Chris Datres

GULF COAST SHOWCASE CHAMPIONS Not sure how silly I looked in the Salt Lake airport bouncing around listening to the last 6 minutes but who cares. We’re bringing home some hardware. Resilient effort down the stretch. Didn’t totally wilt after the 13-0 run. Still some loose ends with free throw shooting and dumb defense (Zane) but let’s bask in this one and hopefully close wins like this one and last nite become great building blocks.

Final score was 70-67, of course. Got a little too rushed trying to type it out before the plane shut its doors. No idea how I can edit the original post.

They knocked down a ton of outside shots yesterday against NIU. Their tallest player was actually one who has a lot of outside range. They like to run a bit too, hence why they put up 90 on the board. Our transition defense will be a big key and we have to keep pace with them in their motion offense as they move the ball around pretty crisply.

I'd echo what Mat said about Morsell. He looked like he was trying to do a little too much in the first half instead of letting the game come to him more. That said, he had a couple of decent looks from 3 and they just didn't drop. I don't think any of the shots he took tonite were bad looks. Zane just uses that big body and his quickness to get into the lane and set himself and others up to succeed....good signs for a point guard. He's made a pretty big leap from his freshman to sophomore year already. It's amazing if they make any sort of money out of this tournament. 8 teams from nowhere near the area with little to no fan support playing on weeknights before Thanksgiving. What could be successful about that? But no matter, it's a business trip for us and given what I saw out of Penn in that first game, they will be another good measuring stick for us on Tuesday night. Unfortunately, I'll have to catch it online instead of inside the arena.

Towson with a pretty complete performance in their beatdown of FAU in the first round of the Gulf Coast Showcase. Shot 57%, assisted on over half the made buckets, and held FAU to 31% shooting. Get Penn next and the defense will really have to pay attention to the 3 as the Quakers lit up NIU in their game.

Congrats to the players and coaches for finishing on a high note and not giving up on the season. They could have easily packed it in but they fought for themselves and finished an overtime heartbreaker from a winning season. Sad to hear about Mahalak and really unfortunate that a kid with so much promise when he came over from Oregon ends up playing what, 4 games in his Towson career? As expected, defenses didn't respect Stover and would stack the box against him and it took him 3/4 of the season to get more acclimated. Hopefully he can have a productive and healthy offseason to be the man next season. Of course, we'll need to develop a running game and a reliable offensive line to round out that side of the ball. 5-6 is certainly nothing to be proud of but given where they were mid-October, this 3-1 finish has to be used as a springboard to bigger and better things in '18 and I think Rob realizes that. Now, to TSU88's comment blaming the coaching staff for leaving the QB position in a precarious spot....I ask this question -- is Jimbo Fisher less of a coach because Francois went down and he had to go to a true freshman? If Jalen Hurts goes down and his backup struggles, should Saban be held accountable? What about if Darnold goes down at USC and the backup gets blitzed? Does Helton get pilloried like some did to Ambrose? It's asking a lot to expect a backup, especially a freshman, to just walk onto the field and light things up. But then I realize that apparently there's a higher standard held by some people, one of which I've noticed has been awfully quiet since this 3 out of 4 stretch occurred. But he'll keep running his numbers and his mouth.

Yes, and even easier, I’m covering the golf tournament in Naples thru Sunday so will only have to drive 15 miles vs the 3 hours from Orlando. But I will only see Monday’s game cuz other basketball travels are taking me out of state.

I get alarmed by the amount of shots in the lane that our guys miss. Is it lack of concentration? Bad form? Fear of contact? They need to do a better job of going strong and absorbing contact to get these shots in the lane. With as many offensive rebounds as we pull down, we can’t continue to miss the shorties. Ingram looks like he has all kinds of potential to eventually be a go-to type guy with that athleticism. I was impressed with his raw ability. That will get fine-tuned. I liked Prophete’s handle but if he faces a decent defensive player, he might get his pocket picked a bit. Needs to be tighter with the ball. Don’t get much from games like this. Loyola at their place will be a better measurement. Looking forward to seeing them here on Monday vs FAU.

