Tiger93

56 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Also regarding the game 12.5 is a huge number. Looks like Aggies have a high volume shooter with 21.5 ppg (players can average thaT much?!) and shoot a lot of threes and don’t rebound. 

That seems like a good combo for Towson to actually look like a team that can score for a night. I expect a knock-down-drag it out affair on Saturday at UNC-W much like last year, but this game might be similar to Monmouth last week in the sense that we look better for one night before going back to the mean of what our offense has generally been for most of the year. 

2 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

My thought process was, if we any pride whatsoever, come out strong tonight.  Saturday they see the large crowd and tv camera and do what they usually do 💩 the 🛌.  A &T is decent at home and we stink on the road so.  And then think we play well first half on Saturday then trask takes over and uncw wins a close one (just because somehow skerry is good head to head against siddle)

I think we win both games at home, but I will be in attendance on Saturday and I don't have a great streak so that might not be a win. I think we win tonight, and I am pretty confidence we win either Saturday or against NC A&T. I also like the way we play against UNC-W against Siddle. They just seem like a good match up for us. Of course, the only combination of results that would really surprise (and disappoint me) would be 0-4. 

50 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Haha.  Like I’ve said, if we win one the rest of the way, it’s likely tonight 

For whatever it is worth, I guarantee we win at least two more games this regular-season. I don't know if I am willing to go any more than that. We could go 4-0 and we could go 1-3 (again, more likely 2-2). I don't say that to be optimistic or pessimistic, this team has just been mixed bag of good and awful this year and I think that is the mixed bag we probably get these last four games. 

3 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Yup. There’s a reason good teams aren’t good at offensive rebounding. Good teams score. Which means they make shots which means they don’t miss said shots and thus cannot or do not need to chase down their misses. 
Like our defense. It’s ok not good. But we play so slow it helps masks everything. We do not defend that well. Teams shoot a decent % against us. But only getting 61 possessions limits their points 

 

Again, an awful game and three coach again ducks the post game? Where the F is the accountability?!  Loser move by pat

It is a little too reductive to say good teams aren't good at offensive rebounding. Houston is fifth in the nation in offensive rebounding and they are pretty good. However, your point that the combination of bad layup percentage, subpar three-point shooting, horrible free-throw shooting and inconsistency of taking care of the ball make being a good offensive-rebounding team less relevant makes sense to me.

I really have a hard time with our defense, because it had a lot of breakdowns yesterday (13-18 layups for Hampton) and has had them at times this season. Ultimately, I think the defense can play at a high level, but it is too inconsistent to label really good. We had an awesome start defensively in the conference, but we have seen some opponents play well against it recently. I also think the offense has been so bad in so many games it makes it hard to realistically assess the defense. I look at it like bad offense in football. The defense can only be good for so long before the dam breaks. 

19 hours ago, TSU88 said:

I hear what you’re saying, and of course I don’t advocate just throwing in the towel on the rest of the season, but at some point any changes/tweaks are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The talent just isn’t there 

I am not fully disagreeing here, but the thing that makes this game so frustrating is there is enough talent there because it is not a great conference this year. This is a mediocre conference, and we have beaten the top three teams (four of the top five) at some point (I know two have come at home and that is a big difference from doing it on a neutral court). An effort like this when we are in the mix for regular-season conference title (which I know some of you don't care about, but I do) is inexcusable. I don't like the style or the sub patterns. They are too inconsistent and they don't seem to fit the players. The players also completely no-showed in the first half. This season is not over despite what some say, but obviously it is ridiculous loss. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I can't be positive after a crap loss like this, but we have been much better at home (although our starts there have been bad lately too) so I am just wondering what Jekyl and Hyde version shows on Thursday and Saturday this week. 

Horrible, horrible loss. Not much else to say (but of course I will say a decent amount anyways). They know it, we know it and everyone in the conference who is battling for a seed in the tournament certainly knows it. One stat that jumped out at me. Layups, Towson 10-32 and Hampton 13-18. It defeats the purpose to get 19 offensive rebounds if you struggle to put them back in to the basket. I know hitting shots right by the basket can be harder than it looks, but we take it to whole different level. 

