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We've done so well with me not being able to watch or listen to the game live that I think I'll do it again for the semifinal game too unless it rains here which is not in the forecast. Impressive effort by the freshmen to carry the day, especially Williamson. Big step up by Tarke to sort of jumpstart things in the 2nd half and get us rolling. The 3-pt defense since the 12:00 mark of the 2nd half vs W&M has been very impressive. That'll be ultra necessary against Charleston as they'll whip it around the perimeter like they did against us in the home game. Only way we're gonna beat them is if we keep up this same defensive effort and if we shoot like we did at their place. Charleston's that white whale that for the most part we haven't been able to take down in a big spot. We've proven they're beatable. Just have to play that same game from January. Oh, and that's another 20-win season. Of course, there will be those who will foolishly place asterisks on it and that's their agenda. Would you prefer the consistent 20-loss seasons from 1998-2011?

Matt, while I realize I do have an air of negativity regarding the coach and the program, I would like to thank you for your time, effort and tolerance. It makes a difference.

Introducing Towson Fans 2.0. This update fixes all of our old issues: - New users can signup without getting stuck in limbo. - New chat box coming soon - Embed videos directly in posts - Over 50 new features with this new update - We will possibly update once again in July. -Less spam signups and posts We have an opportunity for growth. A lot of people don’t know about this website. Let’s get them in here!

There's a very fine line between a win and a loss some nights and Dylan Williamson showed that to us tonight. 2nd to last possession, they're slow getting into whatever offense they wanted to run with the shot clock running out, he loses the ball and JMU gets a basket to cut it to 2. Then we play clockball again, which we should, but run a nothing set and Dylan is forced to chuck it and it happens to go in. 9 1/2 times out of 10, that doesn't go our way and we're facepalming after another terrible loss. It went our way tonight. Then Dylan has the icing on the cake -- pun intended -- with the two free throws to close it out. This was a pretty gritty win against a team that looked very similar to us in how they played at both ends of the floor. This game also showed that Hicks is all the way back from his concussion issues from last year and a contribution like that is going to go a long way for the rest of the offense. If we can transition to a situation where Williamson is more of the alpha shooter while Hicks runs the point, I think the offense gets more efficient. But...we really need May and Tejada to find their games and have Sulaiman and Messiah do their best to contribute on the inside. We need to put one of those electric fence collars on Tarke whenever he thinks about shooting from the outside. Drive all you want and distribute and set up others but goodness, no more of the outside stuff. Twice in that game, he hoisted up 3's immediately after coming down the floor and they led to run-out buckets at the other end. You're supposed to be a senior. Think like one. One other thing that struck me was how big this win could and should be for future attendance the rest of the semester. That place looked hyped and a win like that in a good atmosphere is the best advertisement for getting people to come out to the next one and build that atmosphere even more.

My prediction of a 41-24 Towson win drew some skepticism from some of my fellow Tigers here. I wasn’t too far off. Just felt like the Towson squad we saw against UC was not a fluke but a truer indication of what this team is capable of offensively. Granted, that team was led by Davis. However, after what I saw from Brown against Villanova, I’m all in on that dude. I feel like he has better instincts and composure. There are still some challenging games left but none of them are “improbable” wins. I still wouldn’t be shocked if we ran the table the rest of the way.

When most of us think of NDSU, we think of losing 35-7 in Frisco. I’m old enough to remember playing them in Fargo in the 1983 D-II playoffs. We had a phenomenal team that year, went 10-1, including our first ever win over Delaware. But our offense was pass-oriented and the weather in Fargo was bitterly cold (no Fargodome back then). The Bison were run heavy and controlled the time of possession, winning 24-17, then went on to win the first of their many championships. What still irks me is that we were higher ranked at season’s end and should have hosted that game. Temps here that day were in the 50s, which would have greatly benefited our passing offense. I’m convinced we would have won had the game been played at Minnegan Stadium and TSU would have been national champs.

