What is wrong?

[Bay Area Tiger 347]

1 hour ago, TTiger2024 said:

 

disappointed, but.....am I the only one that is "OK" losing to a top 25 team by a bucket in OVERTIME?  WTF / SMH  CofC is really good, we were right there.....and now two pages of "what is wrong"????   TOWSON......TOWSON...not Duke gents.  I'll ride w/ these players and coaches if we are playing teams like this down to the wire.

sucks not having gibby (spreads the floor so much just being on it) and the turnover issues are real; but May & Conway are going to get better faster w/ more mins.  

Ton of things to work on and ton of hoops left.  but this isn't a stock you should sell right now.  (get over the preseason chatter/rankings... now meaningless).  this team is going to be good....right there in da mix, AGAIN, when the CAA tournament comes around.   bring on da dragons .........

Appreciate your optimism but this is an 8-6 team right now in the midst of a 5 game losing streak so although CofC is an upper echelon team in the CAA we came out not ready to play and dug a hole which with a short bench is never a good thing.  
Devin Boyd isn’t walking through that door and carrying us at the PG spot.  
If we had a “go to player” than I wouldn’t be as worried but sadly we don’t.  
I’m glass half full to the max but good teams don’t lose to Navy at home and good veteran teams don’t lose 5 games in a row.  Hope we can still win 10 conference games as I predicted but that is gonna take some outstanding shooting from behind the arc certain nights.  
Hope our big 3 prove myself and everyone wrong and go bonkers the rest of the way. 
Must win against Drexel!

[TuTigers2012 1,062]

2 hours ago, TTiger2024 said:

 

disappointed, but.....am I the only one that is "OK" losing to a top 25 team by a bucket in OVERTIME?  WTF / SMH  CofC is really good, we were right there.....and now two pages of "what is wrong"????   TOWSON......TOWSON...not Duke gents.  I'll ride w/ these players and coaches if we are playing teams like this down to the wire.

sucks not having gibby (spreads the floor so much just being on it) and the turnover issues are real; but May & Conway are going to get better faster w/ more mins.  

Ton of things to work on and ton of hoops left.  but this isn't a stock you should sell right now.  (get over the preseason chatter/rankings... now meaningless).  this team is going to be good....right there in da mix, AGAIN, when the CAA tournament comes around.   bring on da dragons .........

Lol.  It isn’t the Charleston game. Or Clemson. It’s losing to Fairfield, navy, Uni etc. those are some mediocre to bad teams. Despite playing like shit to start Saturday, we hung in there which is impressive. 
 

may and Conway will get better with more playing time.

Unfortunately this team hasn’t been good since the second half of the completed game against Delaware last year..

[Blazer49 184]

Thursday we should have some answers.  Did we play closer to our potential on Saturday or did we get hyped up to play the best team in the league?  Right now I think it is the later.  Let's see how they play against Drexel.

 

[sr16 158]

3 hours ago, TTiger2024 said:

 

disappointed, but.....am I the only one that is "OK" losing to a top 25 team by a bucket in OVERTIME?  WTF / SMH  CofC is really good, we were right there.....and now two pages of "what is wrong"????   TOWSON......TOWSON...not Duke gents.  I'll ride w/ these players and coaches if we are playing teams like this down to the wire.

sucks not having gibby (spreads the floor so much just being on it) and the turnover issues are real; but May & Conway are going to get better faster w/ more mins.  

Ton of things to work on and ton of hoops left.  but this isn't a stock you should sell right now.  (get over the preseason chatter/rankings... now meaningless).  this team is going to be good....right there in da mix, AGAIN, when the CAA tournament comes around.   bring on da dragons .........

I think our expectations of being a true #1 team has let us down. If we had been picked 10th, we'd be having a different conversation right now. CofC is doing what WE wanted to see our Tigers do. Im glad someone from the CAA is in the top 25... But I was thinking the same thing TTigers2024 said. We have a what is wrong thread after going toe to toe with the #23 team in the country? We lost by 5 at Clemson... This team has something. Would be nice if we had Gibby back. 

[TuTigers2012 1,062]

2 hours ago, sr16 said:

I think our expectations of being a true #1 team has let us down. If we had been picked 10th, we'd be having a different conversation right now. CofC is doing what WE wanted to see our Tigers do. Im glad someone from the CAA is in the top 25... But I was thinking the same thing TTigers2024 said. We have a what is wrong thread after going toe to toe with the #23 team in the country? We lost by 5 at Clemson... This team has something. Would be nice if we had Gibby back. 

Lol. We are 8-6 against a soft schedule…Having 3 all caa players who have done it before and others not showing up, inability to score and put teams away, are issues and major concerns. 

[Blazer49 184]

1 hour ago, sr16 said:

I think our expectations of being a true #1 team has let us down. If we had been picked 10th, we'd be having a different conversation right now. CofC is doing what WE wanted to see our Tigers do. Im glad someone from the CAA is in the top 25... But I was thinking the same thing TTigers2024 said. We have a what is wrong thread after going toe to toe with the #23 team in the country? We lost by 5 at Clemson... This team has something. Would be nice if we had Gibby back. 