I just wish we could get a consistent 7-8 games from any of our top three offensive players. May, Williamson and Tarke all run so hot and cold, and they were all kind of frigid today. The three of them had 20 points total and were a collective 8-34 from the field (five of those were May, Tarke and Williamson were 3-21). Bottom line is a against good teams we need at least two of those guys (or Tejada) to show up with Thompson. Against bad teams only one. We got a burst from May at the end of the first half and early in the second half and that was about it. 

I feel like I end up sounding like a huge Charles Thompson apologist, because I feel like the defensive effort, rebounds and the two or three putbacks he gives every night is good enough if he just has two good offensive teammates show up. However, his touch around the basket has been horrendous (he could have scored 25 tonight if he could make some of his shots around the basket). He should never take more than 10 shots in a game, but I don't blame him when no one else is hitting shots. The more we have to rely on his post moves the more the offense gets bogged down because it takes him such a long tie to get into his shot. I will still stand by the fact that we shouldn't need him to score any more than 8-10 points if the other guys are hitting shots. I am not saying he played well, but he played well enough that if everyone else did something we should win this game. 

Of course, we also blew another golden opportunity in seeding with UNC-W falling against Elon. I don't even think Charleston is that good this year, but everyone is trying their hardest to hand them another conference title. I am in town for next week's game against Charleston, and I hope we can look better than we have lately in that game. 

It was frustrating that we shot 48.9% and William & Mary shot 30.3% and they were still in the game until the last couple of minutes. They shot 19 more shots than we did (66-47). I know a lot of that came in garbage time, but it shouldn't have come at all. This was a team we should beat by 20, but it was close because of a subpar effort.

I did think this might have been Charles Thompson's best all-around conference game of the season. I know he missed some bunnies and had that stupid outburst, but he was a physical force on the floor and was the best player in this game from start to finish in my opinion. Tarke was a little wild with some of his turnovers, but he only took six shots and also put his physical imprint on the game with a couple of steals and a nice block. It was nice to see May get a little bit of his shooting rhythm back too. I also liked the way Sulaiman play. They didn't have anyone to match Sulaiman or Thompson's physicality it is just unfortunately we can't make the second-chance layups to make them pay.

We just have to keep winning. This team has enough talent to make a conference race out of this and make it to Wilmington at 13-4. However, they also have enough inconsistency to lose three games between now and then and be fighting it out for 5 or 6 seed. It will probably end up somewhere in the middle. 

This game scares me. William & Mary has only won at home once in conference play, but they came close to picking off Charleston. Of course, similar to the way our lack of offense can keep opponents in a game at times Charleston's porous defense makes teams look better too. Case in point, our strong offensive performance against them.

I believe taking a quick count Skerry is 12-14 against William & Mary, and I put the loss to them when we had Benimon in the conference tourney semifinals as a top five most painful (probably No. 3 for me) loss as a Towson fan since the 1993-94 season. 

24 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

The last 4 games on the schedule will be brutal.  Not looking past the next three at all but 5-2 with some tiebreakers should get a top4. That path was a lot easier 24 hours ago

No doubt about that, but if you look at the teams occupying the top six spots the other teams have to lose at some point too. If we take care of business against the non-top six (not a given) we will have at least 12 wins. Here are all the times top six teams will face each other the rest of the way

Feb. 15 - Hofstra at Drexel
Feb. 22 - Drexel at Hofstra, Charleston at Delaware
Feb. 24 - Charleston at Towson
Feb. 26 - Drexel at Delaware
Feb. 29 - Hofstra at UNC-W
March 2 - Towson at UNC-W, Hofstra at Charleston

Drexel (2A, 1H), Hofstra (2A, 1H) and Charleston (2A, 1H) all have three of those matchups left with two of the three for all of them on the road. UNC-W (2H), Towson (1 H, 1A) and Delaware (2H) have two left, and we are the only ones who do play on the road out of those remaining two. 

Stony Brook and Monmouth have also been tough at home and Stony Brook still hosts Delaware and travels to Drexel. Monmouth plays at Towson and hosts Stony Brook. Those two teams could also be dangerous in a tournament setting. Still a lot of stuff can unfold here when you take into account none of these teams are juggernauts. 

Keep in mind Charleston and Hofstra only lost twice in conference last year, and everyone already has at least three losses this year. There hasn't been a season since 2014-15 in the CAA where the regular-season champion has had more than four losses. I think we are heading that way this year. 

