MBB ends streak with win over UNCW, 89-71 (added quotes)

[mat1992 2,237]

http://towsontigers.com/news/2018/1/5/mens-basketball-tigers-heat-up-against-uncw-in-homecoming-victory.aspx

 

Skerry
Clearly needed one tonight. I liked how our guys responded on the backboards, esp. in the second half. That's a terrific
rebounding team. This guy (Justin Gorham) did a great job on the glass. I told him I was going to send him back to
Calvert Hall if he doesn't get 10 rebounds. He did a good job. We took care of the ball. High assist to turnover ratio.
We needed this one. It's been a long road trip. I heard we got some favorable news (CofC loss?) heading into Sunday.
That's exciting.

Being home
Jordan McNeill
It was great being home. That was our third long trip and it was really tiring on our bodies so it was good to get home
and win the game in front of the home crowd.

Morsell
It felt like we were travelling for a long time. It felt good to come home and shoot on rims that we were used to.

Skerry
We knew it was a long stretch. Hopefuly we learned something. On the back end of those trips, we coughed up leads
where we should have won games. If we learned from that, that will give us a chance later on.

Skerry on ending streak
I had a streak one year where lost 21 (in a row). That's like being stabbed with ice picks. Four in a row hurts.
We didn't play well enough to win against Charleston and Oakland. Against Pitt and Elon, we led for long stretches.
It starts with me. We just didn't do a good enough job down the stretch. We're going to have seven more road games.
Clearly a tough start. We thank the conference for sending us two Charleston and Elon for the third straight year.
That's never happened. We appreciate that.

Jordan on his two 3s
I know where my spots are on the floor and I can help this team by making shots. That's first place I run. My teammates
found me. They make good passes and I knocked them down.

Skerry on Jordan
He's having a really good year for us. If anything, I probably having done a good enough job getting him more minutes.
One of the things I like about him is his maturity level, he does what he's supposed to do on and off the floor. He's
a good ambassador for our program. That's why he's going to be successful. But he's made shots all year and guys found
him. If they do that, he'll make shots. It really opens up the floor.

Skerry on last year starting 0-4 and then 0-2
The guys want to win. It's like anything and it eats at me because this group could be really good. We're not there
yet. How many times can we do certain things well enough, whether it's hedging, challenging shots, playing off two
feet, executing off timeouts, which wasn't great for us. To get where we want to get to...we have to turn around
and play Sunday against a very good team. If we didn't learn from that, it's going to be tough. If we have, we're going
to right there and win games.

Mike on sense of urgency
I think it was easier. We knew what we had to do. We knew we had to get stops and take of the ball. Make smart
decisions late in teh game. I think we learned from that.

Skerry on playing CofC twice in 8 days
I think it's an awful thing the conference did. It just doesn't make any sense. It's bizarre to play any team twice
in eight days. I just don't know why it happened. In my 24 years in this business, I've never seen that. That would
be a better question to ask Shawn Murphy, who makes our schedules.

Skerry on defending Cacok
I think it started with Al (Thomas). Our guards hurt Al because they caused him to make a couple of poor fouls. Al is
our best post defender and our most intelligent defender. Justin really strapped up tonight and really battled. He
was coming off an ankle injury for awhile. I think he's back healthy and moving forward. If we could get him a little
more focuses, he's going to really help us moving forward.

Gorham on the defense
Last game against Elon, we lost our identity. We didn't play defense the way we're supposed to. We came out today and
we needed to get our identity back and strap it up.

Skerry on defense with more offensive weapons
Great question. It's 100% accurate. It's been a big challenge. It still bothers me. I love these guys. We can score
but we're still not as committed consistently on the defensive end to win a championship. I'm looking at the second
half and we fouled way too much for a team that wins by 20. The question is better for the nine guys that play. Do
they buy into what I'm selling. THey think sometimes they have more answers than maybe they should have.

[TSU88 1,074]

If we can bottle tonight’s performance, we’ve got something. It’s so much more fun watching this style of play then when we can’t throw a beach ball in the ocean & score in the 50’s. 

Shot over 50% & scored 89, with ZM only scoring 12. Morsell was on tonight; scoring inside & raining 3’s. It’s amazing the difference when he makes a shot or two to start the game versus when he doesn’t. Tonight was good Mike-Sunday, who knows.

Starr was strong. 3-3 from 3 & 4 assists to just 1 TO. McNeil gave a nice spark off the bench & Gorham was outstanding, with a double double. EK also had a strong game & I thought Thomas & Tunstall played pretty well too, combining for 6 or 7 points,but playing well on D.

On the flip side, I cringe when Morman has the ball, especially when he goes on one of his ill-advised drives in the lane. But he does play good D. 

C of C lost to Drexel tonight, so they’re not invincible. Sunday is a great opportunity to make a statement by beating them, & getting to .500 in this early juncture of conference play. I hope we have a big crowd, but, between the cold, no students & NFL playoffs, I’m skeptical 

Edited January 6, 2018 by TSU88

[TuTigers2012 1,071]

Nice win over a bad team.  Everyone played above their season avgs minus morman aNd Zane 

 

rebounding and getting to the line are still issues.   Solid game from starr, Eddie and the player everyone loves to hate 

[mat1992 2,237]

14 hours ago, TSU88 said:

If we can bottle tonight’s performance, we’ve got something. It’s so much more fun watching this style of play then when we can’t throw a beach ball in the ocean & score in the 50’s. 