Last year in the NCAA Tournament, I saw numerous instances where a team was down less than 3 and had the last shot but ended up messing around with the ball and being forced to settle for a prayer from behind the arc that went begging. I hoped that coaches would be better about handling end-of-game situations. Unfortunately, our team does the same damn thing that I saw throughout last year's Tournament. Down 1, final possession, and you have a couple of guys who can go to the rack and at least draw a foul and the result is a 25-foot prayer??? Freakin pathetic. Between that and the endless turnovers that FRESHMAN make (stepping on the sideline TWICE, Deshaun?), I'm not sure what I'm more ticked off about. For a veteran team to lay a fat egg in a game that should have been a W is extremely frustrating.

And in other NAIA/D3/D2 action, Appy State beat something called Toccoa Falls by 101 today.

Eh, I might buy the first game jitters stuff if this wasn't an experienced team. What they showed in Canada and the exhibition against Bucknell must have been night-and-day compared to what they showed tonite.

I'm usually in favor of letting the guys play it out but once it looked like they were just messing around with it and not looking to run any sort of set, then he should have gotten a timeout with 10 seconds left and get everyone set. You run sets the entire game and then you get into the last 20 seconds and you don't know what to do. And you've gotta get a shot up with 5-7 seconds left so if you do miss, you can get a rebound. It's not just us, it's an epidemic throughout college basketball -- everyone has to just take the shot at the buzzer and it's usually a crappy one.

ODU's athletic department has to do all they can to offset that cost of taking their crap football team to 1-A so it's no surprise that they'd make you pay for a hoops stream. I guess I'll just listen to Spiro.

It’s never stopped him before.

Wasn't able to watch the game but really happy for these guys to find a way to get the win. Hopefully they can build off something like this and make positive strides for the rest of the season. Always a good day when we beat Delaware. Even better when it might crush their playoff hopes. And hopefully, it'll make the hater(s) around here zip it for at least one week.

Very good opportunity to gauge what we've got going into the season even if Thomas isn't 100%. A number of teams are using the 'hurricane relief' loophole to play these open exhibitions against D-1 teams rather than the usual D-3 fodder. Kansas played Missouri on Sunday in a high-scoring affair in front of a packed house in KC that raised $2 million and UCONN is playing or has played Providence in a similarly-constructed exhibition.

I hesitate to jump into this pool because the OP cited numbers that I've seen before under a different name and that name always gave me the shakes on here....but here goes. I seem to remember that playoff loss to Lehigh being a 40-38 final score so offense was the least of our problems that day. But if it fits your narrative, go ahead and run with it. Our problem is that there was zero capitalization by the entire program (athletic department included) on the championship game run. Victor proved a very capable replacement to T West but the rest of that championship talent graduated and the recruiting/juco pipeline went dry. That causes the domino effect (losses, poor attendance, recruits look elsewhere) that results in what we see on the field this year. Yeah, injuries to the skill players don't help but I'm not sure that Mahalak and Simpson would provide much of a difference given how rough the offensive line is. Hoops season in 3 weeks at least.

I'm guessing you're new to Towson Athletics? They couldn't sell the place out even when they had playoff teams or the year after they went to the championship game. We have a 5,000+ seat basketball arena that hasn't been sold out once, I don't think. For as long as I've known it (and I go back to the mid-90s), Towson fan/student apathy is as high as any school I see and it's not like we're in the outskirts of Montana...though, that may work out better because then there'd be nothing else better to do than go to the athletic events. Part of that is on the on-field/court product, part of that is on the marketing campaigns to get students to games. For those of us who have been on these boards for a long time, it's an endless broken record about why there isn't more support. Whatever it is, there was a giant dropping of the ball after the championship game run. As for this current edition, I find it hard to believe that a team can have an offense that is as horrid as ours is. A lot of that can be traced to the fact there are zero threats on the field -- the QB is a freshman, there's no burner in the backfield, there's no downfield threat. So that allows defenses to take a lot more risks and bring 6 and 7 guys on every down knowing that our line won't be able to handle them and that they won't give up a big downfield play. What's our longest run from scrimmage this year? A lot of this stems from injuries but there's also a lot of blame that can be put on player development. The fanbase has been complaining about the play calling for a while and yeah, it's been bad but what talent is out there? In the past, there was T-West and then there was Victor and there were QB's like Enders and Athens and even Frazier to a degree that had the tools to get the ball downfield if the running game was bogged down. It doesn't appear that we have any of that talent right now so that magnifies how bad the plays are. Am I defending the coaching staff? Not really. But I feel that there are more things at work than just the playcalling -- injuries, development (on the coaches), and recruiting (also on the coaches).