It’s no wonder there’s like 10 people who post here. Aside from general apathy, it’s gets depressing reading the same negative comments ad nauseum. No question the results on the court and the gridiron have left much to be desired. I get it. But I’m growing weary of getting poked in the eye with these ceaseless depressing posts. You don’t have to be a cheerleader, and the board shouldn’t be a propaganda tool for struggling teams and coaches, but when it’s constant negativity I just assume you have some personal agenda/axe to grind

Who or what has been the cause of the beef between us and Loyola? The Hounds released their schedule and they've got Lancaster Bible on there as their 2nd game of the season. I get that there wouldn't be a home-and-home series in season with them but doing a constant home-and-home with them would at least check one home game box for each side every other year. It's also kind of absurd that two schools that close in proximity don't play each other anymore.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! No ifs, ands or buts. 4-11 record in conference tournament; never has won more than 1 game in 11 years of tournament play; never has even made it to the tournament championship game NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! No ifs, ands or buts. No credible, unbiased observer could conclude otherwise. Anyone who does, lacks credibility in my estimation. It’s stunning to me how anyone, with a straight face, could say an 18-12 regular season, over 13 years, with the postseason futility cited above, is acceptable. It’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH, end of story, full stop

Seen this rodeo before but will take it like usual..lol

This is what we’re reduced to. The coach complementing a player who finally made 1 shot from the field. Good grief. When does this purgatory end? It’s a tiresome exercise, pointing out how pitiful this team is, game after game. It’s probably better just to divert my eyes from this dreck and pray that the Athletic Director and/or the University President aren’t delusional enough to give this coach an extension. I never bought into the no-nothing nitwits who picked us to win the conference, and until recently I thought we could win 8 or so conference games. Even if the conference is as bad as some suggest, I’m starting to think maybe 5-6 conference wins is our ceiling. Is there a more hapless, slow, dull, poor shooting, inept offense in all of D1? This coach is getting a half a million dollars a year. Think about that for a minute. This is the bang we’re getting for those kind of bucks? This is completely unacceptable

It’s no secret that I’d very much like to see a change in leadership for our MBB team. It’s long overdue. Having said that, Pat Skerry is a very likeable guy. I just wish his postseason and non-conference success were greater because he’s easy to root for and I like to see good things happen to good people. He’s a good person.

Runyon is going to the Hula Bowl All-Star game https://x.com/hula_bowl/status/1864795715618148545?s=46&t=nScacl1TWT-KyOwj5stBaw

Towson: 27 Spiders: 24

Granted, it was only an exhibition game, and perhaps St. John’s is a very good team, but the stats from this game are discouraging-28% from the floor, including just barely over 20% from 3; a whopping 25 turnovers; and Tejada & May were a combined 7-25; Lowery and Suliman a combined 0-10. But, here’s a shocker…we out rebounded them 😆. I’d say we’re in mid season form 😆. On to St. Mary’s

