Tiger93

I think this is probably our best D-1 team in school history. I actually think the teams from the 1990s should be mentioned in this conversation as well. I started watching Towson hoops in 1993 as a freshman. I would put the 1993-94 team in the hunt for second-best Towson team I have watched in my time of following Tiger basketball. They did not have the talent of the 2013-14 team and probably most of our CAA rosters, but they were far and away the best team in the Big South that year, beat St. John's in the Preseason NIT and played a hellacious schedule against Maryland (Joe Smith's freshman year), UMass (with Marcus Camby and Lou Rowe'; first ever College Hoops game on ESPN2) and UConn (Donyell Marshall and Ray Allen). Losing to Coppin State (a good version) and Loyola probably puts a dent in their argument. They also went 15-3 in conference play (like we hopefully end up this year). Maybe I am being nostalgic, but I would put the level of both Scooter Alexander and Ralph Blalock that year as top-10 players in the time I have watched Towson hoops. John James was very skinny, but extremely long and at times smooth in the frontcourt. Stevie Thomas could be a load down low, but also had a decent outside shooting touch. Michael Keyes was a steady and smart freshman point guard (I didn't realize he was third-team All-Conference that year until I looked), and Quinton Moody was a small but fast change-of-pace guard. DeRon Robinson is still probably one of the most athletic talents we have had, but very raw at that point (and probably throughout his brief time with the program). Matt Campbell was a solid player as well. Much like Devin Boyd and Chuck Lightening, I think Scooter Alexander and Ralph Blalock could have been good in any era of Towson basketball. The 1993-94 team was a team of weird but effective players I am probably overselling this team, but I was much more surprised when we were knocked out by Liberty in the conference semifinals that year than when William & Mary did it to the 2013-14 team. Back to this year's team. Nobody is as talented as Benimon, and the 2013-14 starting five on paper could give this team a run for their money from a talent standpoint, but this year's team just plays off each other and allows everyone to fill their roles. Probably because they are a much better shooting team overall. This team feels like they can win in different ways. It felt like the 2013-14 had to win the same way. Actually when you look back and see the roster of Benimon, Guthrie, Burwell, Damas, McGlynn, TPR and Davis as a freshman it is pretty deep and solid roster. The only problem is McGlynn was the only consistent shooter and that was all he could do. I think winning the conference crown would be the cherry on top of this argument if they can pull it out tonight. I also think the NET ranking is probably the biggest reason I would put this team as the best. Monmouth blew us out for about the first 10-15 minutes of the game, but other than that this year's team has either won or been competitive with everyone they have faced.

There have been a lot of fun parts about this season, but maybe the most gratifying has been watching the development of Charles Thompson. I don't get to see many Towson games in-person, but I did go to the season-opener against George Washington in Thompson's freshman year. I was excited about what he could become after that game because of his athleticism and his motor. He has continued to develop a fairly steady rate, but the jump he has made this year has been incredible. He has been a big part of setting the tone for the physical play Towson has been bringing to these games recently and through the year, and he is putting up some great numbers (including 15 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks last night). Pat Skerry, the coaching staff and of course first and foremost Charles deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the progression he has made as a player. It feels like he is used in almost every other (at a minimum) half-court possession to play a two-man game with the guards that usually sets up other movements on offense. He is fun to watch and very easy to root for. According to the Towson record book, Kennell Jones holds the record for a .589 field goal percentage for a season. Thompson is shooting .613 (119-194) this season. I think CBS Sports gave these stats last night, but he is shooting .723 (55-76) with 17.2 ppg, 8.4 rpg and 2.4 blpg in the last seven games where we have gone 6-1 with wins at Delaware (9-3 at home), Hofstra (9-1 at home) and UNC-Wilmington (11-2 at home).

I usually check everything I post very carefully (maybe not the typos but the information). Sorry for posting something like this that is not true. No idea how this got in my head. Very proud of the volleyball program and everything they have done. Looking forward to the AD's introductory press conference tomorrow.

