MBB, Fobbs stun UMBC in double OT, 80-76

[mat1992 2,228]

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bs-sp-towson-umbc-mens-basketball-brian-fobbs-20181211-story.html

https://towsontigers.com/news/2018/12/11/mens-basketball-towson-edges-umbc-in-epic-2ot-thirller.aspx

Skerry said that they were fortunate to win and sure. We battled but UMBC missing half of their free throws was unexpected. What I did expect was a drought in the second half because we shot 50% in the first half. The drought happened. I think we went 1 of 13 or 14 but UMBC couldn't take advantage. They shot just 37.5 percent for the game and 27.5 percent from beyond the arc. Great defense? Pretty good interior defense led by Tunstall but they mainly just missed open looks. 

Turnovers? We had 17 though remember that was in 50 minutes, not 40. Still, we are kind of a disaster handling the ball against pressure. Even UMBC, who turned us over a couple of times. I like the fact that we went zone press for some possessions to slow them down some but didn't have enough bodies to do that all game. Still. would like to see Tunstall at the head of the press and I think Betrand can benefit from that.

 

[BradTU 18]

Proud of the team and how they battled! Pumped to be on the winning side of a game like this. With how the season has gone, I was sure we were going to let this slip away. Love the resiliency. This will pay dividends moving forward. UMBC ain’t no slouch. 

Fobbs, just wow. Also glad to see McNeil hit some huge 3s down the stretch (since we’ve been so critical of him lately). Tunstall with a monster game on the boards. 

Big morale booster for Skerry & Co I’m sure. We needed this.

[mat1992 2,228]

Boy did we need this win tonight. Had to fight through two horrible traffic jams going there and even coming back at 10pm on 695. Great win. Fobbs was tremendous on offense. Defensively, he has his issues but we can't win without his offense. Tunstall had 15 boards and was really good on the defensive end. The rest? Well Timberlake and Thomas were out with injuries. I thought maybe Timberlake would have started for Jordan, who wasn't good tonight until he made back-to-back threes. Dottin has to start. He might not score much but he makes better decisions. What Howard did near the end of regulation, trying to throw a pass to Sanders, who's not a good foul shooter, instead of keeping it himself made no sense.

Good crowd. About 2,500. Got really loud int he second half. Late arriving crowd, possibly due to the traffic. Love the building. The only strange thing is in the second half and overtime, we are shooting foul shots against no crowd. They basically just have a wall behind the other basket and no seats. Not sure why that was designed that way but it helps the opponent if they aren't seeing people wave at them when they are shooting FTs.

Here are the quotes:

Skerry opening statement

Great game. We're fortunate to win. UMBC is very good. They are potent offensively. Last three we played pretty hard. Things didn't go our way. I'm proud of our kids for hanging in there. This game could have gone either way. Great local basketball game. It will be a game that both teams will benefit from later on when he get into conference play.

On needing this game

Every game is the Super Bowl. When you're in a one-bid league, that's a good way to approach it. I think for our guys, because we lost a couple of close ones. You try to demand certain things out of them every day. This one was big for us. Not everybody played great. We had a couple of guys banged up due to injuries who hopefully be back after a long break. They are good. That's why it's a good win. It's a good environment. It's a beautiful building. You need to have a bunch of games like this in conference play. It comes down to winning close games. We're behind the eight ball right now because I haven't done a good enough job getting us to win close games. This is something that will carry after.

On OT win

We've been like a B- in attitude and an A- in effort so far. I don't expect perfection and I'm far from it. If that continues, we can get to where we want to get to. Fobbs was sensational. Jakigh really hung in there for us. The thing that allowed us to stay in the game against a very good offensive team was that we rebounded it well in the second half. We were down 1 at the half in terms of rebounding.

On UMBC missing 3s in first half and on quick timeout in the second half

I thought Brian and T.J. were loose with the ball. Our theme coming into this game was that you're in May Day for 40 minutes. This is a tremendous three-point shooting team with spacing, passing. They are so well-coached. Sometimes you can get a bit lucky. The ball has to bounce your way.

Free throw shooting

Huge difference. We're fortunate to win a game against a good ballclub. The last couple of games...you try to benefit. It will certainly help us down the line.

On Jordan's back-to-back threes

Huge. I told them during the timeout to stay shot ready. He worked so hard to get healthy. It's good to see him have success. He's such a good teammate and the type of guy you want to coach.

Fobbs on pressure with players injured

I don't think it's pressure. It's next guy up. Everybody who comes off the bench can score. Just keep moving the ball and not forcing it.

Fobbs on local rivalries

It's intense. Everybody wants to win badly. We usually never lose to local teams.

Fobbs on playing 2 OTs

It was exhausting but I had fun. The atmosphere was there. We were getting amped up because of the intensity.

Skerry on the win

It's a really hard team to guard. Our effort was good but I'll reserve judgement until I see the tape where our execution was any good.

Fobbs on the late 3 in 2nd OT

When Jakigh gave me the ball. It was just there. I didn't mean to take the last shot but I just took it. The coaches felt confidence in me.

Fobbs 

[mat1992 2,228]

24 minutes ago, BradTU said:

Proud of the team and how they battled! Pumped to be on the winning side of a game like this. With how the season has gone, I was sure we were going to let this slip away. Love the resiliency. This will pay dividends moving forward. UMBC ain’t no slouch. 

Fobbs, just wow. Also glad to see McNeil hit some huge 3s down the stretch (since we’ve been so critical of him lately). Tunstall with a monster game on the boards. 

Big morale booster for Skerry & Co I’m sure. We needed this.