Made the roundtrip there and back from the Twin Cities today (about 3:15 each way), so I really appreciated the fight in the second half to make the game interesting. This team has definitely shown some fight in the first four games, but I still feel like we don't know much about them. The NDSU offense is pretty good this year, but that is a somewhat subpar NDSU defense for that program. We didn't put enough pressure on them early when we could have made this a tighter game. Our first drive was pretty solid, but Davis missed an opportunity to get a TD on the third down play when he couldn't quite get enough air on his pass to get it to an open receiver. It was a difficult roll-out play, but one that could have been made. On our next two drives, we got decent yardage on first and second down but couldn't executive on 3rd and 3 and 3rd and 4 due to a combination of breakdowns. It felt like one at least one of those third down plays, Davis could have run for the first down. He made that adjustment very well in the second half, but it was probably too late at that point. I only listened on the radio last week, but was wondering what others think about the comp with Brown's throwing arm compared to Davis. It felt like there were 3-4 above average throws that Davis missed today that could have been big plays. He also had the jitters early on, and it seemed like his accuracy was off a little bit. Meanwhile four of NDSU's five 3rd down conversions in the game came on 3rd and 9 or longer. With the game tied at 3-3, we had them at 3rd and 10 from their own 30, and they came up with a 49-yard pass play to keep a drive that ended up as a TD alive. Late in the second quarter at 17-3, NDSU seemed content to run the clock out and was at 3rd and 11 from their own. Once they completed a 16 yard pass play, they quickly drove down the field and made it 24-3. They converted a 3rd and 15 from their own 39 in their first drive on the second half on pass interference, but thankfully missed a 44-yard field goal. They also had a 3rd and 9 from our 22-yard line and converted on a pass interference play, and pushed the score to 31-10 later in the third quarter. I know I am being picky pulling up each of those plays, but between the two punt play letdowns, the two PIs on 3rd and long, and the two other 3rd and long spots we gave up, we just had too many letdowns to make this as tight of a game as it could have been. That was little disappointing. I know some of the big plays we made against NDSU and Cincy show off some of the talent on this team, but finding yourself down 21-3 in the first quarter in Cincy and 24-3 at halftime against NDSU helps loosen the intensity of those defenses too. Our best offense has come try to claw our way back from huge deficits, and I hope we don't see many more of those this year. I also don't think NDSU is a top five team and that Villanova is a top 10 squad. They are still good teams, but both are a tad overrated from what I can tell. Still, credit the players for fighting hard the whole game and for making some adjustments in the second half. Davis did a good job of using his legs when things broke down offensively in the second half, and the Tyrell Greene Jr. TD run was a thing of beauty. We actually almost came close to replicating it with Devin Matthews when it was 34-24, but NDSU's safety made a solid one-on-one tackle to keep it from being a big gain and the drive broke down because of penalties. Overall, I was a little disappointed with some of the mistakes that let us fall behind by so much in the first half. Those mistakes won't just hurt us against NDSU and Cincinnati, we will pay for themi in conference play if we don't clean them up. The talent level and the fact that our total yardage has been 438, 346, 394, 366 in the first four games (even if we piled up a lot of it against NDSU and Cincy when we trailed big) are both promising. We have also run for 5.2 (194) total, 5.1 (137 total), 5.2 (161 total) and 8.5 (205 total) yards per carry in our first four games. We just need to clean up special teams and some of the mistakes we have made on both sides of the ball. They made the Morgan State game closer than it should have been, they cost us the Villanova game, and they blew a chance for this to be a really tight and competitive game against NDSU the whole way.

I started following UC’s football program on Instagram about a month ago to get a feel for how their summer camp was going. They definitely have some beasts. Granted, 20 second instagram stories can be made to look impressive but in all reality this team has some stud athletes as you would expect from a Big 12 program. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’m most concerned about our smaller/shorter d-line against their experienced and huge OL. Would not be surprised if they rush for 250+ on us. However, I also wouldn’t be surprised if they sleep on us early and we break off a few big chunk plays and maybe make it interesting in the first half. Regardless of what happens, I can’t wait for the season to begin. Got myself some new Towson swag to wear….I’m making the trip and will be in attendance this Saturday at Nippert. Go Tigers!!