That is part of the problem however.  We ALWAYS go "toe to toe" "lost by 5" against teams that are better than us.  Look at the headlines on the Towson site for those games:  Towson "Battles" to Force Overtime..." Towson "Hangs Tough...".  Even in past seasons almost beating Pitt or Maryland you name it.  Those headlines are just like a friend who tells you about a girl and you ask if she is good looking and the response is "She has a great personality

 

[TSU88 1,072]

14 minutes ago, Blazer49 said:

That is part of the problem however.  We ALWAYS go "toe to toe" "lost by 5" against teams that are better than us.  Look at the headlines on the Towson site for those games:  Towson "Battles" to Force Overtime..." Towson "Hangs Tough...".  Even in past seasons almost beating Pitt or Maryland you name it.  Those headlines are just like a friend who tells you about a girl and you ask if she is good looking and the response is "She has a great personality

 

You win the internet today. A hallmark of Skerry teams is the inability to win a close game against a better team. You alluded to Pitt and MD, but there’s others (Clemson and C of C this year alone). The players change, but not the results. There is one constant of course 🤔

[Tiger93 299]

I am not a big fan of moral victories. We continued our crappy play of the second half against Navy, Northern Iowa (second half mostly) and Bryant right into the majority of the first half against College of Charleston.

Some good things I saw in the second half against CofC is this team finally started winning some 50-50 battles for loose balls, Charles Thompson hit the offensive glass (although he gave up his share too), Timberlake started hitting some shots and although Holden's decision-making was downright awful at times he also gave us some good by making some spark plays to bring us back into the game. By no means is this the dominant CAA team we thought we were getting this year and this is obviously disappointing, but if they can actually put together an effort and intensity level similar to the second half against College of Charleston I do think this can be a top 3-4 team in the conference. That is not good enough based on expectations, but I do think this can still be a good team.  

Being in-person at Northern Iowa and Bryant this team looked tired, annoyed with each other and sloppy. At least in the second half against CofC, sloppy would probably be the only one of those adjectives I would apply. Let's remember that last year, despite our record, we won some really ugly games in the CAA. I think if we can come with that collective team mentality there is still more good than bad left in this season. I have no idea what that translates into in the CAA Tournament given our bad history, but we have to build a good foundation to have any chance at all. 

I actually disagree a little bit with what was said about the lineup to end the game. Conway has not hit a pressure shot all year and he is too small to get off his shot unless he is wide open until proven otherwise. At least Russell is capable of getting this own shot (even though they aren't always great). I think the biggest issue with both Gibson and Paar being hurt (yes, I think he is small key too) is that we have less bodies and since we have no stars the more depth we can have the fresher our players can be down the stretch. I feel like that is what Skerry wants to do, and without a good player (Gibson) and a serviceable big man (Paar) it creates more of a load for the others to carry. 

I also disagree with those that say we need more from Timberlake and Holden. Guess what, we are not getting it if the other players don't step up. We had five players in double figures against CofC. May had a very efficient 10 pts on 4FG attempts. The other four (Russell, Holden, Timberlake and Thompson) had 11, 12, 11 and 11 field goal attempts. Distributed scoring is the only way we are going to win unless we catch Timberlake on one of his 3-4 hot shooting nights that he has every year. Holden is really the only true first-team all-conference player with his versatility (when he is right and making good decisions).

The rest of these guys are very good role players. When everyone plays their role and there is cohesion this can still be a very good team, but until I see it more that feels more like an aberration than the norm like it was last year. Mat, your assessment on Nolan Jr. and Gibson are spot-on. It is not that they are superstars, but they let Timberlake and Thompson especially paly within their roles. We saw in 2020 that when they those two (and even Gibson) try to do more they can't carry the team, and I think they have proven that again this year. I still really like Timberlake and Thompson because they have stayed all four years and seem to really like the program. I love rooting for them, but they have their limits. 

I said this last week and I think we all mostly agree on here. May's growth has the most potential from now to the end of the season. I also think we can find more ways to get Conway open, which is the main skill he brings to the team for now (maybe he will gain more confidence as the year progresses). When he gets open he is dangerous and his two threes sparked this team against CofC. Even Hicks hitting two jumpers made CofC at least have to think about him defensively. We saw none of this in the previous 3-4 games. With Gibson likely out, we need the coaches to lock in on what they really want/expect from each player realistically. There aren't many who are going outperform their roles, but when they play hard collectively and this team does still have potential to be pretty good. 

[TuTigers2012 1,062]

1 hour ago, TSU88 said:

You win the internet today. A hallmark of Skerry teams is the inability to win a close game against a better team. You alluded to Pitt and MD, but there’s others (Clemson and C of C this year alone). The players change, but not the results. There is one constant of course 🤔

Almost close in some games and smoked in the CAAT every march. There are now 5 teams to never play in the title game us and 4 first year program 😂 

[Tiger93 299]

11 minutes ago, TuTigers2012 said:

Almost close in some games and smoked in the CAAT every march. There are now 5 teams to never play in the title game us and 4 first year program 😂 

I completely agree with this criticism, but you can't put it all on Skerry. Outside of beating St. John's when I was a freshman in 1993, Louisville and West Virginia in 1994 and I guess Temple and Oregon State in other years, this program hasn't produced very many big wins with Truax (not fair to include him since he actually won three of those), Jaskulski, Hunt, Kennedy or Skerry.

We haven't made a conference tournament final, period, since 1992. That list doesn't really produce a high bar and I completely understand the point that we should demand better, but Skerry has consistently been the best we have had to this point, at least since Truax. I trust Eigenbrot will evaluate what happens this year into what he demands from Skerry and the program as a whole, and I do believe Skerry has tried to hold himself to a high standard. 

We all agree it is not good enough until we get there, and I think Skerry and Eigenbrot would be right there with us in that sentiment. What we need to do to get there is where the discussions can go a lot of different ways, but we will have plenty of time to talk about that later. 

For now, I am just hoping some of the passion and balanced play we had in the second half on Saturday is the norm and not an aberration.