My 2 cents

[mat1992 2,237]

The date was Dec. 28, 1996. Lefty Driesell came to the Towson Center and the Baltimore area (if I recall) for the first since getting forced out at Maryland in October of 1986. I was on the radio at the time with Stan the Fan on the Sports Exchange, doing mostly local college basketball reports, producing, and about 1-2 nights a week. When I knew that Lefty was returning to this area for the first time in at least 10 years, I was hoping to get the Towson Center sold out or at least get 3,000+ (4,000 was about as full as it could get) by talking about the game and putting a bunch of guests on to promote it. We lost the game 83-75 and drew just 1,900. Marketing was not great back then or even good. Terry Truax was the head coach at the time and I lost it off the air while calling for his firing. Then Stan brought it up on the air and I agreed with im. The slight irony of that statement was that both Truax and Lefty were fired after that season. But I've never felt worse about a firing though I don't think my statement had anything to do with it. For me personally, having to see Coach T a few weeks after that statement walking to the Towson Center with my head down, I've never felt worse. He had his flaws (saved all his timeouts like Dean Smith until the end, rarely stood up during games, not a yeller or screamer, etc.), but having to cover the team since 1989 and on message boards since 2001, I'm not going to ever push for firing the head coach. If his contract is expiring, then that's different assuming the success has dried up or never really was there. I felt embarrassed because I had covered him since 1989 and he only found out due to some minion. But either way, I was apologetic since he did approach me and was fairly intimidating. That's one of the main reasons I don't call for the firing of coaches on here.

https://jmusports.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/1996-97/towson/boxscore/5136

After Terry was fired in 1997, he bounced around a lot and was never back in Division I which was sad. He was a pretty good basketball coach despite the average record. He had won 3 ECC Tournaments (2 NCAA's) and two Big Sout titles. I think the constant moving of conferences from ECC to the Big South to the North Atlantic/America East wasn't helpful for recruiting. He probably deserved another year or two to get things right, but recruiting in Baltimore was starting to dry up. We weren't getting the Devin Boyds, Kurk Lees or Scooter Alexanders anymore. The guys we were getting from B-More were fine, but not in that class and the step up in competition didn't help.

 I saw Terry Truax right before he passed away in 2015 when he was at the only Towson game he attended at SECU against Drexel. Unfortunately, it was right before he had suffered a stroke and passed away, not too soon after his mentor Dean Smith died. I was able to walk with him to his car where the "regular" people parked and he appeared to be in bad shape, but I didn't see him passing so soon at 70. He did lose his wife Pam a few years before that. She was a Flight Attendant who those who may remember, was at every game with their very young daughter Annie (his second wife) dressed at a cheerleader in every game. 

I was happy that I was able to get a chance to speak with Coach T. one final time. I didn't talk about the JMU game and I felt bad for him that he wound up not really in coaching at the end. The bottom line was that I realized that once I called for Terry's firing, there were going to be repercussions. I couldn't have a professional relationship with a coach and call for his firing so I've never really done that since. 

Guys, you can do what you want here, but I'm also getting older and impatient. Some things cross the line. Not talking about PS and y'all wanting him gone or Steve Eingenbrot or whomever. I've just had enough of the bullshit. Call me sensitive, call me a bootlicker, but the biggest reason I wanted to moderate this board was to bring Towson people together. I don't give a rat's ass if you have different opinions about the head coach or any head coach. If that person likes PS, he shouldn't be dragged through the mud and vice versa. If people are afraid to post here and I know some have left for various reasons, then there will be actions taken if that is continue. 

Now, I'd also like people to actually constructively criticize. Everybody thinks they are Red Auerbach or Erik Spoelstra or Pat Riley and some just take shots without giving info.. Kudos to Tiger93 for coming up with salient points and numbers. But here goes my middle age BS opinion about this team. I needed two days to get my emotions in check.

1)Push the effing tempo. We're not going to get much better than shooting 41.6% from the field and 32.8% from beyond the arc. This is who we are with 4 games left, but we don't have to be 359th in pace for the rest of the year. Push the ball off every rebound, steal, block, etc. We've been pressing full court lately, but more of a mild press. If Lowery is in the game, use him to trap. Nobody can really throw the ball over his 7-2 wingspan.

2)I've been watching Towson basketball for nearly 35 years so I've seen some of the shittiest offenses, but when they were home and I was there for basically every game in 16 straight losing seasons, I couldn't just walk out. The 10 or so minutes against W&M (not Hampton) nearly drove me away for the first time from Flo SPorts. The offense was so boring and predictable and we just did nothing to really alleviate it. Maybe our intensity needs to be ratcheted up because talent isn't going to overwhelm the other team and playing bully ball can get us so far.

3)Yes, defense can be a problem at times, but a lot of that is effort. Lowery, May, Tarke, Sulaiman and Charles are all capable defenders. We can't shoot the ball on the road lately, and defenders aren't going to just defend if they can't make shots. Our overall road numbers aren't terrible, but in the last four games, we are shooting 37.4% from the field and 26.7% from long range. Time to do something other than run the offense through CT. It's fine to go to him down low or go inside out. But mix it up. 