I guess you are correct about most of this. However, I would say being even in the loss column is pretty important at this point. While we have games at Charleston and JMU, they still have to go to Delaware and Drexel as well. Also, don't forget about Hofstra. They are 9-4, but have games at Elon, home against Northeastern, Elon again, William & Mary and Charleston. If we all end up with four losses, which is feasible, I believe we would have the advantage with series splits existing between everyone except us and Hofstra. There are a lot of different ways this can go, and I am certainly not assuming victory in any of our remaining games. I think it is the same for UNC-W and Hofstra too. That resumed Delaware games is kind of just hanging out there as an ugly reminder that it will take a lot to get that win. I do agree with the just win and don't worry about anyone else approach. It is all we can do at this point.

I think we are up for a physical battle against them. Although, they did wear us down in the first meeting. As I expressed in another thread, one of my biggest worries is tight officiating. I think early foul trouble for Cam, CT or Nolan Jr. is dangerous for us in any game. We did do a good job with Cam in foul trouble on Saturday. Hopefully, we carry the momentum we have built up in the last two games into this one. They only have one home loss this year (to Norfolk State), so it will clearly be a tough spot. Would be really impressive to have wins at Delaware, Hofstra and their if we can get this one.

That was a pretty brutal job by the refs at the end. They took a few minutes to look at it on replay and just ignored the visual evidence. UNC-W probably would have won anyways, but still pretty bad officiating.

I thought he had left, but I must have been confused. My mistake. Sorry about that. He will definitely bring in his own people, but that process usually takes 12-18 months. You can do a little here and there, but hard to do it all immediately while still being respectful and open-minded to the environment around you.

I imagine he will keep a fair amount of people around in year one and figure it out from there. I am always suspicious of people who think they can come in, clean house and immediately understand what needs to be done. I know we are in a short-fix, win-now society, but I like my leaders to understand what they are doing before they make moves and there is no way to understand everything that goes on at Towson before you are in it. I do look forward to having him digest what is going on, meet with new people, and start to figure out how he wants to do things. I am also interested in hearing the vision for our athletic program both now, and as he learns more about everything. Are we close to hiring a new volleyball coach, or will he need to do that immediately? Obviously, it will be extremely interesting to see what impact this has on the football program in the short-term and long-term.

Welcome aboard to Steve and his family! Seems like a very qualified candidate on paper. Looking forward to hearing and seeing some of the ideas he brings with him. Hopefully, we can give him an early gift of NCAA Tournament berths for both men's and women's basketball.

I know this was a team effort and most everyone played great, but it felt like Charles Thompson singlehandedly imposed his will on this game in the first 6-7 minutes. He was scoring, blocking shots and getting defense rebounds he didn't event have good position to grab. I thought his physical dominance set the tone for the game early on and Elon was not ready to match his physicality. I want to be 95% positive about this, my only slight bit of negativity is when he was going for some of those rebounds there were plays that bad officials might call ticky tack fouls on in the future. He is rapidly becoming the heartbeat of this team in conference play, and making sure he doesn't get in early foul trouble will be a key to our success. That being said, another positive from this game was that Timberlake and Holden sat most of the first half with foul trouble and we still rolled to victory. The last two games Terry Nolan Jr. has shown us why we were all hoping he would get healthy. He does so much from a ball movement standpoint, but more than anything him being in the game at full strength allows everyone to play their roles. Nobody feels like they have do too much and everyone seems to let them game come to them. That is the way this team needs to play, because there will be off shooting nights. It is important that when that happens, those players figure out other ways to affect the game and we figure out plan B, C and probably sometimes D. As with any team, we are much better at that when this roster is at full strength. Finally, I was listening to the Three-Man Weave podcast (episode #249, https://www.three-man-weave.com/podcasts). At around the 36-minute mark they talk about tough mid-major teams that people would not want to face based on the ESPN analytics formula of low turnovers and high offensive rebounding rate that John Gasaway has used as part of his giant-killers segment. They mentioned Towson as one of five teams along with Chattanooga, Iona, Murray State and one other I can't remember. I realize there is a long, long, long, long way to go before having any of those discussions, but still was fun to hear. Those guys have showered love on Skerry and the Tigers all year. I have heard us mentioned 3-4 times this year in a positive light on their podcast. I think I mentioned this before, but I am always impressed that they can actually talk about Towson in a fairly educated way when they are doing a broad podcast about college basketball. Anyways, just wanted to share in case anyone wanted to listen.