Tonight was my first chance to actually watch them in action. Defense played well enough to win this game outside of the first drive of the game. This offense is horrid. Ambrose said it perfectly going into halftime. It's a bad bad scheme but it all starts with the offensive line. If you're not opening holes, I don't care if you have John Riggins and Barry Sanders back there, you're not going to gain much. Stover seems ok in a simple pitch and catch type scenario. That is, if he has enough time...and his receivers decide to catch the ball. It's just a bad setup right now and I'm kinda feeling the desperate need for a change in scheme. But again, if you have subpar offensive linemen, it's not going to matter.

http://gcs.bdglobalsports.com/#!/schedule There's the schedule for the Gulf Coast Showcase. Towson draws Florida Atlantic in the final game of the first round. 2nd game would be against either Penn or Northern Illinois. Missouri State, Georgia Southern, Manhattan, and UMKC are on the other side of the bracket. Certainly not much meat in this event but will still be good to get some reps, and hopefully wins against this type of competition before getting into CAA play.

Was not able to see any of the game tonight. Given the amount of problems that Stony Brook gave a very good South Florida team a couple of weeks ago, I figured we'd get our doors blown off today. I was pleasantly surprised that the deficit was only 8. It's a very difficult road to navigate when you have a freshman QB, inexperienced running backs (when your best one is hobbled), and a suspect offensive line.

I like the fact that we didn't roll over once we went down 21-0. Fought back, got a score, and if you take away the pick-6 and the missed receiver in the end zone that then led to the 4th down miss at the end of the half, who knows, maybe they're only down 7-10 going into half instead of 28-7. Twerps are just too talented across the board for us and I hope the defense doesn't get down on themselves but instead, learns from bad tackling and taking bad angles. Use this game as a learning tool to help them in the CAA. It sounded like Stover got his legs underneath him a little bit midway thru the 1st and those short passes helped him along. But I agree with Ironman....if there's no consistent running game, it won't matter who's under center, that offense is going to struggle. It was getting very tiring hearing about our backs running into stone walls in the line for minimal gains. I was stuck listening to Johnny Holiday on XM today and the only thing more excruciating than that was sitting in stop & go traffic throughout half of South Carolina. Basic radio play by play is ballcarrier, where he advances it, yards gained, next down and distance. I found myself wondering what the hell was going on throughout the game. On a couple of the Twerps long scores, he didn't pick up the yard mark until like the 20 or 15 and I'm like, 'how the hell did he get there so quickly?'. On our first score, they were in the middle of a scoreboard update and they come back and we're in the end zone. I've been told that Johnny is an institution but he and his analyst left a ton to be desired calling that game.

I'll be listening on the XM as I drive from Orlando to somewhere north to get out of the way of this steamroller that's heading here. Rumor has it that the Twerps are giving away $10,000 to a student if they take a punt back for a touchdown.

http://stats.statbroadcast.com/broadcast/?id=177339 http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/college/football/bs-sp-towson-morgan-football-0903-story.html BALTIMORE'S COLLEGE TEAM!!!!! Wow, that was um, ugly to say the least. But the defense showed plenty of good signs and you can't complain about a shutout. Enjoy it for a few hours and then get to work because next Saturday is gonna be a real hill to climb.

The tournament's website is nowhere near updated but I've been told that we're playing in the Gulf Coast Showcase in Ft. Myers the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. I'll be able to make it for at least one, hopefully two games.