Tiger93

At this point transferring is really not much different than free-agency in pro sports except for the announcement of contract details.

At least let us lose on Saturday first before piling on the negativity. We have all offseason to talk about negatives and what-we-need-to-dos. We all know this team stuck this year, so are in similar places in our assessment of the program (unlike times in the past). I seriously doubt there is not some sort of miracle run in us, but our last game before the pause was probably our best of the year. We play an Elon team that has a similar new-lease on life mindset after winning four straight. We did not play Elon this year in the regular-season so that creates some uncertainty for both sides coming in since I am guessing our tape looks a little different than it did in some of the previous game. I don't follow what they are doing close enough to know what has changed, but clearly something has. Let's enjoy the postseason first, and then we can be negative after we lose (which unless we somehow make a crazy run to the semifinals or finals is going to happen on Saturday or Sunday).

I can't speak to discipline or lack of management off the court when it comes to making sure no one in the program gets a positive COVID test, so I won't go there. I will say that to this point, we have somehow tied for playing the third-most games overall and have played the second-most conference games (that will probably change after this pause) in the CAA. We have only played four less games than Maryland (same total as UMBC, 2 less than Coppin State, same as Morgan State and two more than Mt. St. Mary's, I won't bring up Loyola because the Patriot League has been extra careful), who has a heckuva a lot more resources at their disposal to get through this than we do. My point being is it when it comes to testing players and coaches are in a really tough spot, and it is way too simplistic to blame this solely on them when this is going on all over the country (especially at the mid-major level where there are less resources). If you want to bash something, go back to bashing the on-court product, because the coaches and players have a lot more control over that and we can at least criticize what we can see in front of us rather than wildly speculating on stuff we don't know. I wonder what they will do with the conference tournament. At this point, Charleston, Northeastern, JMU and Hofstra are probably the only teams that deserve to play for a bid. As much as I want to see Towson play more games, I really could not argue with a limited conference tournament from a planning and safety standpoint. I hope they get to play again. I am fine with everyone who is critical of the coaching and wants a change (I can't disagree), but I will say Sunday was the first time this group actually played to the usual strengths of a Pat Skerry team. Prior to that, we were showing all the bad characteristics his teams had shown in his time here and none of the good ones (good defensive rebounding, toughness and athleticism). I would like to see if they can build off that in any way.

I am certainly not going to argue that we are better than anyone at this point. Not sure why, but I thought the Drexel games were at home when I first typed that. I don't think two wins out of the remaining six games is unrealistic, but it is likely best-case scenario the rest of the way (which is not good). Zero wins is obviously very possible. Let's not pretend Drexel is some sort of insurmountable opponent. They are mediocre at best, and we are bad. It is certainly possible to win one there, just like it is possible to grab a win against Delaware. In comparison, I will be shocked if we come close to winning either game against Northeastern. As far as a I can tell, Northeastern and James Madison appear to be the only decent teams in this conference with Charleston (and maybe Delaware) hovering near decent on the right day. I am not sure if you are trying to argue my point that I made about those three players. My point is they have been terrible, and we are a really bad shooting team. Were you agreeing with me, or did you assume I was making excuses for them? Zane's shot selection and decision-making have been brutal, although I thought he was pretty good on both accounts on Saturday. Even with that, he still managed to make a couple of bad decisions in key situations and Timberlake's foul on the three-point shot was the type of play teams that don't know how to win make.

I'll bite. I still think we win two more games. One against Drexel here, and against Delaware here. Those teams aren't very good either. Although, based on the way we handled late-game situations against William & Mary and College of Charleston I am not going to bet a lot on the over. Saying we will lose the rest of our games is a little overly negative, but obviously not out of the realm of reality either. This team is not very good, and we can't even hang our hat on the usual strengths of Skerry teams of rebounding and getting to the free-throw line a high rate. It is pretty incredible that after 15 games we are shooting 40.8% from the field and 28.1% from three, while opponents are 44.7% from the field and 39.4%. Zane Martin, Nicholas Timberlake and Jason Gibson have shot 54 percent of our field goal attempts this year and are collectively shooting 37.8% (186-491).