Hard to know how to define slow start. We led 25-21 at the 6:02 mark of the first half last night and then gave up a 14-5 run to trail at halftime. In conference play, we have trailed at halftime four times in completed games (five if you count the suspended game) and are 3-1 in those games. We have led at halftime seven times (7-1) and been tied once (0-1). Your statement definitely holds true for the Northeastern game where we fell behind big and never got back in it. The home Drexel game and road Elon games also stand out as really bad starts when you go back and look. My favorite part of last night was actually seeing distribution in the shot attempts spread out over six different players. Six guys had eight or more shot and the most was 12. Rizzuto, Timberlake and Holden were 5-26 combined and we still won comfortably because Gibson and Thompson shot well, and Graw and Nolan Jr. also were solid. I also looked seeing the assist numbers at 17 last night. Nolan Jr. only had two assists, but had no turnovers in 21 minutes. Now, this is not a great sample because William & Mary is bad, but this is exactly the way we can avoid shooting ourselves out of games like we did at Drexel and Northeastern. We will still need a couple of guys to have big games to win when we play the likes of Delaware, Drexel, Hofstra, UNC-W and probably also Charleston and Elon, but it is nice to have options. I look at Timberlake and Rizzuto going 2-9 and 1-9 respectively, and with Nolan Jr. back and the ball distribution someone like Timberlake doesn't feel like he needs to singlehandedly hoist up 16 shots and end up going 4-16 like he did against Northeastern. It is one game, but I do think when these guys all settle into their roles and play within themselves this team is at it's best. There are no superstars on this team (although Holden, Thompson on even on rare occasion Timberlake have take over games), but there are six very good players in Timberlake, Rizzuto, Thompson, Nolan Jr., Gibson and Holden who if they aren't forcing things can get what they need to do to help us win. I also don't want to exclude Gray who has been very solid and made some key buckets tonight when we were stretching out the lead. Hopefully we can carry this into the Elon game, which should not be overlooked as a dangerous game. Our 4-2 conference road record has been solid, but even though we are 5-1 at home CAA play I don't think we have been much different from the road. We have 5.7 ppg winning margin on the road and a 6.2 ppg margin at home. We have been consistent both home and road, but we don't really play markedly better at home (at least in conference play).

Probably, good to get him back now. Hopefully there are no bumps the rest of the way and we can reincorporate him into the lineup and get back to the level of the player we were showing earlier this season. Conference play is always grind so it doesn't guarantee anything, but his skillset definitely makes us a better team when things are clicking for him.

