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Chris Datres

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Everything posted by Chris Datres

  1. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    That's the sign you're a great mid-major program -- have a guy get you to the promised land and then they get hired by a basketball desert and they flame out in 3 years while you reload with another young up-and-comer and do it again a couple years later. Not many successful mid-majors outside of Gonzaga keep their coaches around longer than 1-2 years after they go to the Tournament since everyone likes to snap up the hot name. Few realized what he had in Spokane and wasn't swayed by crap programs in major conferences throwing big money figures at him. You can't blame these guys from a bank account perspective but some of the decisions from a basketball perspective didn't pan out.
  2. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    The best parallel example to Skerry is Tod Kowalczyk at Toledo. I outlined this a couple weeks ago -- He's been there as long as Skerry has been here and Toledo has been the 1 seed in each of the last 4 MAC Tournaments. They've lost every time. Their tournament drought is longer than ours. And I read today that Kowalczyk is being talked about for the job at Utah State.
  3. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Citing James Jones in that list might be pushing it a little bit because it's the Ivy League. They'll fire a scientist for not producing a Nobel winner faster than they'll fire a basketball coach. Here's the last time each Ivy League school fired their basketball coach for on-court performance: Penn -- 2009 (Jerome Allen had some shady stuff going on and ended up getting a 15-year show cause from the NCAA) Princeton -- at least 1945 Columbia -- 2003 Cornell -- 2016 (contract not renewed) Yale -- at least 1947 Harvard -- 2007 Brown -- 2012 Dartmouth -- 2016
  4. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    1991 was their last time too. Here's their roster -- https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/louisiana-tech/men/1991.html
  5. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    That would be correct. Columbia & Dartmouth have only had 8 years of Ivy League Tournaments in order to get to the championship round. All the others have had plenty of time.
  6. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Here's the list. The ones in bold have also not been to a conference championship game since the last time we were in one. The ones with asterisks are those who are D1 veterans and never been or have droughts longer than us: Army** Bethune Cookman** Bowling Green** Brown** Cal Baptist Central Arkansas Chicago State** Citadel** Columbia** Dartmouth** Denver Elon Fort Wayne High Point Houston Christian Idaho** Idaho State** Incarnate Word Jacksonville** Kansas City** LA Tech** LeMoyne Lindenwood Loyola Marymount** Maine** Marist** Merrimack NJ Tech New Hampshire** North Alabama Omaha Presbyterian Queens Quinnipiac Rice** Sac State Sacred Heart Seattle** SIU-Ed South Dakota Southern Indiana St. Thomas Stonehill Tarleton State Tennessee Tech** Texas A&M Commerce Toledo** UMASS-Lowell UC Riverside VMI** USC Upstate UMES** UC San Diego UT Martin UTRGV Utah Valley Western Illinois** William & Mary** Youngstown State**
  7. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Hold that thought. I'll fire off that list in a bit.
  8. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Congrats to Stetson, Grambling, and Duquesne for punching their tickets to the Dance. For the Hatters and Tigers, it's their first time. For the Dukes, first time since 1977. That now leaves 59 D1 teams who either have never been to the Tournament or have a longer drought than we do.
  9. Chris Datres

    Drexel WBB Thread

    He prefers to focus on the losses so it gives him a reason to complain and call for firings.
  10. Chris Datres

    2023-24 WBB Thread

    Ladies on to the semis doing something the men couldn't do -- beat a higher-seeded Charleston team. Next up are those dopey Dragons.
  11. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Shockingly, braindead basketball sends Norfolk packing. Betrand will have to petition for another year and maybe go to a 5th school to get a Tourney trip.
  12. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    Watching Howard-Norfolk State for financial reasons and I catch the name Allen Betrand after a basket. Yep, same one. On his 4th school. Maybe he'll get to the Tourney via this route.
  13. Chris Datres

    General Basketball Thread for 2024-25

    If you want a Towson equivalent elsewhere in the country, head to the home of Corporal Klinger. Toledo has had Tod Kowalczyk since 2010 and they've had 8 20-win seasons in his tenure there. But in the MAC Tournament, that's where the terror happens. They've at least made 3 conference championship games but they've gone into the last *4* conference tournaments as the 1 seed. Today, as the 1 seed, they got whacked by Kent State, a team they had beaten by 14 & 15 in the regular season. They extend their Tournament-less streak to 44 years (one of 61 schools who have not been there since we were last there, though almost half those have barely been in D1).
  14. Chris Datres

    TU Baseball Disaster

    They lost so many years of progress after the attempted purge that they weren't able to build on their CAA Title win (where have we heard this before in this athletic department?). What recruit of any significance in the subsequent 5 years was going to come to us with all of that financial mayhem going on? You wanna talk about tearing it down to the studs, I think we tore this program down to the concrete pourings.
  15. Chris Datres

    2024-25 Transfer Thread

    They have and that's because their coach is able to cultivate that talent and assimilate it within the team he has. We bring in a POY and an All-American in consecutive years and their play here makes you wonder how in the world they earned those awards.
  16. You bring up good points about the economics of the landscape and they’re not fun ones. But if the bought talent gets hamstrung by an archaic offense and questionable (being nice) decisions during winning time, who cares what the NIL war chest is. Look at how SB handled the final 3 mins in their upset bid. They played to win and got on a wave. We played not to lose. That’s a mindset and that’s bad coaching. Do you think Samford and Morehead are overflowing with NIL funds? Their conference competition is maybe a tick below ours but they figured out a way to get it done. We’ve had better teams than this fail at this spot. When May’s 3 banked in, I thought it funny that this group would be the one that finally broke through. And then, all of the intelligence drained.
  17. Yep, and that goes to having the wrong personnel on the floor. DW is one of the few offensive bright spots in the first half and yet, Tarke is out there for the first 3 minutes of the 2nd half -- just long enough for him to unnecessarily cheat on defense and leave his man open in the lane for an easy bucket. When Tarke is on it, he's pretty good. But when he's been bad in games -- and we've seen plenty of Bad Tarke -- it's a hilarious disaster. Like, stop shooting dude, they're leaving you open for a reason.
  18. Chris Datres

