s=46&t=nScacl1TWT-KyOwj5stBaw
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2 pointsSitting in SECU on a Saturday afternoon, going to a TU vs C of C debate. Laugh about it, shout about it, when you have to choose, anyway you look at it you lose
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2 pointshttps://towsontigers.com/news/2024/2/22/mens-basketball-tejada-scores-30-points-towson-mens-basketball-downs-monmouth-80-61.aspx Freshman Tyler Tejada scored a career-high 30 points to lead the Tigers to an 80-61 victory over Monmouth before 1,910 at TU Arena. In their first meeting, Monmouth beat Towson 51-43 and this time, Towson had 44 points at the half. Mekhi Lowery did an outstanding job on Hawks' star guard Xander Rice, who was held to 4-17 shooting, though managed 16 points and three assists. With the win, Towson improved to 10-5 in the CAA and moved to a third-place tie with Drexel, who lost to 10-5 Hofstra tonight. Charleston improved to 12-3 and dropped Delaware to 9-6 after their 90-71 win.
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2 pointsSo getting back on topic, I'd like to add one other late-season idea. Tejada needs to touch the ball nearly every possession and they need to run the offense through him. He's a freshman, but he's the most talented offensive player we have. Nobody else can post up, shoot the three (35.4%), put the ball on the floor and make FTs (82.3%) as well as him on this team. He had 8 points total against W&M/Hampton and then 29 against Elon/Delaware at home. He has had just two back-to-back double-digit games since non-conference play in December. But he's also played just 18 minutes per game over his last eight games. Does he have turnover problems occasionally? Yes. He had three awful ones against Hampton. Does he struggle on defense against smaller, quicker guards? Of course. He's 6-8, 220. But he needs to play close to 25mpg down the stretch assuming he's not crushing the team on defense. As he said after the game last night he was, to paraphrase, in his own head. That he was maybe thinking too much and being tentative on offense. He's a scorer. Not saying never pass the ball, but if he takes advantage of smaller opponents with his size and length. He might draw more attention and allow others to thrive.
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2 pointsYou stole my thunder on the unsung hero tonight, Lowery. I tried to pay special attention to how he played Rice on D, and I came away very impressed. Not enough accolades to describe Tejada’s performance. He was on fire 🔥. Wonder when the last time a TU freshman dropped 30? Certainly a 1st under Skerry. CT with a solid overall game (7 points, 7 boards and 5 assists) and Jones & Sulaiman combined for 17 points and 11 rebounds. Now, OTOH, May and Tarke shot a combined 2-12, for 9 points. Normally that’s not a recipe for success, but Tejada more than compensated for their scoring deficiencies tonight. Huge game Saturday vs C of C, before what should be a large, raucous crowd
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2 points
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2 pointsThe year 2011 just called and it said while it’s grateful that Skerry pulled the program from the abyss, it’s also ok to hold Skerry accountable for never having made it to a conference championship game, if not, you know, actually winning such a game. It’s laudable he graduates players. Other coaches graduate players AND win conference tournaments and go to the dance. Graduating players is one metric; it’s not the only one. Serious question-let’s assume we don’t make it to a conference championship game this season, and the 3 after, which would take us to the end of Skerry’s contract, absent another extension. Notice I didn’t say he actually wins the game, but I set the bar at him simply getting us to the finals. Would you advocate that he get yet another extension?
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2 pointsYou can criticize the program all you want. You can critique the coaches, you can disagree with me on my comments after the game, you can love the team or piss on them because that's what some love to do, but no personal attacks on coaches, players, myself, or any other poster on here or people will start getting banned. Just tired of it. We all can disagree without calling people names. If not, it's time to move on.
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