Shot over 50% & scored 89, with ZM only scoring 12. Morsell was on tonight; scoring inside & raining 3’s. It’s amazing the difference when he makes a shot or two to start the game versus when he doesn’t. Tonight was good Mike-Sunday, who knows.

Starr was strong. 3-3 from 3 & 4 assists to just 1 TO. McNeil gave a nice spark off the bench & Gorham was outstanding, with a double double. EK also had a strong game & I thought Thomas & Tunstall played pretty well too, combining for 6 or 7 points,but playing well on D.

On the flip side, I cringe when Morman has the ball, especially when he goes on one of his ill-advised drives in the lane. But he does play good D. 

C of C lost to Drexel tonight, so they’re not invincible. Sunday is a great opportunity to make a statement by beating them, & getting to .500 in this early juncture of conference play. I hope we have a big crowd, but, between the cold, no students & NFL playoffs, I’m skeptical 

This is not a bad offensive team. Not sure what you mean by score in the 50s. I think that's in the past although UNCW is a terrible defensive team. We shot 51% against Elon and lost because we didn't defend. On the offensive end, it's about taking care of the ball and finishing games late. I also like the fact we're going more and more to Mike down on the block. That's the best part of his game other than finishing in transition. Also we did not press at all tonight. Maybe it was the opponent but I think it's something we should go back to depending on the opponent. Maybe the zone press wasn't that effective in that four-game losing streak but it was against PItt when we forced over 20 turnovers.

[mat1992 2,237]

Very interesting comments from Skerry about scheduling. Check them out up top.

Good win. Must win. Beat a bad team. Not a whole lot to say. We were outrebounded by 2 in the first half and rebounded much better in the second half. Without Davis and Moto, we're not a very good rebounding team. But we're not a bad one either. We're still about +5.5 on the boards and outrebounded them by 10 in the second half. Cacok is a beast, averaging around 12rpg  and had 10 boards. I thought Al did a nice job on him and Gorham as they said up top, really "strapped" up and played tough. Took some crazy shots late. I thought he's better off facing the basket against Cacok or bigger guys because he can shoot it but that's fine. Give him 10 pounds of muscle next year and he'll be one of the better power forwards in the league. Didn't say the best because Brantley and Cacok are juniors.

Big game on Sunday but I hope people don't give up on the team as some did after the four-game losing streak, if we lose. They are a better team but the Cougars did lose in OT to Drexel on the road tonight so maybe they'll be tired but they'll also be extra focused. Brantley continues to play out of his mind but their three guards struggled. Drexel played out of their minds and the Mizzou transfer Isabell returned from a groin injury to score 14 points. That team is going to be tough to deal with if he's healthy. But on to Charleston.

[TuTigers2012 1,071]

Scheduling sucks. Why have preseason 2 finish with 1 and 3 so soon.  Our January is a bear. Last year we just stunk early on.  

C of c is a 3 man show but those 3 are top 6-8 players in the league.  Hoedully one has an off night Sunday. Home games are huge especially when we struggle nightly on the road. 

[Chris Datres 424]

As Morsell said, it was good to shoot on the home rims finally and it looked like the familiar atmosphere helped the confidence.  Shot the ball great all night and weren't really throwing up the ill-advised bricks that we were seeing on the road trip.  Defense started off ragged again and we got caught chasing defenders a few times, which then got big men in foul trouble but they tuned it up much better in the 2nd half and it allowed them to pull away.  Skerry's right, he needs to find McNeill more minutes and just hide him in each of the corners because that's his sweet spot.  He gets his feet set in those areas and he's almost automatic.  Actually saw a great post move out of Alex down on the box late in the game and his 2 free throws were pure.  Maybe if they can keep working on that side of the game, they can make him more of a passing interest in the offense instead of having him just be a constant screener up top.  

[mat1992 2,237]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/baltimore-sports-blog/bs-sp-towson-unc-wilmington-basketball-20180105-story.html

[mat1992 2,237]

34 minutes ago, Chris Datres said:

As Morsell said, it was good to shoot on the home rims finally and it looked like the familiar atmosphere helped the confidence.  Shot the ball great all night and weren't really throwing up the ill-advised bricks that we were seeing on the road trip.  Defense started off ragged again and we got caught chasing defenders a few times, which then got big men in foul trouble but they tuned it up much better in the 2nd half and it allowed them to pull away.  Skerry's right, he needs to find McNeill more minutes and just hide him in each of the corners because that's his sweet spot.  He gets his feet set in those areas and he's almost automatic.  Actually saw a great post move out of Alex down on the box late in the game and his 2 free throws were pure.  Maybe if they can keep working on that side of the game, they can make him more of a passing interest in the offense instead of having him just be a constant screener up top.  

I'm fine with playing McNeill more minutes but not at the point. Problem is you can't play him at the 2 or 3 that much because Morsell and Martin are going to play 25-30mpg at  a minimum. And Morman has to play 20mpg for his D. So that leaves about 10mpg at the point and maybe another 5 at the wing. Maybe in certain lineups, Pat can play Mike at the 4 (say against W&M and teams with smaller 4s) to get Jordan more time.

[TuTigers2012 1,071]

I like that they had mike posting up a lot this game.