This is where we get into the drawbacks of our pace of play. If there are only going to be 59 possession by both teams and one shoots 11-19 from three and the other shoots 4-17 it is game over. That is a 21-point difference. We were +6 in turnovers, +8 in offensive rebounds (Charles had one less than Delaware) and +19 in field goal attempts and it didn't a mean a thing because we were playing from behind the whole game, we couldn't shoot and our offense just isn't very efficient even at its best. I give our guys credit for coming back against Northeastern, but our style and offense does not allow for any margin of error, and when we fall behind big early it is that much harder to overcome. 

Full disclosure, I only got to see the first half before I had to go to a previous commitment. However, it seemed like much of the same in the second half. From an offensive efficiency standpoint, we can not have Tarke and Thompson take 29 combined shots while May, Williamson and Tejada take 23. I know that is mostly because Thompson and Tarke are fearless and will always look to be aggressive, but even when he is struggling we need to find a way to get May more than six shots. Some of that is on him and some of that is on the guys not trying harder to get him some good looks to get going. 

After the Northeastern game, I mentioned that I would think teams would look at the tape to see how they have dissected our defense since they were pretty efficient in both meetings against Towson. Delaware clearly made some adjustments, but they also just hit some shots. They could have beaten us in Newark, but their shooting was atrocious. This time their shooting showed up. I praised our switching defense and three-point shooting early on in conference play, but it hasn't been very good the last two games. However, I also think we all know that there is a large element make or miss luck in three-point defense. The law of averages has definitely evened itself out. I know we played bad three-point defense in this game, but I would love to see a chart on open three makes and misses. I would guess Delaware missed 6 or 7 open threes in the first matchup, and they seemed to know down most of their open looks last night. 

We talk about our slow tempo compared to other teams, but we had 67 possessions in the first game against Delaware and our efficiency was actually worse than it was last night (1.000 in the first game to 1.051 last night) when we had only 59 possessions. In the losses against Hofstra and Delaware we have averaged (59.5 possessions averaged in the two games) less than our 63.4 possessions per game in conference (61.7 overall). I was wondering if it is part of their strategy to slow things down. That would make more sense last night than it would against Hofstra since Delaware jumped all over us and had control for the entire game. 

Being unbeatable at home was one of the things that had me optimistic about a top four and possible higher spot. Now that we are done with that, we will have to scratch and claw the rest of the way for a top 4 seed.

Our conference is probably the deepest race at the top of any in the nation. Right now, the CAA, Big 12, Horizon (they have already played 15 conference games), Mountain West, Pac-12 and Summit are the only leagues where the first place team has three losses. Every other conference has a team has with 0, 1 or 2 in first. We are also the only league with six teams within one game of first place. The Big 12 has four and six within 1.5 games, the MEAC has five, and the Mountain West has five and seven within 1.5 games. 

I only bring this up because there is really no reason to be overly pessimistic or optimistic about where we are now. We put ourselves in a good spot after nine conference games, we messed that up a little the last two, and we have a chance to somewhat fix it the next three before things get really tough. 

I do agree with Mat, that we have to tweak a few lineups and rotations. 

1 minute ago, TuTigers2012 said:

He plays 22 mpg. He’s good but needs to be dominant for that amount of time to be considered.  

Yeah, I definitely think the weakness in all these basketball analytics are always that they give too much credence to efficiency and not enough to someone who may have warts, but can carry a team for better or worse for 33-40 minutes of play. 

20 minutes ago, BK_Brian said:

Kinda interesting/sad that in 2023 Charles Thompson was #2 on this list of POY and in 2024 he does not appear in the top 15.   https://barttorvik.com/poy.php?year=2023&conlimit=CAA 

That is kind of sad, although I do think the responsibility is spread out throughout the team for better or worse this year. Last year, we kind lived and died with Charles, Cam and Nick. This year, there about 7-8 guys that we can distribute various responsibilities. Of course, as we said I am not sure anyone is as much of a go-to offensive player as Cam or Nick. Although, I do think based on the Hofstra game we are getting to the point where Williamson and May are becoming our go-to guys, and Tarke is willing to play aggressive offensively for better or for worse (and it as been a mix of both).  