When you're the better team, you should win that game. We were the better team tonight and the defense against those snipers was on point...for 36 minutes. When May banked in the 3 to put us up 7, I thought that was a sign. But when we got the stop at the other end and decided to go into clockball with 4 minutes left, I knew we were in trouble. This is a choke of epic proportions that puts every one of our past disappointments in the conference tournament down a peg. I have no idea why in the world you wouldn't just keep running your offense and working the ball down low to CT with that 7-point lead. Oh wait, I know. It's because we have a choking tactician on the sidelines. How man free throws did we shoot tonight? 7. Shameful. As soon as we got that 7-point lead, that was the time to run the offense thru Charles and force Charleston to either collapse and open up a shooter or get him to the free throw line. He had finally figured it out in the lane in the first half and yet only had 2 points in the 2nd half (while also committing a couple of insanely dumb fouls for anyone, let alone a 5th year senior). But instead, freakin Paar is in the game and DW is out there on an island all by himself with no one coming to the ball. Then we gotta chuck up crap at the shot clock horn when we hadn't done that the entire game. Tarke should have been stapled to the bench after the first 10 minutes of the game when he showed that he was gonna be Bad Tarke and throw up a bunch of crazy crap around the rim. He did NOTHING tonight. But he could have made it all better if he flushes that breakaway layup. Nope, that was too much to ask of him. Weak. This also points to the lack of player development and regression we've seen throughout the season out of a lot of players. Who got better as the season went on? DW, Tejada (though still an enigma at times), and that's about it. I'd put Lowery on the positive side too but he needs to get tons better at the offensive end. I love his defense and his activity on the boards. So now the elephant in the room. I'm done with Skerry. Great guy, keeps his players out of trouble (for the most part), graduates them, gets them opportunity post-college. But he's hit his ceiling. You have to be a winning coach in this situation when you're up by 7 with 4:00 left against the best team in the conference. You can't have offensive liabilities on the floor during that time. You have to realize that certain players don't have it tonight and make sure they don't continue to hurt you. But most of all, you have to make your players better as the season goes on. The player development over the last couple of years has been lacking. I can't count the number of times I've watched a big man this year take it soft to the basket and miss layups. That should be corrected in the summer, not allowed to fester throughout the entire year. He's brought in a pair of D2 All-Americans in the last 2 years and both players looked like they wouldn't make a roster of any D1 team in the country. Worst of all, we still try to win games via the caveman era. We haven't evolved with how the game has evolved. And yet, when we needed to go to that in the last 4 minutes, the wrong personnel is on the floor and the wrong gameplan is called out. This is a shameful choke.

There was a small piece of schadenfreude last night when ODU lost in OT on the first day of their conference tournament to finish the season 7-25. For any of the other old-schoolers besides Mat and I from the ollllllld CAAZone days, we took a beating from the ODU fanbase among others for how bad we were. They're a good example that the grass isn't always greener as they've only been to 1 Tourney since they left CAA whereas they had been to 4 in the 9 years before leaving.

The long and short of it is Skerry is not a good basketball coach. He ahs had 13 years to win something, even if it is by accident. His offense is dribble for 20 seconds, throw up a bomb and send everyone to get the rebound. His defense is mediocre, but it is a story of keep telling everyone it is good and sooner or later they will believe it. His teams are good enough to beat bottom feeders and every now and then another mediocre team. Fundamentals are lacking and basketball IQ has not improved once the talented kids arrive. These are all responsibilities of a coach. These kids have potential, but it needs to be developed. During 13 years, the TU coach is overpaid and under productive. It is sad to see. When the hallmark of the 13 years is good coaching PR....you are in trouble.

Yesterday was a display of coaching and execution. More importantly, it was a message to Towson…We have the biggest D*%#k in this conference. Ive watched Charleston overcome lesser athletic ability by out coaching and out executing their opponents. Yesterday was a prime example of how they do it.

Today was the largest glaring example of what works in college basketball and what doesn't. You can hang your shingle on defense and rebounding but you'd better have offensive weapons in order to do that. The years we won the conference regular season and advanced in the CIT, we had guys that could score. You have to go out and find more of those scorers and not just a bunch of brutes that look good in a weight room and can play defense and rebound. Kelsey took the job at Charleston and set about finding the type of players that work -- they're big, they share the ball, they hit open shots. Meanwhile, we plod along and run a low-post offense with zero movement and sometimes a wing and a prayer to get a decent look or a look before the shot clock expires. Twice today, the shot clock was running out and who had the ball? Mekhi Lowery. That can't ever happen. We were largely clueless on offense, finding zero ways to get Tejada open (1 shot in the first half) and showing very little interest in running anything that had ball movement to 3 sides of the floor. Meanwhile, Charleston is slinging it all over the floor and playing an orchestra on our defense (especially Thompson and Paar) with the pick-and-roll action. Charleston's the template of what we should aspire to be. They have D2 players just like we do but they found the offense while we went for the bruising fullbacks. With whatever time Pat has left on his contract, he needs to overhaul his philosophy to be more like Charleston. Otherwise, we've already hit our ceiling and it's never gonna get crashed through.

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.

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.

Of all the things the chickens have spoiled over the years, this can’t be one of the last things they get. Do what we usually do at home (minus that first half vs NE) and we’ll be good.

