Tiger93

Thanks for the update. Seems like a lot of interesting pieces going into the year. Hard to get overly optimistic, but it does sound like Skerry is trying to evolve and do different things. We will see how that translates in-season. Last year was a disaster, but in his defense there were a lot of teams who had those types of years with the uncertainty of last season. We are only two years removed from a nice CAA run at the end of the season. Hopefully a somewhat normal offseason can help this group of players establish some chemistry. There is clearly potential, but as others have said even with the decent quality of stats these transfers have coming into the program it is hard not to take a "prove it to me" approach to this program at this point.

I am with everyone else who wishes we could get a big name team to SECU, but overall Monmouth, Penn and UNC Greensboro are the type of teams I like to see us play in the non-conference, especially at home. Penn and UNC Greensboro have both made the NCAA Tournament within the last few years (UNC Greensboro last year), and Monmouth had a couple of seasons in 2016-17 and 2017-18 that I would kill to see Towson have. Overall a pretty solid schedule. I actually liked our schedule last year, we were just awful and the pauses hurt us as well. No idea what to expect this year, but at least the transfers seem better on paper based on the stats at their respective previous institutions. Of course that is no guarantee of anything. Football and basketball both are complete wildcards this year in terms of what they could do. I am not trying to be overly optimistic, but both definitely have some upside on paper and if you remove some of the recent disappointment there are some things to get excited about. That being said, we all know the reasons to wait and see before buying into anything that is too optimistic.

It is probably a break for us that we are not playing Delaware since we already have NDSU, San Diego State and James Madison as games that seem very difficult to project as wins. Still, I hate that they are not on our schedule. They may not view us as their primary rival, but it is definitely a rivalry especially with all the wild games we have historically played against them with unexpected results. This is one of those quirks I hate about modern college football. They should be a team we play every year. When I look at our schedule, even if we are really good it is hard to imagine getting more than seven wins. With the tough matchups against San Diego State and NDSU (and the conference game at James Madison), we will have to be near perfect in our conference if we want to make the playoffs. I hope we can piece together the talent it sounds like we have in our transfers. Looking forward to finally having Towson Football back after the long hiatus

You are correct. It wasn't just Towson, the Big South did not get a NCAA Tournament bid that year. I believe that is why we redshirted Scooter Alexander. I think the conference not having a bid had something to do with combination of Campbell leaving, UNC Greensboro only recently having joined the conference, Towson leaving the next year and maybe one or two other schools in the same category. It was one of those weird situations where not enough schools in the conference were eligible or something similar to that. Sorry to hijack the thread with old history. Just wanted to close the loop on the conversation.

I definitely remember the Michigan game was the first home game of the Mike Jaskulski era (not sure he deserves to even have an era). Me and one of my friends drove to American to watch Towson win on the road in his first game as head coach. In his first home game they played the Wolverines pretty tough until the end. I think you are right that Truax worked that out with Fisher/Ellerbe prior to getting fired. I would agree that year might have been the beginning of the end of Truax, but we redshirted Scooter Alexander that season. I thought I remembered that we were ineligible to make the NCAA Tournament out of the Big South that year because we were transitioning to the NAC (eventually renamed the America East). That West Virginia win was a buzzer beater three with the game tied by Ralph Blaylock on Gale Catlett Night. The next year, 1995-96, was probably Truax's last stand when we finished 11-7 and third in the NAC (the next time our conference record would be this good was 2012-13). I remember an odd scheduling quirk had us play Delaware in the final two games of the season (both of which we lost), but then we knocked them out of the tournament in third straight meeting on their home floor behind several clutch Florian Schneider three-pointers off the bench. We made it to the conference tournament semifinals (something we did not replicate until Kennedy's magical run in 2009), and lost when the referees gave Jeff Myers and Malik Rose a parade to the free-throw line. The next year was Truax's last, as he went 9-19 despite a great year form Ralph Biggs. I also thought they should have given him one more year, but as we have seen with Skerry I am admittedly forgiving to coaches and always think they are 1-2 players away from putting things together. I remember before they got rid of Truax hearing a rumor that North Carolina might come to the Towson Center (I believe Truax was a grad assistant there), but in retrospect that probably was not true. As for scheduling then vs. scheduling now, I agree it was very different. Like you said, I believe that Louisville game was actually scheduled either right before or during the first week or two of the season. I have never heard of anything like that happening at the D-1 level. The one thing that I think is the same between the two eras is that previous relationships or visits home for a star players are often reasons for big teams to come to a smaller team's gym. They also usually do require 2-for-1s so I don't think that is sword Skerry should die on if the right opportunity is presented. I am just surprised that Skerry has never been able to get Pittsburgh or TCU to come here with the relationship it seems like he has with Jamie Dixon, but I do understand that might be a tad simplistic. Sorry for the long post, but I just enjoyed Towson basketball so much from my freshman year 1993-94 through my senior year 1996-97 (even when we were bad his last year, Truax's teams played a fun style). Skerry has brought back some of the winning with not quite as enjoyable of a style. I just want another year like 2013-14 where I can actually trick myself into believing we have a shot to make the NCAA Tournament. My freshman year (1993-94) when we dominated the Big South only to lost to Liberty in the semifinals, the aforementioned 1996-97 season and 2013-14 season were the only seasons in nearly 30 years of watching Towson basketball where I let myself believe it was possible to get to the NCAA Tournament (I got excited, but never truly believed it during the Kennedy run in the CAA Tournament in 2008-09).