AtlantaTiger, l realize your initial post was positive and that you are pulling for the Tigers to do well as hard as anyone else on here. However, the logic in your second post is flawed. If this is only about the postseason, what is the point of any of this? This season is a success from the standpoint that we have won 19 games, started to develop some great young pieces in Gibson and Thompson who will hopefully progress going forward and we won 12 of our last 15 games in conference play. In the vacuum of this season, I would say this team has pretty good momentum heading into the tournament and even probably got the better side of the bracket draw. That being said, we all know we will need to play at a high level to get by a well-coached Northeastern team. I think Chris' point is can we play out the game against Northeastern on Sunday before we start talking about Skerry's postseason record. We can determine how relevant the past was after the tournament, but for now, let's give props to Skerry and players for how they bounced back from a horrendous conference start and see if we can beat a good Northeastern team to build off our momentum and make a run of this thing. I do realize that is basically what you said in your first post but just wanted to chime in. Go Tigers!

Fairly irrelevant stat, but figured I would share. Only 15 teams in the nation had a better conference record than Towson in their last 15 conference games. Those teams include: Dayton 15-0, New Mexico State 15-0, East Tennessee State 14-1, Gonzaga 14-1, Kansas 14-1, San Diego State 14-1, Stephen F. Austin 14-1, Baylor 13-2, Kentucky 13-2, Murray State 13-2, North Texas 13-2, Prairie View A&M 13-2, South Dakota State 13-2, UC Irvine 13-2, Vermont 13-2 Towson was one of 35 teams in the nation to go 12-3 or better in the last 15 conference games. Here are the other 19 that were not in the above group: Belmont 12-3, Bowling Green 12-3, BYU 12-3, Eastern Washington 12-3, Florida State 12-3, Furman 12-3, Hofstra 12-3, Liberty 12-3, Louisville 12-3, Merrimack 12-3, North Dakota State 12-3, Northern Iowa 12-3, Northern Kentucky 12-3, North Florida 12-3, Radford 12-3, Rhode Island 12-3, Seton Hall 12-3, Winthrop 12-3, Wright State 12-3.

Gary Durant is my cautionary tale of waiting to see how a super-athletic player translates on the court at D-1 level competition. Still, always exciting to see high-end athleticism in one of our signees.

This will be an interesting hire. They hit home runs with Jerry Wainwright (94-95 to 01-02), Brad Brownell (02-03 to 05-06) and Kevin Keatts (14-15 to 16-17) and whiffed big time on McGrath (17-18 to this year), Buzz Peterson (10-11 to 13-14) and Benny Moss (07-08 to 09-10), who I admittedly did not remember.

The ODU 4th and 29 TD, T-West going crazy in the quarterfinal win against Eastern Illinois and Jimmy G, and Connor Frazier filling in for the injured Peter Athens at Eastern Washington and scoring on the game-winning QB sneak are all magical memories that stand out for me.

Who is trying to rationalize the state of the program the last two years?! We all hate it and think it sucks. We have sucked in the Big South, America East, a good CAA, and a mediocre CAA at times (although we were good at the beginning in the Big South). We are pretty consistent at being bad over the last 25 years. We have been better recently under Skerry until the last 2+ years. Now we have regressed back into some of the crap we were before Skerry and changes probably need to be made, beyond just him. I believe these are facts that we should mostly agree upon. Nobody likes this crap, and to pretend there is some old guard here that is happy watching this while other people are more demanding is just BS. We all want the same thing. A good basketball program we can enjoy that can give us just one damn trip to the NCAA Tournament.

I agree with most of what you are saying. I just hate general complaining with no realistic analysis or solutions. I also hate calling out people personally, but I do agree that this program likely needs change. Here are my answers to the questions I posed. 1) I believe the AD and leadership of the Athletic Department needs to change before I would feel comfortable getting rid of Skerry and hiring another coach. 2) As for the analysis of it could not be worse. I can't disagree more with you. We have hired three head coaches since Truax. Their total combined record was 132-272 overall (Jaskulski - 37-76, Hunt - 23-63, Kennedy 72-143), 70-182 in conference play (Jaskulski 22-50, Hunt - 12-42, Kennedy - 36-90) and 8-14 in conference tournament play (Jaskulski 3-4, Hunt 1-3 and Kennedy 4-7). Skerry has had a miserable 2+ years, but he is light years better than those hires (except the conference tournament record admittedly where he is actually worse at 2-7). That does not mean we should be afraid to make a change, get a new coach and start a new direction. However, based on Towson's track record we could hire three or four more guys and suck worse than we have under Skerry. Again, that does not mean we should be afraid to do it. I just hate the sentiment around here that if we get rid of Skerry things will automatically be better. History shows us there is a good chance that is wrong. 3) There are definitely good coaches out there, but do they want to come here, will we give them enough money to do so and are they the right fit? This is harder to find than people on here think. I hope if and when a move is made that we are ready to answer these questions and make a serious commitment to the program. We all deserve an NCAA Tournament bid and a better team on annual basis.

