TSU88

1 minute ago, AtlantaTiger said:

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. 

I agree, but I don’t think we need to have this conversation tonight. There will be plenty or time for recriminations, depending on what happens tomorrow night, but for now, let’s invoke the 24 hour rule 

So, what if I told you we’d have 10+ turnovers in the first half; CT would pick up two early fouls and their best player would have 18 points in the first half. Go figure. That Tejada 3 quarter length shot at the first half buzzer was just the tonic we needed. 

Major props to the law firm of Tejada, Williamson and Lowery. The future is now with our diaper dandies. Williamson has that skill we’ve sorely lacked for a long time, the ability to create his own shot. And if Lowery develops a serviceable jump shot in the offseason, look out.

I know many, including myself, have excoriated Tarke, but if we get the last 2 games Tarke next season, we’ve got something (Skerry just needs to somehow limit his 3-point shots). 

Well, I didn’t think we’d get this far, hopefully we can boldly go where no other Skerry team has gone before. We’re kind of playing with house money at this point. Do I think we’ll beat C of C? Well, I wouldn’t bet my mortgage, but I guess at this point ya gotta believe. 

Personally, I wish we would have gotten a dunk at the end of the game. You know what they say about karma. To quote that famous philosopher, Kool Mo Dee, UNCW, how ya like us now? 


Survive and advance just called and said see you tomorrow night. 
 

35 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

my dislike for uncw, their coaches, their players and especially their fan base has been second to none

They’ve deactivated their Twitter; and have blocked the ability to leave messages on their IG account. Also, their message board is missing in action 

19 minutes ago, mat1992 said:

The Charles response was the strangest. They are obviously hiding something 

There’s only 2 possibilities: (1) the CAA imposed the suspension; or (2) it was self imposed by Skerry. The latter seems highly unlikely. If it was mandated by the CAA, why not just say it, instead of trying to spin that it was self imposed, and was designed to put W&M in a trick bag?

23 minutes ago, Blounge said:

That was a very skerry press conference

”that must be one of those $5.99/year services. I’ll have to talk to my AD to see if we can afford that we’re over budget”

was that a shot at FloSports and a lack of funding from the university?

I don’t think it had anything to do with Flo. I think it was a subtle jab at the AD

Will CT be suspended tomorrow for head butting the basket stanchion?

Heckuva game (except 0-4 from 3) for Tarke. When he takes it to the tin, good things can happen. Also DWill was our microwave off the bench. No coincidence that CT’s arrival in the second half coincided with the game trending towards a L, to a double digit W. Suliaman also had a nice game. Now, OTOH, May’s shooting was woeful, again. And Jones was equally futile; his consistent misses on what are basically layups is incomprehensible. 

I expect us to get jacked tomorrow, but I’ll hope against hope that we can ugly it up to the extent that it’s close at the end, though close at the end usually isnt a recipe for victory for us 
 

Just now, TuTigers2012 said:

Well our game hasn’t started obviously but There is good 200 hawks fans here

It’s idiotic to hold this at a neutral sight, with teams from Boston to Charleston. I guess they’re afraid to be thought of as small time if they hold it at campus sites, but they’d get much better crowds that way. 

1 minute ago, TuTigers2012 said:

The 8 seed hawks have a louder and better showing crowd than we will.. 

I’m not there, but if I had to guess I’d say maybe 50-100 TU fans? 

45 minutes ago, Bay Area Tiger said:

Apparently William and Mary will both be in DC today.  

It’s one thing to play William OR Mary, but it’s quite the daunting task to play both 

In an effort to put the hoodoo jinx on W&M, I will predict W&M 73-TU 62

5 minutes ago, tualum said:

Towson only active caa team not to make it to championship game it stated. Pretty abysmal stat..

Doesn’t include SB, Monmouth, Campbell, NCAT & Hampton, but depressing nonetheless 

31 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

32% for his career.  44% on a very small sample size 

I wouldn’t get too worked up either way. He’s the first of many, many portal players we’ll be looking at between now and probably into May of this year. I’m more interested to see if we bring in a PG, as DWill is the only one we have currently (I’m assuming Hicks won’t be back) and DWill is not necessarily a true PG in any case. Also interested to see how many open spots we’ll have for next season. We have 2 incoming freshmen and 3 players who I definitely think won’t be back (Hicks, CT and Chase Paar). But what about guys like Jones, Jaiden Cole, and Coleman? And will we be able to retain the guys we presumably want back (Tejada, May, DWill). And what do you do with Tarke? I doubt any other program will try to poach him after his performance this season. 

Potentially a lot of moving parts. Stay tuned 
 

32 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

maybe just maybe, we do something smart like get rid of conference tournaments.  

I’m not sure that’s going to happen. I seem to recall hearing something though about some conference that’s going to do away with every team making its conference tournament. That would eliminate a bottom feeder catching lightning in a bottle and knocking off a top seed. I guess it would also make the regular season conference games even more important. 

I also wonder if the CAA would ever go to playing the tournament games on campus, rather than a neutral site 
 

41 minutes ago, Bay Area Tiger said:

We had a coach here at USF back in the late 90’s Phil Matthews who called his players a very derogatory word during the game religiously.  Couldn’t do that today but it was common place back then. 

My 7th grade woodshop teacher once said to me & my misbehaving classmates: “I might as well kill you all. They can only hang me once.” Boy, was I motivated to behave after that 😆

1 minute ago, AtlantaTiger said:

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

I dunno, Hoffa supposedly got whacked and buried in the Meadowlands. Although Dartmouth players have an Ivy League stupidity, so who knows what they’d do with Skerry 

2 minutes ago, AtlantaTiger said:

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!!