Ok, so what if I told you CT would score 4 points (after being kicked out of the game, following a brutally bad technical foul call); Tarke (who I still love) would have a comically bad 2-17 shooting performance (how’s that even possible); Tejada would continue his funk (3 total points in the last two games); and Sulaiman would score 2 points, and …we’d win by 11, on the road, on short rest. After May channeled his good Timberlake in the 1st half, you knew DE was going to take him away in the second half, and when they did, up stepped DWill, who was virtually unstoppable towards the end of the game. And kudos to Jones, with another solid 8 point effort, and to Lowery, for draining those two foul shots late in the game. I saved the best for the last…what a clutch performance by Chase Paar. He chipped in a few points, but really played stellar D, after CT got the boot. Credit to Skerry for calling out the abomination that was the ejection of CT. As best I could see, he simply slapped the ball out of Davis’s hands, which, in a big conference game, hardly seemed to have been deserving a technical foul. Having said that, CT needs to do a better job of maintaining his composure, and not giving bad refs like this an excuse to T him up. 6-2, with W’s vs DE & C of C (on the road) along with W’s vs Drexel & UNCW. I don’t know how long they can keep this up, given some of the inherent limitations they have, but for now, I’m just going to enjoy it. On to NE at home Thursday, in what should be a revenge game for us

We have a mutiny after every loss. What else would be new? Some just love the misery. The schadenfreude. Hey, let's give this team kudos for the road win against a team that had won nine straight games and was supposedly down from last season (and wasn't going to match 31 wins). A team that we had chances to beat in all three games last season and couldn't get it done at the end.

I’ll give credit where credit is due. Tonight’s game is usually the type we lose. Instead it was UNCW who yakked a 7 point lead with a little over 3 minutes left. If you would have told me before the game that DWill and TT would combine for 9-38 shooting, I would have told you we would lose by 30. Go figure. Credit to Hicks, Samb, who had a nice little spurt in the first half, and, to all people, Tarke, who actually made a few plays. Let’s temper this though with the fact that UNCW is not the same team as last year, when Trazarian (sp) White was tearing up the CAA (he’s now getting paid quite handsomely to avg 10 ppg for TCU). Also, as alluded to earlier, our shooting was woeful. Anyway, take the W and on to C of C. Frankly, no matter what happens in Charleston, the road trip is already a success. Forgot to mention that Suliaman was a bad man on that put back dunk

Another soul crushing loss, choking away a 19- point lead. A team full of mental weaklings, who fold like a chess tent at the first sign of adversity, reflecting their horrible coach. Tarke just killed us agaim. Why is he allowed to play???????! Embeya has zero basketball IQ, and May is beyond awful. For gods sake, FIRE this coach!!!!!!!

Pat didn’t show for both the halftime and post game interview?! But sends out an assistant?! HAVE SOME ACCOUNTABILITY

https://towsontigers.com/news/2024/11/26/seven-tigers-recognized-in-2024-caa-football-all-conference-honors.aspx

I only date back to the early-to-mid-90s with my association with Towson (although I did grow up in the area prior through junior high school). To me, Carl Runk was the legend of all Towson legends. I took an Officiating class with him my senior year, and it was enjoyable (he taught up how to score gymnastics as judge, which was interesting). To me, him Vince Angotti and Phil Albert (who I also took a class from at Towson) were the Mount Rushmore coaches who built this athletic program into even getting to D-1, and in Runk's case being a top lacrosse program in the region and nation (which were basically the same thing at the time). He will be missed.

Williamson's last 6 games against Mid-Major teams: 18.2 PPG 2.7 RPG 2.3 APG 1.2 TPG 34-63 overall from the field, 18-28 from Three! 23-25 from the line. That will certainly play!