I also think guys like Sulaiman, Lowery and Jones are cutting into Charles' rebounding (in conference play) totals in a good way. Last year, Charles was one of three double-figure scores (along with Cam and Nick). This year there are three double-figure scores (Tarke, May and Williamson). I do think that takes some of the onus off him, and he can focus more on locking in on the defensive end and trying to help those guys get into good scoring spots. 

Here is rundown of his stats in 18 conferences games last year and 10 conference games this year:

2023: 11.8 ppg, 53% FG, 8.3 rpg, 1.6 apg, 0.9 steals per game and 1.7 blpg
2024: 8.6 ppg, 56.4%, 6.9 rpg, 2.6 apg, 1.2 steals per game and 1.5 blpg

As a team in 18 conference games in 2023 we averaged: 72.94 ppg (gave up 66.28 ppg), shot 44.6% (opp. shot 42.3%), shot 40.5% from three (opp. shot 33.1%), had a rebound margin of 5.0 rpb (36.3-31.3) and blocked 3.33 shots per game

As a team in 10 conference games in 2024 we are averaging: 67.7 ppg (giving up 62.5 ppg), shooting 40.9% (giving up 41.8%), shooting 36.4% from three (giving up 29.0%), have a rebounding margin of 3.3 rpg (37.1-33.8, I think this is partially because we are much worse shooting team and are giving people more def. rebounds because of it) and blocking 4.4 shots per game. 

9 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Interesting.  I just don’t understand Williams that high in POTY. 

I would agree. I know scoring is not the end-all-be-all of player assessment, but hard to imagine the 17th-ranked scorer in conference play being the race for Player of the Year. Also, even on that player breakdown they have him 14th on what appears to be a similar stat to WAR in baseball called PRPG (I find it interesting that Williamson is our highest ranked player on this at 21). He is first in what I believe is the average +/- per game. Although, I would guess that will change with trips to UNC-W and Charleston. 

Some of these analytics are not always the best as it relates to actual knowledge or information about the conference, but they are interesting reference points:

Regular-season title odds - https://barttorvik.com/conodds.php?conf=CAA
Player of the Year odds (again I have no idea what data set they use for this - https://barttorvik.com/poy.php?conlimit=CAA&year=2024&yr=
Conference-only efficiency stats - https://barttorvik.com/teamstats.php?conyes=1&conlimit=CAA&year=2024&sort=2
Conference-only player ratings - https://barttorvik.com/playerstat.php?link=y&minGP=1&cvalue=CAA&year=2024&start=20240101&end=20240203

32 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

What’s the old saying about role players? They show up more often than not a home but not on the road.  A team with balanced scoring and can have anyone lead the team any given night is a nice thing. But to have that on the road is much tougher. 
 

While Charleston isn’t as good as last year, the middle pack schools are better than last

Agreed, my only point on Charleston is I thought we showed up and played a solid game against them in the tournament last year they were just better than us. It wasn't like 2022, where we were the best team and didn't really show up. I am not saying either one is better than the other, because at the end of the day we didn't accomplish our goals either year. My main point is everything is more wide open this year. I am not sure if that is better or worse, it is just the state of the conference this year. 

1 hour ago, TSU88 said:

What is our highest shooting percentage in any conference road game this season? It was dreadful vs Monmouth, NE & Hofstra (I think we scored something like a combined 158 points in those 3 games). I don’t think it was particularly good in the W vs DE (I doubt we shot above 40% in that game). That would leave C of C, which ironically was very likely our best shooting performance on the road. 

No matter how good we are in the friendly confines of TU Arena, we are eventually going to have to win 3 straight (hopefully only 3) away from campus, to grab that elusive brass ring 
 

Here is what I wrote earlier about this topic. We have had three good shooting halfs, six bad ones, and one fairly solid half. The good news is that a lot of teams have road struggles and no one is any more familiar with the conference tournament area then we are. I also don't think there is a team as good as Charleston was last year, so in that respect the conference seems more up for grabs. The bad news is our conference tournament karma and history, and it only takes on bad shooting half to sink a team in single elimination. 

On the road in conference play, we are now 103-277 (37.2%). If you take out the 30-58 performance at Charleston (which obviously shouldn't be taken out) it gets a lot worse. We have six bad halfs, one decent half and three good halfs. We shot 57% in the second half at Northeastern, 50% and 54% at Charleston, and a decent 43% in the first half at Delaware.  We shot 33% in the first half against Hofstra and 27% in the second half, 24% in the first half at Northeastern, 35% in the second half at Delaware, and 23% and 31% at Monmouth. 

