AtlantaTiger

Someone please explain to me how on earth Towson baseball has been this bad for so long. I’m assuming it starts with the head coach? Is there any hope of getting this program to respectability anytime in the foreseeable future??

I’m getting stoked for football season. Trying to not drink my own kool-aid but can’t help but feel like Towson football is going to take a major step forward this season (regardless of what happens in Cincinnati).

Impossible to watch Oakland take down Kentucky and not realize why some of us so desperately want new leadership for Towson’s program to possibly improve our chances for a similar shot at glory. But hey, I should just be grateful we get our coveted 20 wins a year. 😉

Is Towson having a pro day? If so, when?

If you were a betting man, which is more likely to happen first?…. Pat Skerry takes Towson to the NCAA Tournament or Pete Shinnick gets Towson back to the FCS National Championship Game?

Not an apples to apples comparison because it’s football but even Nick Saban eventually relented and changed his offensive philosophy years ago to be more uptempo because he knew his offensive system was falling behind and becoming passe. The game had changed and evolved. Pat Skerry is a relic from yesteryear but he’s so enamored with his own philosophy and approach he’s willing to sabotage his own program’s success to try to prove it still works in today’s game. Tony Bennett got the wake up call last night…..meanwhile, Skerry is still asleep at the wheel.

Believe me, I ask myself that very question often.

My tournament allegiances are as follows Dayton (wife) Creighton (mom & dad) St. Peter’s (dad undergrad)

How about the top 4 seeds in the A10 all taking a nose dive in their tournament? Wild stuff….March Madness!

What’s even more disheartening is that there’s not much chance that help is coming through that door in the form of recruitment. What’s the old Bill Parcels quote? “If you want me to cook the dinner, let me buy the groceries.” Well, the groceries that Pat Skerry has been “buying” tend to be the leftovers and scraps from other programs and lately the groceries have been rotten. How often is Towson a player’s first choice? Pat only recruits the players that he considers to be good fits for HIS preferred style of offense, which I think we all agree is a dreadful style of offense. So to think we’re going to magically get a slashing guard or high-flying explosive 3 or 4, probably not going to happen. I feel like we’re too often everyone’s “backup” school or fallback option. If I’m a decent recruit and Pat is pitching me and my parents in my living room one of the first questions I would ask (after “how much will I make from NIL at Towson?”) would be, “hey Coach how many times have you taken Towson to the NCAA tournament?” In the ruthless world of recruiting beggars can’t be choosers and right now I think Pat is more beggar than a chooser.

After giving it some more thought, this whole Pat Skerry contract extension could really come back to bite Steve and impact the trajectory of his own career. How will potential future employers view Steve’s decision to extend a coach who is just north of .500 with ZERO NCAA Tournament appearances over the course of 13(?) seasons? ”So Steve, in your opinion it made sense to extend Pat Skerry, based on what exactly? Would you use those same standards/criteria here at University X when evaluating our coaches?” Steve has hitched his wagon to Skerry with no clear or practical contract exit strategy. No one will be able to bail Steve out of this other than Skerry and that’s highly unlikely. What if the Tigers take a massive step backwards next season and only win 10-12 games? These two are married to one another….for better or for worse.

Meanwhile, #7 Stony Brook about to advance to the final.

I honestly don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but to be speculating on who comes back, who leaves, who starts, etc. is a bit like rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. Have we not learned that the players that come into our program make little or no difference?? As long as the captain of the ship remains Skerry, this ship will ultimately sink.

I thought Jon Rothstein’s post-game analysis was great. Telling the audience Pat Skerry needs to go without explicitly saying Pat Skerry needs to go. Far too many golden opportunities over the years to capitalize on either superior talent (Benimon) or circumstances and never able to get it done, adding tonight’s game to that list.

It took all of about 3 minutes after this complete collapse before some people started mentioning the possibilities of “next year”. Next year?? That’s laughable. There’s ZERO reason, !ZERO!, to believe that next year will be any different. Maybe 18 wins and get bounced in the quarter finals, or maybe 24 wins and semi-final tournament loss, who knows maybe a complete regression and only a 10 win season. Give Pat long enough and the bottom will completely fall out. Wanna talk about tonight’s game? Let me refer back to something I brought up about two weeks ago. The need for a bona fide sports psychologist for this program. Case in point, air-balling a crucial free-throw attempt late in close game. How on earth do you completely miss the rim in that situation? That issue is entirely in the players head. The “yips” as golfers call it. We are a mentally fragile team. No amount of mediocre coaching from Pat Skerry is going to solve that problem. Bring in a professional shrink.

“University of Towson”. I don’t mean to be overly sensitive to this but I think it speaks to the lack of brand awareness and/or respect our school has even within a 2 hour radius of our campus. This is a Virginia kid who isn’t aware of the proper name of the school…..I can understand if kids from Texas or Minnesota or California, etc. botch it but c’mon, VA should be “Towson country”.

In addition to our game today I’m going to be keeping a close eye on that Arkansas State vs. JMU game in the Sun Belt. Bryan Hodgson is aiming to take Arkansas State to the big dance in his first season as HC. They took down #1 seed App State yesterday. Good for Bryan Hodgson…..first year HC.

I don’t disagree at all. Winning this tournament is the very least he can do after all the time, grace, patience and extensions he’s been given. The college basketball coaching world is littered with fired coaches who have achieved far more than he has in much shorter time frames.

https://x.com/jonrothstein/status/1766934511663669515?s=46&t=fR0BE-ZSjjxLQwcKb42n4w

A good win for sure. All “must-win-game” wins are good. Credit to the players and the coaches for finding a way to get it done today. However, I’m not quite ready to let Pat off the hook. Anything short of the big dance will just be more of the same. I don’t care that it’s CofC tomorrow. Let’s not consider consecutive wins in the CAA Tourney meaningful progress. This isn’t year 2 or 3 of his tenure.

This is where Pat can actually start to earn that extension he received.

Skerry is the Jimmy Hoffa of college coaches, they’ll love him.

As luck might have it, I think I have a winning scenario for us! Dartmouth!! Dartmouth is a basketball graveyard in the Ivy. If they can just go ahead and sack David McLaughlin it opens up an absolutely fantastic opportunity for Coach Skerry to get back to New England and to a prestigious university. He gets them to respectability, we get a new coach…..it’s a win-win-win scenario!!

That would be poetic, wouldn’t it!? Also, I’m thinking our neighbors down the street at Loyola might be in the market for a new coach sooner than later….maybe they like what they’ve seen from PS over the years?