It's absurd to me that a decision about redshirting in basketball comes before the season. If a player decided that without injuries being a reason, you might as well just tell the world that you're not good enough to play at this level. If a coach decided that, it's basically telling the player to head for the portal. I did not get to see any of last night's debacle and it looks like I'm better off for having not seen it. When I saw the score and saw we were down 20, it felt like more of the same. Other mid majors are going on the road and knocking off big-name teams or at least dragging them into the mud into the last minutes of the game. We come in, take our check, and give the home fans what they want. More of the same over and over and over again. With a young squad, I could be patient with their progress. There's far too much experience on this team to be laying eggs like what we've seen against St. Mary's and South Carolina.

Hopefully this is a good omen, my best friend’s brother Dave Weinstein is calling the game on SEC Network tomorrow night and he’ll be as much as a homer for us as possible.

As one poster (and it wasn’t me) wrote, “ugly and Towson basketball go hand-in-hand.”

Towson: 35 SB: 24

I think there are certain benchmarks this program needs to hit to continue to gain momentum on the way back to be at high level. Playing a good game at home was the first low bar to clear, because we didn't do that last year. I also grouped that together with eating a ranked team at home (after a 2023 season of stinkers, check). Next up, not playing down to a level of a lower opposition like we did against Morgan State. That is what is in front of us this week. We racked up a lot of yardage against Morgan State, but repeatedly shot ourselves in the foot with penalties and turnovers. After that we can focus on the upcoming three-game stretch. All three teams are probably top-25 (Richmond) or fringe top-25 in the case of Stony Brook and Monmouth. Obviously if we want to say we are playoff team we need to win all of those games and the rest. There are some signs this program is heading in the right direction with the level we have reached at at times this year, but consistently staying somewhere around that level is the next challenge.

Tribe: 24 Tigers: 41

ARETE!!!! Game Week! Don't get injured, don't end up on ESPN's not top 10, & make sure that check clears!

This is from PS' Twitter. See if you can name everyone aside from Parfait, Chris Conway, PS, and PO. https://x.com/CoachPatSkerry/status/1813750186277061070

There was a Zoom meeting for donors on Wednesday at 6pm. Probably not the best time but it was better than not having one. Steve Eigenbrot, Pres. Ginsberg, Coach Pete Shinnock and field hockey coach Katie Gerzabek Salem. Personally, I just wanted Steve to talk about NIL and the CAA, while answering questions. While they addressed some of those questions at the end, but there were no major surprises. They weren't going to say, "we're unhappy or concerned with all these teams leaving the CAA in all sports and basketball." Just didn't happen. I'd like more specifics about NIL. How far are we down the list of CAA teams? I assume we're in the middle of the pack, which is good enough to keep most of our key players. What about football and other sports? Speaking of football, the improvements are finally coming to the Field House, the Towson Center and more. Here's the thing. If you are going to spend $14M on improvements to the Field House (additional offices, team meetings, film rooms, expansion of academic center, more space to watch the games from an enclosed surface) and $20-30M on the Towson Center renovation for training room space, turf for a football field and replacing the additional courts, football is not staying in FCS and the CAA forever. They are also adding a much-needed second weight room, but for some reason, it's also going in the Towson Center instead of the Field House. Having an indoor practice facility for football is a game-changer (likely 60 yards) and some sort of basketball practice facility, also used by volleyball, can't hurt recruiting.

Make no mistake, the Richmond move is an indictment of the inept CAA leadership. As evidenced by what happened at the FBS level where the SEC and B1G leapfrogged all the other conferences by being assertive, aggressive and forward-thinking, you can see the same thing happening at the FCS level among programs with historically strong leadership, success and AMBITION. Delaware, Richmond, Stephen F. Austin, JMU, Missouri State….even upstart Kennesaw State. Making bold decisions that are in their best interests. Meanwhile, the CAA is managed by reactive, small-minded, milquetoast-weenies, who broker god-awful media deals and “poach” random, marginal, snooze-worthy programs to simply fill the void when marquee schools walk out the front door.

You know you’re getting old when classmates are gettin inducted…

I’m perfectly fine in California. I’m the ultimate optimist and I do like PS but I watched the preview and our coach is reaching for loose branches right now. I don’t want to hear about past accomplishments. Win now!

