MBB falls to Charleston, 54-53

[mat1992 2,233]

https://towsontigers.com/news/2019/2/2/mens-basketball-towson-battles-cofc-to-the-end-in-heartbreaker.aspx

Towson will certain moved to tied for eighth, depending on what the other teams do. Delaware got rocked by 21 by W&M today as the only other 4pm. That's bad for us as far as trying to stay out of the bottom four. At worse, we will need to go 4-1 at home since NE and Hofstra are probable road losses. I thought this one was a probable road loss as well but Towson had a four-point lead with under a minute left. That's when Brian Fobbs went to the line for a one-and-one. He missed the front end and Grant Riller nailed a 3-pointer with Fobbs playing five feet off him. We were give open three's all game but that's one guy you do not want to leave open for a 3, up 4.

Then Howard misses a front end and Riller scored on a backdoor layup against Fobbs. Still time left to win the game but they are all over Fobbs, who tries to go through the entire team and misses. Sanders has easy put back and clanks it off the glass.

Better team won but they didn't deserve. We gave it away. Fobbs had a tough game with nine points on 3-of-10 shooting and was 0-4 from 3-point range. Missed two open threes to start the half, which makes you wonder.  If we had started the game and the second half better (actually hitting a basket in first five minutes), we win the game with ease. That's because the defense was sensational and strategy to play zone and then stay in the "red zone" in the paint to limit the drives worked great in the second half.

But I like to second-guess so I wonder why Solomon gets taken out for Sanders late in the game. He's playing well. Has 9 points and four rebounds off the bench. Sanders has 5 points and is 1 for 7 from the field with four rebounds as a starter. Betrand also playing well with 10 points n 4-of-5 shooting. I get having McNeill in the game for defense, but he should have been on Riller, not Fobbs.

Oh well. They need a break. They won't play until next Saturday at home against JMU when Lax team plays Hopkins at 12pm. 

 

 

[mat1992 2,233]

Hold up, NE is beating Hofstra by 19 late in the with Shawn Occeus out? One of the best defenders in the CAA. I thought they could win but not like that. Hmm. Is Mihalich going to his bench with under 2 minutes left down 19?

Here are some comments by Skerry on 1300am after the game

"Ther are no moral victories. Have to continue to play better. That was a Towson effort defensively. That's what we talked about going in. A couple of questionable calls. We had it where we wanted it. Our best FT shooters missed one-and-ones. Had the ball in Fobbs hands late. That's what we wanted. Riller made a couple of big ones late. We wanted to be loaded in the red zone. Force them to take long jump shots. We have to keep them out of the lane. The foul shooting hurt us. TJ played well. Allen played well. Solomon was good. That's a good team, Came right down the wire. Our record should be better, it's not. Hopefully we are learning from it. This hurts but can we play that same type of focus and edge at home that we do on the road. The mental toughness is do we learn from that and have that same type of energy and toughness at home. Starting to do better things

 

[TSU88 1,073]

Well, I’ll try to take the “glass half full” position...other than Hofstra, we’ve proven that on any given night we’re capable of beating anyone in the conference.

Now, how we yak a 4-point lead with less than a minute left, with our 2 best foul shooters at the line is more of a “glass half empty” proposition 

[mat1992 2,233]

The good news is that this is not the same team that played Charleston and lost by 12 at home. The freshmen are playing better. Howard is playing better. Sanders is well...but at least we have a decent nine-man rotation. Fobbs probably needs that one week rest considering all five players are chasing every time he touches the ball. Now we need to win at home. Not just play better but win because we are not playing the elite guys at SECU.

[TSU88 1,073]

5 of last 7 at home. Drexel, JMU are hopefully revenge W’s; Delaware & Elon could go either way-can we sweep either? We’ll see. W&M is a sleeper team in my opinion. Not overly optimistic we’ll beat them.

We almost certainly lose the 2 road games (Hofstra & NE)

 

 

[mat1992 2,233]

W&M has been awful until the last two games. They have one of the best collection of offensive talent but they play defense like UNCW. We can't stop their Princeton-style offense. We have to pound them inside and out-physical them, which is not tough to do. But we also have to f-ing finish, which is well, not one of our best attributes.

[TSU88 1,073]

How many W’s will it likely take to finish 6th in the conference? A wildly optimistic finish for us would be 9-9 (requiring us to win out at home). Not impossible, but a pretty damn tall order. Last year we finished 8-10 & that kept us out of the play-in games

[tualum 108]

How the heck did we lose with the lead with so little time left? Forgot it's us. Much improved however and probably should have won this one.. oh well..

[TSU88 1,073]

From the “it could be worse” file, NC State shot 9-54 from the field today!!! The Wolfpack’s 24 total points for the game is the fewest in the shot clock ⏰ era. 24 points sounds like something out of the Phil Ford 4 corners era.

Edited February 3, 2019 by TSU88

[TuTigers2012 1,062]

No killer instinct or alpha dog on this team. Luckily we played good d and kept Riller and Brantley down. Could have been worse