I love the effort and defense of this team, but this is one of the big reasons why as much as I like the talent and depth on this roster it gets very dicey come tournament play. Right now, in 10 halfs away from Towson in CAA play, six of the 10 have been 35% or worse shooting halfs. One half like that sinks you tournament play.

Yeah, that is why polls don't really mean much. We have played as well as all those teams so far, but UNC-W and Charleston have much better overall recognition than our program does, and Drexel is still in first. The only way we can earn respect is on the court.

The Delaware game worries me because they were so piss poor shooting in the earlier game. Of course, we weren't much better. Two years ago they came in on a mission to beat us at home, and they probably would have if the game didn't get stopped and continued later. We need to be ready for everything they will throw our way. Not that anything is a given, but if we beat Delaware we will be 8-3 going into three straight games teams in the bottom three of the standings. Of course, two of those are road games and our offense has been wildly inconsistent on the road. 

1 hour ago, TuTigers2012 said:

6th in fg %. 4th in 3%. 6th in d rebounding %. Middle of pack in turnovers.  ABOVE average. And that’s helped by playing slow

We won't play anyone outside of our conference for the rest of the year unless we win the CAA Tournament, so I am judging our conference rankings being the most relevant for quality of defense the remainder of the way.

Right now in 10 CAA games, we are fourth in opponent field goal percentage at .418, which is .07 off of second place. We lead the league in opponent 3pt-FG pct at .290 (two other teams are very closed at .294), although the fact that the top five at .321 or under shows part of that is this just isn't a very good league at the three-point shot. We have yielded the second-least free thrown attempts (160), we are third in turnovers per possession in conference play at 17.2% (Northeastern is 17.8% and Campbell is 17.4%), and we are first in defensive efficiency or points allowed per possession at .984 per possession is .026 (or 2.6 pts per 100 possessions) better than the next best defense of Stony Brook at 1.010 (third place is Drexel at 1.035). Even our defensive rebound percentage is sixth in the league. 

I know tempo helps all of that, but I do think it spells out that we are probably the best defense in this conference. That being said, there are some very ugly numbers on offense which make this a challenge. This link has some interesting ways to compare all those numbers. 

https://barttorvik.com/?sort=AdjOE&begin=20231101&end=20240501&conlimit=CAA&year=2024&top=0&venue=All&type=C&mingames=0&quad=5&rpi=#
 

5 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Agree and wasn’t saying our defense was awful. It’s not elite. It’s above average and a lot of that is due to pace, that masks a lot of things. Until Saturday we had done a good job at defending the three. 
 

that is fine and all but he’s a 5th year senior and capable of giving more than 2 points 1 offensive rebound. Not asking for him to be wilt or Kareem, or even last years charles but we need just a bit more from him especially against teams with no front court.  We also need him to stay on the court thrusts against Jyaire 

Sure, the Delaware game was a disappointment and I think he would be the first to say that. However, all in all I didn't think he was terrible against Hofstra. Probably a little below standard, but he did enough to help us win if we could hit any shots. He was active defensively with a couple of key blocks and his key assists and bad turnovers probably canceled out into a net-neutral.

Sure, you would like your 5th-year senior to exert his will on a game like that, but that probably isn't what he is giving us outside of the steals, blocks, rebounds and defensive plays he makes. Those are really valuable, but I can't blame anyone for wanting a little more offense. My only point is his offense does well when others are stretching out the opposing defenses and giving him room to make plays. When we can't hit a shot and things get congested he is not the place to look offensively. 

1 hour ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Hofstra is better defensively than in years past but 56 points against them isn’t enough. 

Our defense is average and it’s bolstered by playing slow. Hofstra shot 45.1 and 47.8% from deep. We turned them over 10 times which is good on the number of possessions. 

 Would have liked lowery on Thomas more than May. He looked tired and that affected his offense. We need him to score.  
Charles  isn’t an offensive player but he needs more than 2 points, 3 shots and 1 offensive rebound against a small pride team  chase had better numbers in half the minutes. 

Agreed somewhat on our pace dictating the defense. However, if you sort the numbers in conference vs. non-conference it is a very different story. Our defensive efficiency in non-conference was 1.035 points per possession, which was ranked 166th in the nation. Since conference play started, we are 57th in defensive efficiency (0.984 points per possessions).