You can criticize the program all you want. You can critique the coaches, you can disagree with me on my comments after the game, you can love the team or piss on them because that's what some love to do, but no personal attacks on coaches, players, myself, or any other poster on here or people will start getting banned. Just tired of it. We all can disagree without calling people names. If not, it's time to move on.

Unacceptable. Rather than bother with a postmortem, I’ll leave it at we don’t have enough talent and we don’t have a coach capable of getting us to where we want to go. Other than that, everything is peachy. Rinse, wash, repeat. Let’s see where we are in the 2027-28 season.

The one thing I have really liked to see from this team lately is role players stepping in and contributing effectively in a variety of ways. Messiah Jones is averaging 7.3 ppg, shooting 10-12 (83%) and is a +41 in an average of a little over 17 minutes over the last three games. Toniya Sulaiman had 4 offensive rebounds (8 overall), has contributed 9 offensive rebounds in the last two games and leads the team with 15 offensive rebounds in conference play. Chaase Paar chipped in 6 pts, was 3-4, and was a +9 on the floor in 14 minutes. Dylan Williamson didn't have a great game and only played 18 minutes, but knocked down the last two free throws, which we desperately needed and was a +8 on the floor. Skerry has figured out the Tarke, May and Thompson are the only guys he trusts playing 30 minutes per game. May led the way with 34 minutes, and it was good to see him score 15 points on only nine FGs while also grabbing a team-high 10 rebounds (only one less than Williams). Tarke continues to be our alpha player, and is not scared of any moment. Sometimes that doesn't lead to the greatest shot selection, but he had a couple of great hesitation shot fakes to score over Williams. Even though it took him 14 shots to get 18 points it is helpful to have his aggressiveness, because it opens up offensive rebounding and other opportunities. Charles fouled out in 25 minutes, but I thought he played really well defensively when he is in the game. It might not look like it statistically, but I feel like he gets the better of Williams in these matchups. He scored 12 points in 25 minutes has to be one of most explosive outputs, and he had a couple of key blocks. He is shooting 61.5% from the field in conference play. He does not qualify, but that would be second behind Williams if he did. Charles leads the team in conference play in rebounding, FG%, steals, blocks and is only two behind the lead in assists. One of the interesting things when you look at the conference-only stats is that of the top four teams (Drexel, Charleston, Towson and UNC-W) they only have three players in the top 25 of minutes played. White is 18th, May is 20th, Tarke is 22nd and Charleston and Drexel have no one on that list. The rotations of those teams and how they evolve throughout the year (probably not much) will be interesting to track. Going back to my original point I feel like Skerry has been doing a solid job rotating players and having them understand strengths when they get in the game. This might be the deepest Towson team from an athletic standpoint I can remember, so it is good he is doing that well because it was one of my primary criticism of him heading into conference play. Now it is time to send Delaware off to their new conference with a couple of Ls the next couple of weeks.

We've seen in these last couple of games just how much Tarke solidifies our backcourt. He's the veteran presence that was sorely needed and missed at the beginning of the season. The defense in the middle part of the 2nd half was outstanding and allowed for us to get out to the big lead. But as Mat mentioned, the drought hits and the shot selection was a touch questionable and before you know it, the Dragons are right back in it. Fortunate that DW knocked down those 2 free throws to get it to 3 because there's no doubt that if it had been a 1 or 2-point game, Drexel was going to the rack with it and based on what happened the final 2-3 minutes, they were going to get a good look at the rim. So now we've knocked off the other top 3 teams in the conference, one of them at their place. It would be great if we could treat Delaware on Saturday the way we treated JMU when we booted them out of the conference a couple years ago.

Yesterday after seeing our team over/under posted at 63 1/2, it sent me down a rabbit hole of our history against Charleston. Starting last night, here's our last totals against CoC -- 82, 72, 75, 74 (OT), 80, 74, 53, 88 (2OT), 70, 69. That goes back to the 2019-20 season. So even though we struggle with offense at times and winning vs Charleston in particular, there's something about playing them that brings out our offense. We're certainly not going to throw in a 10-19 effort from 3 every game but finding an ounce of that consistency from the outside is gonna go a long way in these last 6 weeks of the season.