I don't think it is quite that simple. I certainly don't mean to imply that if Cam gets healthy (and gets a better mask) and Terry Nolan Jr. comes back that we will roll through everyone and win this conference. I know it could never be that easy. However, the point is we were playing at higher level earlier this year. Part of that is because we were playing teams that were not as familiar with us, and conference play is a different animal. They mostly all know Skerry Ball inside and out, even if it is a little different this year. The other big reason is Holden was healthy and did not have one of the craziest masks I have ever seen, and Nolan Jr. was playing regularly and helping lead the way. I know it is what it is, but the only reason I think it has to continually be brought up is we still have games left for Nolan Jr. to play and Holden will get his clear mask and hopefully that can play even. What that means, I don't know any more than the rest of you. Every team has injuries and weird situations and you have to get through them, but Towson is the team we follow and know about. There is potential to get closer to the way we were playing earlier in the year. However, more important is continuing to find ways to win tight games and trying to make sure that we try avoid awful shooting nights like the Northeastern and Drexel games if we can. Statistically there isn't much different between Cam without mask (15.1 ppg, 6.7 rp, 2.5 apg, .423 FG pct, Ft pct. .683) and with mask (13.5 ppg, 9.5 rpg, 2.5 apg and .479 FG pct, .738 pct) other than a dip in rebound, field goal percentage and free throw percentage which makes sense. Nolan Jr.'s shooting numbers don't make much of a difference other than the fact that he gives us another scoring option, but his assist-to-turnover ratio (one of the best in the nation) and overall feel for the game are important. If we can have Nolan Jr. we will be better, if we can't we need to win with the guys who are playing (which is possible). I just bring it up constantly because it is a factor and it can still change. If I heard tomorrow he was out for the season, I would drop it.

I am not sure anything is going to be easy while Cam is playing with the mask and Terry Nolan Jr. is out. We have enough to win any of our remaining games, but they will likely almost all be grinds. We have played 11 conference games and eight of them have been decided by 7 points or less. We rode hot-shooting games to double-digit wins at William & Mary and at Hofstra. The game at home at Hofstra was a not red-hot overall shooting, but we hit 16 three-pointers, including eight from Jason Gibson. The conference this year is tight, and it takes out-of-the ordinary efforts to win big. We are 5-3 in those games where it is decided by seven or less, and we are going to see how tough we are down the stretch because I expect a lot of down-to-the wire games. We are good enough to win a lot of them, but nothing is guaranteed with the current status of the team.

One other thing. I know the Northeastern loss was a bad one for us, but this stuff does happen fairly often on a year-to-year basis. In fact, just last year if you remember our dead-in-the-water squad knocked off first-place Northeastern at the end of the conference season. I remember trying to talk myself into the fact that it might be an awakening only to see two straight weeks of games get postponed, followed by getting blown out by Elon to end our nightmare season with a whimper. No matter what, much happier times for the program this year. https://towsontigers.com/news/2021/2/14/dominant-defense-leads-towson-mens-basketball-over-northeastern.aspx

Good points, although the only thing I think Skerry could do better from a game-planning situation is probably to put more pressure on to create turnovers and speed up the pace. I think he tried that at times. Sometimes it worked and sometimes they got better looks than if we had played half-court defense. Others on this board may have a better eye on this stuff than me, but seemed like we went to a zone that confused then towards the end of the game. Down the stretch, Northeastern had three or four bad offensive possessions that helped us tighten up the game. It just felt like there were more opportunities to try to speed up the pace, but we also got beat on it at times and we did force 16 points on 14 turnovers. I don't think the game plan criticisms are all that obvious, they are more on the periphery on micro-decisions that could have been handled better by Skerry. I don't really know as a coach how you tell a kid who went 8-11 with 26 points two days earlier and is playing in front of hometown friends and family, you don't have it tonight so make the extra pass. That is one of the you take the good with the bad situations. One of the other posters on this board brought up that backdrop point to me offline. I think it is a great point, however, we need to overcome that to win in a neutral-site conference tournament situation where the backdrop will be unfamiliar. The good news is it has taken some horrific three-point shooting performances for us to lose our three conference games. The bad news is we have now shot worst than 30 percent from three in nine of our 24 games. While that is not the majority, seeing that it has happened in nearly 40 percent of our games means we need to figure out ways to overcome it because it is not a complete outlier. In our defense, we are 5-4 in those nine games (of course two of those wins were against really bad Hampton and Long Island teams). I guess the one thing that would be encouraging is to see if we can try to find ways to beat some solid teams without relying on the three-point field goals (we did do it against Drexel last week). That is hard for most teams, but finding a way to win those games is probably the difference between being good and being great. You know we will probably have to overcome a performance like that in at least one of the conference tournament games, and I would like to have confidence to believe we will be ready for that moment. We won't know until we get there, and we obviously have a lot of fan trauma associated to confidence in conference tournament to success. I am Caps fan and I believed in 2018. At some point I have to think if I keep believing I won't be made a fool of in these big spots.