The players on Dartmouth just voted to unionize. I wonder if their shop steward would approve of Skerry? After all, he might make them do dehumanizing stuff, like run wind sprints and practice rebounding 

13 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

A coach who rebuilt DePaul came to Towson and burned it to the ground gets replaced by a  Towson coach who tries to go to DePaul and rebuild?! 😂   Circle of life 

Word on the street is that DePaul is looking at this former Chicago Bull, who turned a ragtag bunch of LA. kids into champs 

6 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

That’s could be. But likely having the money, resources and fans to be successful in one big sport, rather than putting a few eggs in many baskets. How do they get superior recurring and better coaching???

 

   “Some good teams”. 

It’s a “which came first, the chicken 🐓 or the egg 🥚 “ debate. As I’ve said before, personally I’d be bitterly disappointed if we ever dropped football, which I doubt is going to happen in any event. I will say this though;  our new president comes from George Mason, which has no football program. It would be interesting to get him off the record, to see if he feels that ultimately we’d be better served by concentrating more on basketball over football 

Just now, AtlantaTiger said:

Cal Poly, Pepperdine, DePaul and Pacific, among others, will all be looking for new head coaches for the 24-25 season….any chance one of them (God willing) takes an interest in Pat Skerry? 
 

Have to give the guy credit, he knows how to take a dismal program and get it to a respectable level. He just doesn’t know how to take it from respectable to great. 

None of those schools. It would have to be a lower tier D1 team, preferably in New England. For instance, I was hoping last season that Holy Cross would make a run at Skerry. No such luck 

2 hours ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Just sharing a fact.   Non football schools have much more success than football schools.  Top 4 seeds this year fit that bill

I just wonder if this isn’t an oversimplification. There have been recent seasons we’ve been in the top 4; W&M had some very good teams under their previous coach; JMU, before they left, had some good teams. Maybe the reason the non-football schools do so well in basketball is attributable to superior recruiting and in-game coaching. 

6 minutes ago, Blounge said:

Should we get rid of football and double down on basketball?

Hard no, IMHO. Instead, let’s hold our basketball coach accountable for the caliber of players he brings in, as well as his postseason record 

3 minutes ago, Bay Area Tiger said:

Listening today Spiro made the point that PS won 18 games while losing 75% of his scoring from last season and 2 starters this season in Watson & Hicks.  
Mind you there is a transfer portal now Sprio and every college is in the same boat.  Win or lose in DC..  Skerry is not going anywhere it sounds. 

Watson’s loss hurt, no doubt. I don’t think Hicks’ loss really was that big a factor. But, to your point, look at the 3 guys not named Watson that Skerry brought in via the portal, Tarke, Sulaiman and Jones. By any objective measure, Tarke was dreadful, save for an outlier game here and there. The other two guys averaged a combined 10ppg. 3 swings and three misses. This illustrates the problem with blowing up this roster, which is it’s the same coach bringing in the replacements 

6 minutes ago, TTiger2024 said:

I’m buying beers in DC  if (when) we get to the finals

I don’t think you’ll have to break your piggy bank open. Frankly, if this coach ever gets us to the conference finals, we’ll all be wearing silver jumpsuits and getting around on conveyor belts. In other words, far, far into the future, if ever 

9 minutes ago, TTiger2024 said:

Ahhhhh, you know Timber plays at KANSAS now (bit diff than Towson,  right ?  ) And ….. do you know how many other D1 offers he had ?    
I mean ……

if you are gonna kill the coaches for the “misses” you THINK they’ve made , I wonder why they don’t get credit for wins like ( ya know , a guy at KANSAS) 😂 

 

Remind me again how many conference title games we went to with Timberlake?  I’ll give Skerry some credit for developing Timberlake into a player who KU would want.  But really, in the grand scheme of things, big deal. 

15 minutes ago, Chris Datres said:

This would make too much sense, why would you ever present this idea for Towson basketball??  (sarcasm)

Our offense often belongs in the peach basket era, especially in these higher-stakes games.  We can come out against A&T or Monmouth at home or Arcadia and swing the ball around like an offense should and look like world beaters.  But when we get into the butt clenchers, we revert to this archaic, dump-it-in-the-post style that hasn't worked since Benimon was dominating.  Too many times today, the ball stagnated.  No switching sides or working it inside out.  In the chat, I equated Tarke to that guy at the Y who you always leave open because you know he's gonna shoot it and he's likely gonna miss it.  Gosh, he was open so many times today and he just clanks one after another.  But if you have a lineup of DW, Tejada, May, CT, and either Suli or Jones, you have a ballhandler who has to be monitored for drives, 2 guys who can light it up from outside (theoretically) that you can't help off of and 2 guys who can gather the rebounds on missed shots and be somewhat of a force in the lane.  But this goes back too many times to constant substitutions and never getting a good mix on the floor.  There were a few times today where the lineup was Tarke, Lowery, Tejada, Paar, and Suli.  Where do you think the defense is going to key?  It almost feels like sometimes that we put lineups on the floor like a rec league coach would in order to make the parents happy that their kids get into the game.  In the first 5-7 games of the non-con season, I can understand it.  But now, there's no excuse for it.  

As for next week, I'd imagine we'll get one since it'll be either A&T or W&M but after that, I have zero confidence that we'll learn anything from today's game to beat UNCW a 2nd time.

Couldn’t have said it better myself