This probably supports the notion that our conference is a little weaker defensively, and most opponents play into our hands with a slower tempo. However, I would say our defense has definitely raised its level in conference play, with some of that being helped by familiarity of the opponent. Second through sixth is pretty similar in terms of opponent field goal percentage in conference play, and we have only played two games against the bottom part of our conference (of course one of those was the lost to Northeastern). Conversely, Drexel leads the team in opponent field goal percentage, but has played four of its 10 games against teams with losing records, and hasn't play Charleston, Hofstra or UNC-W yet. 

As for Charles, I really think it is about what is going on in the context of the game. We don't need him to shoot or score if any two of Tejada, May, Tarke or Williamson are shooting well. Those players all have a better offensive skillset than he does, and Charles isn't particularly great at getting easy looks unless it is playing off a two-man game on the roll with one of those players. It was very helpful when he got to the line and made his free throws in the second half against Northeastern last week. As for offensive rebounds, Lowery, Jones and Sulaiman are all pretty active in that category which limits his opportunities. He is probably the fourth best offensive rebounder on the team.

To me, what we need more out of him is limiting other teams offensive rebounds (he is probably our best defensive rebounder), setting the tone for our switching defense (he has his lapses, but his quickness, toughness and versatility are the reason we can play this defense), guarding the best post player (he is third on the team in steals and first blocks, and generally makes it tough for the person he is defending), and bringing the energy to the team (he is still our heart and soul and everyone knows it). These are his strengths, and when he leans into them and other players do what they do well it generally works.

When he is asked to play outside of this role, it can take us out of the offense because it takes him a while to make his move and get to the basket. I know he is the team leader, but I don't think scoring is what we need from him unless it is something the other team is giving us on a silver platter. I actually think him and Skerry know that. He looks to see what the other team givens him and capitalizes if he sees it. 

That was the first time since the Monmouth game that we have been under a point per possession in a game (.933 points per game in 60 possession) and it was not pretty. I think to some extent Skerry is right that it is make or miss game, and we missed a lot. If we have a couple more shots we win that game, but (and I am not saying this to be critical Skerry, just in genera) it is bad habit to think that way. 

On the road in conference play, we are now 103-277 (37.2%). If you take out the 30-58 performance at Charleston (which obviously shouldn't be taken out) it gets a lot worse. We have six bad halfs, one decent half and three good halfs. We shot 57% in the second half at Northeastern, 50% and 54% at Charleston, and a decent 43% in the first half at Delaware.  We shot 33% in the first half against Hofstra and 27% in the second half, 24% in the first half at Northeastern, 35% in the second half at Delaware, and 23% and 31% at Monmouth. 

I love the effort and defense of this team, but this is one of the big reasons why as much as I like the talent and depth on this roster it gets very dicey come tournament play. Right now, in 10 halfs away from Towson in CAA play, six of the 10 have been 35% or worse shooting halfs. One half like that sinks you tournament play.

Tip your cap to Thomas who made some tough shots. One thing that has been brought up on this board is how good Lowery plays on defense, but what a liability he can be on offense. There was a 4-5 possession stretch where Lowery was covering Thomas. One time Thomas just got the angle on him and hit a jumper, but the other 3-4 times Lowery forced him to him pass it or miss the shot. I think if we played Hofstra again, I would probably use Lowery in that matchup more. The stretch where Lowery was guarding Thomas is where we made our run at the end to tie it at 54 (I am pretty sure). Mat mentioned some good defense by Tarke, and Tarke did make a great block on Carlos with the game tied at 54 to give us a chance to take the lead late. Unfortunately, he had one of his several really bad possession when he committed an offensive charge. 

I honestly think you guys are being a little hard on Charles. The only reason he was a good offensive player at times in 2021-22 was because there were so many options on offense that things came easy to him and Timberlake. When either of those guys are a clear-cut second option on offense things won't come easy. Charles had some bad turnovers, but he had the assist on May's game-tying three late, and also had a couple of key blocks. I like when he scores, but I would rather see this then him force up a bunch of ill-advised shots. 