This is were I really miss the late Terry Truax. He got Louisville and Michigan to come here while I was a student at Towson. I remember towards the end of his tenure there were even rumors that he was close to getting North Carolina to come to Towson (those may be exaggerated). As time goes, by his accomplishment of getting Towson the NCAA Tournament twice grows in mythical proportions.

Three Man Weave, which is probably the best podcast I have heard at comprehensively covering all D-1 conferences the best that they can, did a deep dive on the Transfer Portal last week. When they were talking about Mid-Major programs, they gave a quick plug to what Towson has done in the Transfer Portal. They then proceeded to talk about how Skerry gets a few interesting transfers every year and they are middle-of-the road to lower team that does the same thing. They admitted they watch very little Towson basketball, and said the primary reason for is they hate FloSports! Despite the fact, that they know very little about Towson I thought the 30-45 second soundbyte captured perfectly what we are as a program and the same things that frustrate all of us. I guess it is encouraging that they saw what we have done in the transfer market and gave it a shout out considering they were looking at a Google Doc that had every player in the Transfer Portal and a list and rating for everyone who has transferred in and out for every program. I am not saying they are experts in this, but they have put in more work to understand it than 99.9% of people covering college basketball. They talk about Towson (very quickly) around the 1:05:00 mark of the podcast. It looks like on their website they are one episode behind and don't have #211 (where this is featured) up, but it is on all the podcast platforms. https://www.three-man-weave.com/podcasts

Of course in typical Towson fashion we lost the next two of the series right after you posted this. Still, glad to see some positive momentum around the program. The CAA site says there will be six teams in the conference tournament field. I am wondering how they will do that with nine teams split in the South (5) and North Division. Towson is currently second in the North Division and would have the second-best winning percentage. Still a long way to go with four-game series at Northeastern and Delaware, and a home series against Hofstra.

I know we are likely done with transfers and I am not even sure this kid is at a high level, but seems like a Four McGlynn type shooter from the little I saw of him as a freshman at Georgetown.

I feel like Skerry has always done a pretty solid job of bringing in decently high-level transfers (last year being a notable exception) and even recruiting some talented freshmen. Where it has gone south recently is keeping them here and blending them into a solid team. Even though I have often complained that our teams do the same things well and poorly year in and year out, last year's team had zero identity. I will give a pass on that with Covid, and I am guessing Zane and Skerry would be admit it was a mistake to run it back again. Hopefully, this is a group that will at least have time to blend together in the offseason, be ready to compete and have a chip on their shoulder after a miserable 20-21 season.