Several things jumped out at me after this game. Of course the obvious one was the three-point shooting, which was a season-worst 1-15. There were a few rushed attempts, but I thought we missed 6 or 7 point-blank 3s that usually fall for us. As we have talked about before, when threes aren't falling our offense gets stagnant. We had our second-lowest assist total of the season at 6 (5 vs. San Francisco was the lowest). I know we didn't turn the ball over much, but we still had less than a 1-1 assist-to-turnover rate. We are 4-3 in those type of games, and the wins have been in some of our closest games at Elon, our comeback win against Drexel, our road win at Delaware and home against Northeastern (I think the turnovers piled up at the end of those). We are 15-2 in games where we have double-figure assists with the only losses coming at Drexel (10) and Pittsburgh (14, horrible shooting game). We also had our third-lowest number of attempted field goals at 48 (41 at Hofstra, of course we didn't need a lot of shots because so many went in; 45 vs. San Francisco). This was one of the most alarming stats, because it felt like Northeastern had a bunch of possessions where they took the shot clock down to 5-10 seconds or less and made the shot or got the foul. There were definitely a few too many comfortable three-points by Northeastern, but give them credit for being patient and hitting their open looks. This one concerns me the most, because if teams control the tempo against us we lose the talent edge that we have against most if not all the teams in this conference. Two things we did well that we probably could have leaned on more were forcing turnovers and scoring in the paint. We forced 14 turnovers and scored 16 points off turnovers. I honestly felt like there were more opportunities to speed this game up and try to get some easy points off turnovers since we labored to get every point we got, because of poor outside shooting). Secondly, although we were 1-15 from three-point land we were also 20-33 from 2-point land with 40 points in the paint. I think there were more opportunities to push it to try to get easy buckets or continuing to hammer it inside. Timberlake was so awesome at Hofstra I don't want to be too hard on him, but he should not have led the team with 16 field goal attempts with the shooting night he had when Holden was 7-13 and Thompson was 5-7. It is very strange after losing to a 0-11 team, but I didn't think we played awful. It was a terrible shooting night, but I actually thought a lot of good lucks were slightly rushed and missed. Mostly in Timberlake's case, which is completely understandable since he could not miss at Hofstra and was playing in front of all sorts of friends and family. That is just human nature. The main three lessons I got out of this is we need to be more aggressive when teams try to slow down the pace against us, if the three is not falling we need to probe a little more for not just the good shot, but the best shot we can get, and third even without Nolan Jr. we have enough options offensively to figure out plan B and C and realize when our first and second ideas might not be working on a given night. To beat a dead horse, right now Nolan Jr. is the missing piece to making us probably the first or second-best team in this conference. Without him, we are one of the 4 or 5 best (we can be the best on a given night but not any night), but we have to work a lot harder and have a lot less of a margin for error. I still feel good, but the margin for error is extremely low both in conference play (for a title or top 2 seed) and especially (as usual) in the conference tournament (not that I am saying anything we don't all know).

Don't want to take us to negative town because I feel good about this team, the way they are playing, and the matchup. However, I can't help but have bad flashbacks to our last really good team in 2013-14 losing to a 0-10 UNC-Wilmington game. I am pretty sure we won't take this one lightly, but I only bring this up because I think we can win the regular-season title this year and we only have room for maybe 2-3 more losses (obviously one is fairly likely with the continued Delaware game) if we want to do so. Let's avoid silly losses to teams we should beat. We all know Bill Coen is a great coach, but they are 0-11 and we need to take care of business. Let's not have this happen. https://towsontigers.com/news/2014/2/11/Tigers_Have_Four_Game_Win_Streak_Snapped_at_UNCW.aspx

I meant to say in Hofstra's eight conference games, we are the only team to be favored against them so far.