Honestly, this offense seems at its best when May and Williamson are scoring. They combined for 37 against Northeastern and 39 at Delaware. Yesterday they had 10 points combined. It was probably he 21 bench points, 17 of which came from Sulaiman (10) and Jones (7). Those two had 11 offensive rebounds combined. Unfortunately, Jones, who had been making his shots at a high clip recently, was only 1-6 and missed 3-4 layups in traffic. The team was 10-22 on layups. 

One positive trend I would love to see this team keep up is the free-throw shooting lately. We are 59-70 (84.3%) the last three games and an impossible to replicate 40-44 (90.9%) in the last two. 

Hofstra still hosts Drexel, but UNC-W misses out on traveling there. That will be a tough place to win, and only Charleston has beaten them at home. We have four home and four road games left. Nothing can really be assumed, but I would guess 5-3 is the worst we can go to get a top 4 seed.

I know it is early for this nonsense, but I will start it. Here are the top 6 teams remaining games:

Drexel - at UNC-W, at Charleston, vs. Hofstra, vs. Campbell, at Hofstra, at Delaware, vs. Stony Brook, vs. Northeastern
Towson - vs. Delaware, vs. Elon, at William & Mary (who almost beat Charleston yesterday), at Hampton, vs. Monmouth, vs. Charleston, at NC A&T, at UNC-W
UNC-W - vs. Drexel, at Hampton, vs. NC A&T, vs. Elon, at William & Mary, at Campbell, vs. Hofstra, vs. Towson
Charleston - vs. NC A&T, vs. Drexel, at Northeastern, vs. William & Mary, at Delaware, at Towson, vs. Campbell, vs. Hofstra
Hofstra - at Hampton, at NC &T (I think they lose there last year), at Drexel, vs. Northeastern, at Hofstra, vs. Elon, at UNC-W, at Charleston
Delaware - at Towson, vs. William & Mary, at Elon, at NC A&T, vs. Charleston, vs. Drexel, at Stony Brook 

17 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Top 4 is now the goal since NIT doesn’t happen for finishing first.  Finish top 4. Get whatever amount of byes and go from there. 
Hofstra is tough at home and has three really good offensive weapons 

I still think the main goal is to win the conference, but it is too early to go there and top four is the first step in that conversation. No doubt this is a very difficult matchup for Towson. We played great up there two years ago and were playing well last year in the first half until they shredded our defense in the second half. Hitting a shot at the buzzer to win after trailing by 13 to Stony Brook last game has to give them so momentum heading into tonight's game.

Northeastern feels like the one team so far in this conference that has found a way to get a lot of good looks against our defense, but give Towson credit for really clamping down in that second half. I still wonder if there is anything on the Northeastern film that other teams can use. Although, their style and personnel seems a lot different than others teams in the conference. I have only watched small parts of Hofstra games this year, but the few times I have watched they seem like a really talented team that isn't getting the most collectively out of that talent. Hopefully that spark doesn't go off tonight. Would be nice to be tied for first at the end of the day. 

4 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

To get a top 4 spot, this game is crucial. 

I was thinking bigger, but I get your point about the top four. A win on the road at Hofstra would give us some good separation from one of the major threats to be a top four team.

That UNCW sweep of Charleston is going to loom large in the conference title race. Drexel is off this Saturday and goes to UNC-W and Charleston in their next two, followed by playing two of three against Hofstra in their following three.

Something tells me if we can win at Hofstra we can start credibly putting ourselves at the UNC-W/Charleston level of the conference conversation. Still too far away to start talking about conference titles, but if Towson wins this weekend it would be tied for first with Drexel with no more road games against Drexel, Delaware, Charleston or Monmouth (they haven't lost at home in conference play yet). There are still a lot of landmines and it is way too early to assume wins, but we have set ourselves up well so far. 

I believe the 51 second-half points were a season-high for points in a half. I could 10 half this year where we have scored 40 points (51 vs. Northeastern, 50 vs. Arcadia, 47 vs. Arcadia, 46 at UMBC, 45 vs. UMass, 44 at Charleston, 44 vs. Campbell, 43 vs. UMBC, 42 at Northeastern, 41 vs. Morgan State).

What an odd trend that in first halfs against Northeastern this year we have scored 49 points in 58 possession (0.845 points per possession) and shot 14-47 from the field (29/7%). However in the two second halfs, we have scored 93 points in 62 possessions (1.5 points per possession) and shot 27-49 (55%). 