    Stony Brook in the finals

    Isn't that always how it works out? If we're able to pull off the win, we'd have had a better shot in the championship.
  19. When you're the better team, you should win that game. We were the better team tonight and the defense against those snipers was on point...for 36 minutes. When May banked in the 3 to put us up 7, I thought that was a sign. But when we got the stop at the other end and decided to go into clockball with 4 minutes left, I knew we were in trouble. This is a choke of epic proportions that puts every one of our past disappointments in the conference tournament down a peg. I have no idea why in the world you wouldn't just keep running your offense and working the ball down low to CT with that 7-point lead. Oh wait, I know. It's because we have a choking tactician on the sidelines. How man free throws did we shoot tonight? 7. Shameful. As soon as we got that 7-point lead, that was the time to run the offense thru Charles and force Charleston to either collapse and open up a shooter or get him to the free throw line. He had finally figured it out in the lane in the first half and yet only had 2 points in the 2nd half (while also committing a couple of insanely dumb fouls for anyone, let alone a 5th year senior). But instead, freakin Paar is in the game and DW is out there on an island all by himself with no one coming to the ball. Then we gotta chuck up crap at the shot clock horn when we hadn't done that the entire game. Tarke should have been stapled to the bench after the first 10 minutes of the game when he showed that he was gonna be Bad Tarke and throw up a bunch of crazy crap around the rim. He did NOTHING tonight. But he could have made it all better if he flushes that breakaway layup. Nope, that was too much to ask of him. Weak. This also points to the lack of player development and regression we've seen throughout the season out of a lot of players. Who got better as the season went on? DW, Tejada (though still an enigma at times), and that's about it. I'd put Lowery on the positive side too but he needs to get tons better at the offensive end. I love his defense and his activity on the boards. So now the elephant in the room. I'm done with Skerry. Great guy, keeps his players out of trouble (for the most part), graduates them, gets them opportunity post-college. But he's hit his ceiling. You have to be a winning coach in this situation when you're up by 7 with 4:00 left against the best team in the conference. You can't have offensive liabilities on the floor during that time. You have to realize that certain players don't have it tonight and make sure they don't continue to hurt you. But most of all, you have to make your players better as the season goes on. The player development over the last couple of years has been lacking. I can't count the number of times I've watched a big man this year take it soft to the basket and miss layups. That should be corrected in the summer, not allowed to fester throughout the entire year. He's brought in a pair of D2 All-Americans in the last 2 years and both players looked like they wouldn't make a roster of any D1 team in the country. Worst of all, we still try to win games via the caveman era. We haven't evolved with how the game has evolved. And yet, when we needed to go to that in the last 4 minutes, the wrong personnel is on the floor and the wrong gameplan is called out. This is a shameful choke.
  20. We've done so well with me not being able to watch or listen to the game live that I think I'll do it again for the semifinal game too unless it rains here which is not in the forecast. Impressive effort by the freshmen to carry the day, especially Williamson. Big step up by Tarke to sort of jumpstart things in the 2nd half and get us rolling. The 3-pt defense since the 12:00 mark of the 2nd half vs W&M has been very impressive. That'll be ultra necessary against Charleston as they'll whip it around the perimeter like they did against us in the home game. Only way we're gonna beat them is if we keep up this same defensive effort and if we shoot like we did at their place. Charleston's that white whale that for the most part we haven't been able to take down in a big spot. We've proven they're beatable. Just have to play that same game from January. Oh, and that's another 20-win season. Of course, there will be those who will foolishly place asterisks on it and that's their agenda. Would you prefer the consistent 20-loss seasons from 1998-2011?
  21. Chris Datres

    CAA Tournament Preview

    There are 29 teams who haven’t reached a conference championship game since the last time we did in 92. Over half are new to D1 in the last 3-4 years.
  22. Chris Datres

    General MBB 2023-24 thread

    Yeah, that was announced a couple days ago. That Pepperdine-Pacific WCC opener will be the battle of the interim coaches.
  23. Chris Datres

    General MBB 2023-24 thread

    There was a small piece of schadenfreude last night when ODU lost in OT on the first day of their conference tournament to finish the season 7-25. For any of the other old-schoolers besides Mat and I from the ollllllld CAAZone days, we took a beating from the ODU fanbase among others for how bad we were. They're a good example that the grass isn't always greener as they've only been to 1 Tourney since they left CAA whereas they had been to 4 in the 9 years before leaving.
  24. 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.
  25. Chris Datres

    UNCW II preview

    Amen to this. It's one thing when you can see the game and you have to endure his soundtrack. But for those of us that go audio only, it's nearly impossible to follow the game. If you run a drinking game for all the names he drops, you'll have to call the ambulance by the under-12 timeout in the 2nd half. As for this game against UNCW, it can be considered a 'big game' due to the top 4 being at stake. We know what our history is in these type of 'big games'. It would be nice to buck our trend and play a complete 40 to get what we need for the CAA Tournament.

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