This is not meant to defend Skerry, but there has pretty much been total ineptitude around this program since the last year of Terry Truax (95-96 was our last solid non-Skerry year) and everyone else before Skerry (not just Kennedy). There have been some pretty good years under Skerry, but this is all starting to go in the wrong direction. Everyone who has criticized Skerry has a very one-sided, short-term memory view of this program. However, I will agree with most of what is being said at this point because since the end of the 2017-18 season this program has mostly been a debacle. I just have three questions: What is your realistic plan to replace Skerry? (I know this has been talked about plenty) How are you going to get a better coach with the current decision-makers in place? Who are the realistic candidates for Towson based on our budget and job stature that you think can do better based on what this program has been for the last 23-24 years?

True, but Towson is likely playing three of the top four teams in the league in the first three games of the year. I was mainly pointing out it is a tough start. Still, I get your point. If we don't play better we are not going to get many wins in a competitive conference. I expect a much better performance today.

All conference games are tough is cliche. Playing UNC-Wilmington, Elon or Drexel would be a little easier than playing the projected top three teams (Hofstra, Charleston, and Northeastern) in the conference to start the schedule. That being said, if we are any good (which we don't look like so far) I would expect to win one of these two home games and that is going to be tough now. Of course it is disappointing to lay an egg in the opener but we have 17 more of these conference games to go. I will try to be a little less of an rmist and actually wait a couple of games before I jump all over how bad we are going to be this year.

Too early to determine where we will finish in the conference based on one game, but yes Saturday's performance was highly disappointing. If Skerry and the players don't come out ready to play at a high level today against Hofstra I will join the negativity, but let's see what today brings before calling the season over. We knew this was a tough schedule to start conference play, but we are at home and I was hoping to be able to win at least one of these games to get off on the right foot in conference play.

RundaPower, why is this a dumb move? I realize we might not be up to the competition and that outside of FCS circles NDSU only has a limited amount of brand-name recognition (you have to admit they have a little having hosted College Gameday twice). No matter who our coach is and what we think about this program, we have shown we can compete in the conference at times and that we can be a top 20ish team. Why not give it a shot?

Interestingly enough they actually have not played an FBS school since beating Iowa State 34-14 in 2014. FBS schools probably got sick of losing to them. They are at Oregon to start the season next year but are slated to play Towson, Albany, and Valpo in 2021. Of course, we also have San Diego State in 2021. I don't know how the CAA schedule shakes out that year, but if we play James Madison that will be an absolutely hellacious schedule. This is exciting. There is no excuse for this game not to be close to a sellout, especially considering they will probably bring at least 1,000 fans. I know they are not a brand name, but we should at least be able to hype up the concept of this game to get close to filling the place.

This is an interesting conversation overall for Towson basketball. As much as I love this program, our lack of a conference championship since 1991 combined with a shortage of signature wins does make us uniquely woeful as a D-1 program. The one victory no one talked about here was the win over St. John's in the Preseason NIT in 1993 (I know it was not at home, but it was my first experience as a college student rooting for Towson). The West Virginia buzzer-beater on the road (the same year we beat Louisville) was fun too (but again not at home), although they were not very good at the time. I do have to give Skerry credit for one thing. This year's schedule is actually a pretty good one. We have criticized him in the past for the schedule, but the combination of high profile games (Florida, Xavier) decent to high RPI mid-major opponents (Buffalo (who just beat an undefeated DePaul team), Kent State, Vermont, and Liberty) and some winnable games (GW, Morgan State and hopefully UMBC (who were are favored by 9.5). I don't think the science of getting good teams to play you at home is as clear as some make it out to be. I think it is usually a combination of luck, previous connections, circumstance, recruiting or desire to have a player play at home and sometimes open dates. It always seemed to me that Pittsburgh or TCU with Skerry's connections might be good targets to bring to Towson, but I don't know how much he has stayed in contact with Jamie Dixon or Pittsburgh. I would be happy if we could get Maryland to play us at the Baltimore Arena again for a couple of trips there, but I think that ship has sailed.

This team really deserves a ton of credit! Going 18 for 18 in conference matchups is absolutely incredible, no matter what the sport or the level. The Tigers are one of only seven teams in the NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball to be undefeated in conference play this year, and they are the only team in the entire nation to go undefeated in conference play and not get pushed to the fifth set in any match. Hopefully this year we can get a manageable first-round matchup and win our first NCAA Tournament match.