This was the fifth time a Towson player scored 20 this year I believe. May did it the previous four times with 27 vs. UMass, 24 at UMBC, 23 at Delaware and 20 at Charleston. May's 19 points in a half was the most this year before last night when Williamson went for 23 points (7-9 FG, 4-5 3pt FG, 5-5 FT) in the second half. I can't remember the last time a Towson played dropped 20 in a half, but I didn't know May almost did it earlier this year. I am sure it has happened more recently then I can remember, but it still impressive. In the last two games, Willamson has dropped 37 points in the second half and shot 13-16 from the field. 

It was a really awful first 22 minutes of the game. With Towson trailing 45-38 at the 16:49 mark Sulaiman was subbed in. He had five points and three steals 3:52, and when he was subbed out at the the 12:42 mark Towson led 49-47. The guy has had a knack during this stretch to come up with a big steal or offensive rebound at some point in the game to spark us, and he kind of just took over this game defensively for three minutes or so to flip the momentum. Sulaiman finished 8 points , 4 steals and was a +15 on the court (only Williamson's +18 was higher). He did all that in 19 impactful minutes.  

This was one of those games where Charles Thompson also puts his imprint on everything. Thompson had 16 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocks and 2 steals, and as was mentioned he was a mind-boggling 8-8 from the free-throw line. I like that the only guy to shoot double-figure shots from the field was the player who was hot with Williamson scoring 26 on 8-13 FG (5-9 from three). Nendah Tarke ended up with three blocks and five assists on the night, and he continues to exert his physical will on the game even when he doesn't score. Tarke and May each had a Towson-high 35 minutes. 

For the third time this year, Towson made more than 20 free throws in a game. Our season-high was 27 against Bryant, but it took us two overtimes and 43 attempts to get there. We also had 23 against UMass in 34 attempts. Towson made 26 in a tidy 29 attempts last night (89.7%). It was only the fifth time this year we have shot over 70% from the free throw line, and two of those have come in the last two games. The 89.7% was a season-high eclipsing 13-16 (81.3%) against Wake Forest. Last night was also the second time we hit double-figure steals. The first came against Arcadia. 

I said a week or so ago that we owned two of the best wins in the conference with our victories at Charleston and against Drexel. Well, UNC-W joined us by winning Charleston last night and Monmouth also did by winning against Drexel. Stony Brook and Charleston join us as the only teams to beat UNC-W.

My point is that the more tough wins against good teams we get the more we can raise our expectations. We are still the only CAA team to win at Delaware, and we are 4-0 against the combination of Drexel, UNC-W, Charleston and Delaware so far. UNC-W getting season sweep against Charleston is a big feather in their cap, and they join Towson as the only two teams who are undefeated for the whole season at home.

Hofstra's only loss at home in conference play is Charleston, and as has been stated a win in Hempstead would be a huge statement by Towson that we are ready to not just be near the top of the pack, but take over and try to lead the way. 

Doing a quick scan the 1.243 points per possession that Northeastern put up against Towson was the best by any Tiger opponent this year. It looks like we have only given up 1.2 points per possession three times all year (Charleston and Wake).

It is weird, usually we try to drag teams into a our slow pace, but when we played Northeastern they dragged us into a slow gave even by our standards. We are averaging 61.7 possessions, and both teams only had 54 possession in the first meeting. I think that was our lowest total. It really was the tale of two halfs. In the first half, we had 4 FG, 9 TO, 17 points and averaged 0.680 points per possession. Hopefully, we can avoid a half like that the rest of the season.

In the second half, we had 42 points, went 13-23 FGs, 5-10 3pt FG and averaged 1.556 points per possession in 27 possession (same as the first half). That still might be our most efficient half of the season, but they were also really efficient we dug too big a hole in the first half. It reminded me of some of the tournament games we have lost where we start slow, begin to heat up, can't quite stop the other team enough, and run out of possession eventually. 

Chris Doherty was good as usual in that game, but I thought the player who controlled everything was Luka Sakota. He had 18 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists. What is every more odd is that Sakota is 3-22 with 7 points in three game since, and it looks like he missed the last game. Nendah Tarke had all 17 of his points in the second half in this matchup. 

I am hopping the offense can pick up where it left off in the second half against Northeastern last time.