4)What I noticed against Hampton was how unathletic we are. Yes, Lowery is and Williamson in transition, but nobody was getting to the basket against them. Not Tarke or Williamson, who are decent drivers. Tarke is stocky, but a bit heavy legged. He doesn't explode past guys and some quicker point guards get past him. BTW, Tarke has been brutal. I don't expect great shooting numbers, but 36% from the field and 31.5% from beyond the arc is brutal and worse than expected. Last season, he shot 42.6% from the field and 32.7% from beyond the arc. My biggest issue with Tarke was his FT shooting (54% LY) and he's done pretty well (72%), but isn't getting to the line a ton. You do have to wonder when your two top transfers Tarke and Jones are shooting much worse at Towson than last season with other teams. Even Messiah Jones was at 57.2% last season and is now shooting 47.8%. Something is wrong when your players are shooting worse and it's mianly twos.

5)With a bunch of guys that are graduating, but may have a year left, I have to wonder who many if any of those guys return. It's a business and we need better players. More skilled, length, better guard play, etc. Better free throw shooters. Charles has the most attempts at 116 and is shooting just 58.6%. May is second at 69 and is shooting just 62.3%. Maybe adding a bigger Gibson-type of player would have helped.

 

Personally, I don't know about everyone else, but I want to see them respond well against Monmouth, who is a very dangerous team with Xavier Rice. I love this program and I know what it's capable of, though in this era of NIL, we have to be creative with D2s, NAIA, Euros, juco, etc.

[Bay Area Tiger 347]

Mad Dog had Tom McMillan on today to talk about Lefty..  great interview.  
I forgot how he was in essence blamed for Len Bias and hence kept out of the Hall of Fame for decades.  
Lefty may have taken Davidson to a National Title if Charlie Scott had decided to go there.  
You had to win the ACC for a chance to dance back then..  how crazy is that notion looking back now.  
 

Appreciate your coverage Mat1992…. I rely on you for 95% of my Towson Sports News.. a school so very dear to me.  Always be you and keep doing what you do.  

[Chris Datres 423]

I was one of those 1900 in attendance that night and I remember that JMU seemed to have more people rooting for them than we did people rooting for us.  Truax's teams were at least entertaining even though they could be frustrating as hell.  He'd schedule anybody anywhere and the majority of the time, they'd hold their own.  Just in my time of Towson awareness, they beat St. John's (year before I got there), West Virginia, and Louisville and they went to places like Arizona, Tennessee, and Virginia and didn't embarrass themselves.  That was a product of the type of ball that he ran.  I wasn't a fan of his firing and that seemed to be the result of a new AD wanting to put his stamp on the program.  That led to one bad hire after another that culminated with the abyss that Pat Kennedy put us in.  So there's a small history lesson for those young enough to not have had to suffer though the Jaskulski/Hunt eras.  

What Pat Skerry has done with the foundation he was given is very commendable.  At some point (and that point could have come as soon as 5-7 years ago), the level has to improve.  Since the last time we went to the Tournament, we're one of 18 teams that haven't even played in their conference championship game (the others -- Army, Central Arkansas, Citadel, Incarnate Word, UMKC, UMES, UNH, Presbyterian, Sacramento State, SIU-Edwardsville, UC Riverside, UTRGV, Utah Valley, Brown, Columbia, Rice, Dartmouth).  In Skerry's time, we've had 2 teams that were beyond capable of not just advancing to the Final but also winning it.  But as happens in conference tournaments, a bad shooting night can sink your entire season and we've lived that.  Rather than being able to continue to raise our level from those teams, we regress and it seems that we don't want to adjust our systems.  It's ok to make your mark on defense and rebounding but you'd better have offensive tools to back that up.  With the exception of the Benimon team and the 2021 team, we've failed to cultivate any offensive skills.  Thus, we win games via smoke and mirrors that may not even crack 60 on the scoreboard.  That's entertaining, huh?  But the biggest mark against us is the lack of improvement with players who obviously have talent but they're either held back by lack of minutes or lack of continued development (or both).  If you didn't know  anything about us and you saw a potential frontline of CT, Sulaiman, and Messiah, you'd think that we could be a pretty formidable offensive team in the lane.  Nope, far from it.  The potential that May showed us at the end of last season only comes in bursts this year.  We have the potential to have a point guard that can engineer a transition game but the governor gets put on because we don't like to push the pace.  

There's 4 regular season games left.  There's zero reason why we shouldn't go 4-0 in those games.  This conference doesn't have that dominant boss at the final screen that it's had in past seasons.  If Elon can win at Trask, we certainly can too.  Somehow, we need to flush last week's offensive effort and use these last 4 games to ramp up for the tournament run.  But I've also been beaten down by decades of failure so winning games in a big spot are more of a surprise.  I let myself believe that 2021 was finally going to be the year and I was treated harshly for the belief.  

TL;DR -- I'm annoyed that we're living the Groundhog Day of college basketball.

[TuTigers2012 1,071]

😂. 😂 and some more 😂 

 

after the last 4 games, there’s no reason to think we can go 4-0 lol. I mean I think if there’s any pride in themselves they come to Friday and maybe contain XANDER rice. But besides that there’s probably 3 L in a row going into dc