We are three-point underdogs tonight, which makes sense. It is only the seventh time all year we have been underdogs: at Pittsburgh -6 vs. San Francisco -13.5 vs. New Mexico -2.5 at Kent State -6.5 at Ohio State -14 at Delaware -1.5 We were 2.5-point favorites in the first matchup. We were also 9.5-point favorites against UNC-Wilmington. Amazingly, UNC-W has been underdogs in six of its 9 conference games. In eight conference games, we were the only team to be favored over them. They lost as a 4-point favorite to UNC-W and as a 16.5-point favorite at William & Mary. I know not everyone cares about the gambling aspect of these games, but I found this interesting to look at to view the overall perception and performances based on expectations of Towson and Hofstra.

Here is the NCAA Stat Report. http://stats.ncaa.org/rankings/ranking_summary. I agree the Nolan Jr. with and without record is an oddity (although three of those losses are Monmouth, San Francisco and Ohio State, who are probably three of the four best teams we have played, if not that three best). I always find it interested to see where Towson ranks individually and as a team in key areas as we get deeper in the season. A couple of things jump out to me. One, is our field goal percentage defense (which I have to imagine was abysmal last year) and the second is that we are back to doing a classic Skerry quality and that is getting to the line in bunches. By the way with referees calling the game inconsistently at the college level, our reliance on free throws may be one of the biggest reasons we historically struggled in the conference tournament. Still, it isn't a bad identity to have overall. More relevant to Nolan Jr., He is 18th in the nation in the assistant-to-turnover ratio and first in the conference at 2.88-1 assist to turnovers. As a team, we are posting a positive assist-to-turnover ratio. I did a quick scan at that stats, and it looked like we have not had a positive assist-to-turnover ratio since the 2008-09 season (not a particularly good season, but still interesting). I will continue to say with a healthy Nolan Jr., we can plan on ways to get through the conference tournament because we have a strong enough roster to be one of the favorites. Without him, we are hoping everyone shows up and plays great for three straight days. It can happen, but the odds are very different. I am not saying this to contradict your post, because I actually find it very interesting. I am just reiterating what many others have said, that Nolan Jr. really helps us distribute the ball better, give us more offensive options, and helps reliever some of the pressure on guys like Timberlake, Gibson and Rizzuto.

While this is true, I think a big part of this has been the transfer portal. With guys having the remaining one-year of eligibility and Pat Skerry not having a great stretch of results (really only have one good year in the last three) getting transfers for immediate results made more sense to focus on for him. Even last year, we chose to go all in on Zane Martin, Cam Allen, Curtis Holland, Demetrius Mims and Victor Uyaelunmo. I am not saying it was the right thing to do (and of course last year it blew up in our face spectacularly), but you throw that many spots at transfers it is hard to put together a good freshmen class. This year it is working out alright. You are probably right overall about the quality of the freshmen, but hard to know completely because they are being block by better, more-experience players in the transfers we brought in this year.

It is inexcusable and should not happen. I get that the point of message boards are to speculate and second-guess, but directing criticisms at specific areas without knowing all of the facts and basing them on people or parts of the department we might suspect is somewhat unfair. I would think we will get more information sometime soon, and we can direct our blame and comments once we have more information.

Coincidentally we beat one of those teams to up our road record, and one of those teams beat us to pad their road record.

Agreed, I think Towson, Delaware and Hofstra are all more talented, but UNC-Wilmington is playing tough, locked-in team basketball. They play Hofstra on Saturday, and if they beat them they will have beaten all of the three teams listed above who I think those are the three best teams in the conference on paper. When the conference tournament rolls around it will probably be like last year where 6-7 teams are capable of winning it.