Oddly enough, the last team to miss the NCAA Tournament from the CAA happened the same year we got shafted in 2012. Richmond was 8-3 with a 6-2 conference record and missed the tournament. I believe it was a smaller field back at that point. They lost to Virginia, Old Dominion and New Hampshire, and beat Villanova who was also 6-2 (as was Towson). https://caasports.com/documents/2019/7/22/2019_CAA_Football_Guide_WebSMALL.pdf. Out of the two main projections I looked at (College Sports Madness and HeroSports) one has us in the last three in and the other has us as one of the first teams out. This is an odd year because we don't really have a great win (Maine and The Citadel seem to the best on the surface), but we have lost to Florida and three teams ahead of us in the conference. I don't think anything is guaranteed in this case and this is not a very good CAA year (looking back on it 2012 was historically good). Our resume was a little better last year (with wins over Villanova and Elon on the road), but we have one more win this year. It is always hard because I never know enough about the other conferences to have a great feel for this. All we can do is take care of business and see what happens.

I get the premise behind this, but I have to disagree. Whatever level we play, our goal should be trying to win the conference title and then trying to get as close to a national title as we can. Those are the most important accomplishments on our list in my opinion. While beating Maryland or a top 25 team would be huge in the short-term, the next week to a month, maybe even the rest of the season, building a consistent program is more significant. I get from a publicity and fan standpoint a lot more people will care, but it would be better if we could build something that can last in the long-term here. I would take a CAA title (and of course an FCS Championship) over any of this because that is really what our players are out there trying to accomplish week in and week out. I would be really excited if we can giving Florida a great game, and being in Baton Rouge when Towson took a 9-7 lead in the second quarter was one of more favorite in-person football moments. However, I really want to be able to expect to be a contender in the CAA and a top 20 team on an annual basis. We have done this sporadically, but if we are doing right we should be able to be more consistent with those goals. Other good things will come with that.

I went to that LSU game (was hoping to swing this weekend's game), and it was an absolute blast to see our team physically battling LSU tooth and nail. I am fine with these games. I just don't want us to ever repeat what we did in 2012 when we played both Kent State and LSU (and I know we probably never will). Also in 2012, we scheduled LSU the week before a big game at James Madison and lost that game. That was a scheduling loss and even though we got ripped off out of playoff spot that year we also did a bad job of scheduling even though it was fun from a fan standpoint. This year I think we did it right playing Florida before home games against Albany and Bucknell. Nothing against those teams, but I hope we can win those games no matter what happens this week. The other part about playing top 10 teams compared to decent teams like Maryland and USF is that the top 10 teams take us much less seriously. I mean when Alabama is tied with The Citadel at halftime and we are almost beating No. 3 LSU halftime, you know they are not 100 percent dialed in. Let's roll with the experience, see what happens and use it to our benefit going forward.

We always get too far ahead of ourselves when it comes to this program. That was an awesome win on Saturday and it is exciting to be in the top five. It was great to rip the game from Maine and impose our will in the second half. That being said, can we just make sure we take care of business next week against Villanova before we talk about beating Florida, winning national titles and other stupid things like FBS football (I know no one has mentioned this, but it always seems to creep its way in when we are doing well). The 2011-13 stretch was a truly special one for this program. I was wondering if we would ever get back to it. Last year offered a glimmer of hope in terms of working our way back and we are off to a nice start, but let's try to build something sustainable here. Annual victories in the playoffs, an outright CAA title and getting good student engagement with good turnouts like it sounds like the North Carolina Central game was (I am just going off photos and the chatter I heard on this board). Here is hoping that this is a special season, but also that our program is not Tom Flacco or bust. Lets put together a complete performance against the Wildcats and do our best against Florida.

Just about every power conference team is going to try to play the bulk of their non-conference games at home so it makes it difficult to get them to SECU no matter what level they are in their conference. I do agree that once every 3 or 4 years we should be able to get one of them to come to SECU in a 2-for-1 if we try hard enough, and don't mind stacking a bunch of road games in a future schedule. I do like that we are involved in the Battle for the Capital event. Those teams are a good level for us and have the possibility to be high-level mid-major squads, and it is bus ride back. I also liked the Atlantic City Tournament last year. Taking advantage of close neutral-site games gives any local fans a chance to travel nearby, isn't too much of a financial outlay, the tournaments often draw at least a decent level of competition. I hate the D-3 games (as does everyone), but I think the coaching staff has done a decent job the last couple of years of finding some good neutral-site tournament opportunities.