Fobbs is better than advertised. Unfortunately Howard is the opposite. He was 0-7 tonight and 0-4 from 3pt with 2 assists and 3 turnovers. If you combine his shooting with Dottin, they are 1-of-15. Dottin did have four assists but defensively, he seemed to have troubles with the jet-quick KJ Jackson. Yet there is something about him that reminds me a very little of Devin Boyd. About the same height and built similarly. He's not as quick but Devin wasn't a great athlete. He knew how to use his body and was not a great shooter when he started out but became very good as a junior and senior. Dottin has a ways to go to even come close but I like the decisions he makes. He just has to stay in his lane as a driver and slasher and of course not turn it over much. 

 

I like starting Solomon and bringing Sanders off the bench. Solomon has raw post moves but he can rebound and finish inside. Sanders was solid tonight iwth 13 points and 7 rebounds with just one turnover. He still dribbles around too much but he still played 33 minutes. So coming off the bench might suit him. 

[Bay Area Tiger 346]

Faith restored for now.  Credit to team!

Taking foot partiallly out of my mouth. 

[Basketball Mat 3]

Great win. Loved some of the adjustments by Skerry. I thought he let them play through mistakes a little more which helps their confidence build. Fobbs can score and is unselfish. If we can cut those turnovers and at least get shots up we would see continued improvement. I think this will be a boost for us. Conference play is around the corner and I expect to surprise some teams

[TuTigers2012 1,061]

Any win at this point is a good win. (this isnt 16 vs 1 UMBC, which we beat handily last year) But will take a hard fought road win.

The Good: -Fobbs- My Godness can he score and shoot.

Sanders- Showed some leadership after some late turnovers by Dottin and Fobbs, by showing emotion and getting vocal. Also nice that he played alot of minutes and didnt foul out!

Tunstall- Dude knows his role probably better than anyone under Skerry (Maybe TJ). Gives energy and crashes the boards.  He can step back to 10-15 and shot when needed. Looks like a decent shot.

Solomon- Surprised by how good his offensive game. I thought he would be raw but has good post moves, showed emotion and looks good shooting FT's

Our team shooting including the FT line!

 

The Bad: Decision making by the players (pass ahead by Howard), and coaches (not using a T.O. there) 

Turnovers--Still an Issue

The refs--were equally bad on both sides, some VERY questionable calls especially late (Dottin didn't touch Jackson with 7 seconds left) total phantom calls

The defense inconsistency-- we had some great possessions and some Bad ones (to be expected on the road against a team that runs phenomenal sets)

The Ugly:

UMBC shooting-- They were bad, especially from the FT line which was surprising.

 

 

The arena was nice. As Mat mentioned, the 1 open side is odd. (reminds me of Kaplan hall at WM) but would be nice for a concert. The black seats are SO much better than SECU's gold ones. It got fairly loud in there and the sound traveled well.  Helps seem more full as people cant stand and walk around concourse and see the game like at SECU.

Sponsorship and advertising blows us out of the water.

Concessions were way better too.  Had Chick fil-a, Zekes Coffee, Ritas, A donut stand and a Sweet Frog inside along with other stadium fair.

[TSU88 1,069]

Nice to finally win a close one, especially against a crosstown rival (and a pretty decent team at that) on the road. Good atmosphere in the 2nd half-crowd was into it, & a nice contingent of TU fans. 

I know UMBC’s foul shooting at one point was pitiful, but how refreshing was it to get a W where for a change the opponent yaks at the line & we shoot well from the charity stripe.

A few random observations:

I criticize Skerry for his recruiting, but he hit a home run on Fobbs. He was every bit as good last night as ZM was anytime last year. He’s averaging 23ppg in his last 5 outings. 

Gotta love the D from Tunstall. He’s not going to score much, but 15 boards last night & averaging 8 rpg.

We have a major problem at PG (hardly a revelation, but I felt compelled to discuss it here). They shot a combined 1-15 last night, but it’s also the turnovers. I will give Dottin credit for running the team in crunch time last night, after Skerry benched a completely ineffective Howard. Problem with Dottin is he can’t shoot from the outside & on a few occasions last night he drove into the lane like a bull in a china shop. Still, he might be the better option this year.

Why is Drayton playing? I admire his toughness (playing with an injury to one of his hands) but none of his shots last night were even close to going in.

Kudos to McNeil for knocking down 2 3’s in the 1st OT. Wish he could do that consistently.

Solomon continues to show flashes. Think he had 8 points last night. If he can develop his interior game, we’ve got something. 

Question for Mat-I didn’t see Selcuk on the bench last night. Is he already gone? If he’s injured, I noticed the other injured players made the trip.

The UMBC arena is nice, though I found it odd that one end doesn’t have seats behind the basket. Also a little distracting that they don’t have a big overhanging scoreboard like us-I constantly found myself looking around for the score & time remaining in the game. I did like that they had a chick-fil-a booth. Getting off the parking lot after the game was a royal pain in the butt though.

 

 

[sr16 158]

9 hours ago, BradTU said:

Proud of the team and how they battled! Pumped to be on the winning side of a game like this. With how the season has gone, I was sure we were going to let this slip away. Love the resiliency. This will pay dividends moving forward. UMBC ain’t no slouch. 

Fobbs, just wow. Also glad to see McNeil hit some huge 3s down the stretch (since we’ve been so critical of him lately). Tunstall with a monster game on the boards. 

Big morale booster for Skerry & Co I’m sure. We needed this.

As I was thinking in my head, WHY is Jordan in the game.. He bangs 2 threes.. Fobbs just flat out BALLED 

[mat1992 2,228]

Forgot Selcuk wasn’t there because he doesn’t play. I’ll assume he was injured.

The only reason Drayton played was to give Fobbs a rest and Betrand had some minor leg issue.