I am right with everyone in doubting Skerry, but just because this year (and three of the last four years) was a disaster does not mean he has given up and can't sell a clear vision of how he things we get to a conference title. I am not saying it will work, but I know he won't stop trying to do it. Say what you want, but he has convinced Frank Mason (didn't qualify or play), Justin Gorham (transferred after one year and is now going to the Final Four) and Jerelle Benimon to come to Towson at one point or another. Benimon and Gorham are probably as talented as any players who have stepped foot on campus outside of Devon Boyd, Chuck Lightening, Kurk Lee and Gary Neal (maybe as it ended up Michael Green as well). I believe the level of talent has gone up since Skerry has come here (not including what we just watched). He just has a brutal style, does not coach well in one-game elimination scenarios and needs to update his thinking to modern basketball. That doesn't mean that he can't grind on the recruiting trailing, lay out his vision and hopefully for all of our sakes trip over the next Benimon. If we all bemoan being stuck with Skerry for the next five years, I think our only hope is the mantra "Players win championships not coaches". We all bemoan the fact we are stuck with Skerry. The only optimism I have left is somehow he convinces a player that this place is the right program for him and we get lucky. That is what we are all hoping for remote as it may be. I agree with Datres about waiting until transfers actually get to campus (heck that holds true any player no matter their hype), but the fact of the matter is with the transfer market the way it is there are more opportunities to get good quick if you can find the right fit for a player who is leaving another situation. Sometimes I feel like people here don't want Skerry to succeed. When getting another coach is reality, we can have that conversation. Until that time, I want him to succeed and he did at one point have a degree of success at Towson. It has just been really rough recently. I have a lot of doubt about what he can still do with this program, but I hope some day he breaks through and shoves all these comments back in our faces. Until then, I will continue to scan the transfers and recruits and hope we luck out and find the next impact player who makes Skerry look good.

Good story, and at 6'3 he seems big enough to get off better shots than most of our guards were getting this past year. Hopefully he has a better shot selection. I am done being too optimistic about this program for now, but the first two transfers do seem like solid additions who actually bring some size to the guard spot (and maybe some adequate shooting) which we lacked last year. I am sure this year probably caused Skerry to take a long hard look in the mirror and make some big changes to his approach. Doesn't mean it will work, but hopefully it will at least make for a tolerable product to watch next year. The Northeastern game was the only thing to get excited about at all this year.

Agreed with just about everything that has been written on this thread. I completely agree on the point with the pathetic showings in the tournament, but that is not just Skerry (even though his winning pct. relative to seeding is the worst). I started as a freshman in 1993 and we have never made a conference tournament final in that stretch, and have only gone to five conference tournament semifinals in that timeframe (Truax - Big South semi against Liberty, 1993-94; Truax - NAC (America East) semi vs Drexel, 1996-97; Kennedy - CAA semis vs. George Mason, 2008-09; Skerry - CAA semis vs. William & Mary, 2013-14; and Skerry CAA semis vs. College of Charleston, 2016-17). We are 0-5 in conference semi games since 1992 when we won the ECC and didn't get an auto bid (another bad stroke of luck). We have lost those games by 5, 10, 8, 12 and 8 so it is not like they have come down to last possession (even though Liberty and Charleston were very close, and I thought I remembered us playing well against Mason in a losing effort). As much as we all rip Kennedy (and I do it more than most), he is the only coach since 1992 to win two conference tournament games in the same year. With all that being said about crappy tournament performances, I still care a lot more about our next coach putting us in position to be a top-three team in this watered down conference on a consistent basis and figuring things out from there. Skerry has done this at times, including last year. However, as much as I was an apologist for him last year, the predictability in style, failure in the conference tournament, transfer of too many players and being really crappy 2 of the last 3 season (I know COVID gives him somewhat of a pass, but the program has been heading this away since all of the transfer going the 2018-19) is too much to argue against. I think it has also been brought up that this AD is not the right person to make this hire. I completely agree with this. This has to start from the top down. I agree with whoever said we hate talking about people get fired and losing their jobs, and that was part of why I felt it was unfair to talk about Skerry like this last year when we went 12-6 in conference play. However, I like the rest of you am sick of no hope as a Towson fan. If this group (who I know are all great fans) feels like this, the amount of apathy outside of here is going to only make things worse in a tough financial program. Something needs to be done to get this on track, but obviously we are stuck in a situation where there are not many options. Mat, thanks for writing the player profiles piece, because that is really all we can focus on until we figure out some other things. It is depressing, but the players are really all we can change at this point and we can keep hoping someone impactful walks through the door and makes the situation better. That is the only way right now.

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.