Chris Datres

Certainly not sad about today's results. In fact, it's pretty funny to see the Chickens get smashed and JMU yak a lead. I'm going to be in the Frisco area next week and I didn't want to run across any enemy markings. Now maybe they'll be banged up for the fall season but that's doubtful.

Oh I’m not advocating for a coaching change, especially with the contract extension he signed a year or two ago. They need one or two guys that can ensure a closing attitude in the 4th quarter. A lot of this year’s losses could have gone the other way and we’d be singing a much sweeter tune.

How many big games under Nadelen has his team yakked a 4th quarter lead? Seems to be too many. Pretty embarrassing that we can’t even make the conference tournament.

*checks bracket* *sees UNH didn’t make it* *declares whole thing a sham*

I refuse to get suckered into any more optimism about any more transfers unless I actually know who they are and/or have seen them play. 2nd team all-conference? Team captain? Team's 2nd-leading scorer? Grrrrrreat. And then they get here and turn into lemons or in Holland's case, never sees the floor. I'll reserve judgment to when the ball gets tipped in November.

Northeastern's Tyson Walker runs off to Sparty. Byeeeeeee

Lateral job basketball-wise for sure. Jeff Goodman reported that he's getting more than double his salary by making the move so in that respect, it's a good move. I'm just surprised that his name isn't up for a lower-level A-10/AAC job.

Only thing worse than the Chickens winning is freakin Drexel winning. Would have had no problem with that drought extending to 250 years.

Found this on the UL Lafayette athletics site: Boosters are subject to some limitations on their contact with prospective student-athletes. One component of NCAA rules is that only the authorized coaches may recruit on behalf of the institution. This promotes competitive equity by ensuring that every program has the same number of people available to recruit for their program. Boosters are not permitted to recruit prospective student-athletes on behalf of the institution. So it would be a violation of NCAA rules for a booster to contact a prospective student-athlete by Twitter or Facebook to encourage them to attend UL. Likewise, it would be impermissible for a booster to set up a fan page in order to encourage a specific prospect to attend UL, such as a page entitled “Cajuns Fans Love Jake Prospect.” Because the institution is held responsible for the conduct of its boosters, doing so would require the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to self-report a violation of NCAA rules. It is not, however, impermissible for booster to follow a prospective student-athlete on Facebook or Twitter, as long as they are not reaching out to that recruit to in any way encourage them to attend UL. Boosters may not contact a prospect even if a prospective student-athlete invites people to contact him or her to advise them about what school to choose. Also, keep in mind that someone can be both a member of the media and a booster, depending on the context. As a member of the media, you would expect that someone would be seeking information, not pushing a particular agenda. So if a media member/booster contacted a prospect to say “I hear you are leaning towards UL, would you care to comment” that would be an appropriate contact by a member of the media. If that same individual sent a message saying, “I hear you are leaning towards UL, I think you would look great in Red and Black. Is it true?” that would be impermissible contact by a booster because they are encouraging the prospect to attend UL. It all depends on the context. So in answer to your question, it doesn't look like we can do that. Because I'm in the media AND I officiate two high school sports, I have to keep this in mind when I'm working games.

They are certainly out there. Former DePaul PG Rashon Burno just got hired at Northern Illinois. There are tons of former players from our generation (mid-90s to early 2000s) who are assistants on college benches that would jump at the opportunity to lead a program. And I'm willing to bet that 99% of them wouldn't rely on defense and rebounding as ways to recruit and try to win games.

Where I stand... I'll start by saying that despite the mess this season was and the no-show today in Harrisonburg, I don't feel like anyone should lose their job after the circumstances of this season. The fact we actually finished the season after three (!!) pauses is a credit to the players and the staff for keeping it together. But that's pretty much where my 'praise' ends. Let's start with Skerry. He's a great guy, very personable, changed the culture with Towson basketball especially academically, and I think he could be an asset as an assistant for a program. But let's face it, this program is bottoming out. The peak ended when we lost to W&M in the semis with Benimon and the second smaller peak was after we won in Belfast to start that season 11-1. Since then, we're 40-62 with 4 straight one-and-dones in the CAA Tournament. That's not continuing to build a program. That's having it infested with termites and mold and watching it fall apart. The reason for this is simple -- recruiting and scheme. Skerry has one way to play and that's defense and rebounding. Unless you're Michigan State or Virginia or Texas Tech (among others), you're not gonna get away with that philosophy with too much success for too long. The modern game has changed too much and we have failed to adapt. As a result, we have NOBODY who can reliably create their own shot and when we do have drive-and-kick situations, it leads to various clanks and clangs from the 3-point line. While Gibson and Timberlake are serviceable players, they are wildly inconsistent from a scoring standpoint. Would they start elsewhere? Highly doubtful. That's not to slight them. But to even an untrained basketball eye, they are not the players you build your team around. Let's look at the transfers that we've brought in -- Holland was a waste for this year and maybe altogether if he doesn't stick around. Allen was very meh. Victor didn't show all that much promise either. We sit in a very fertile HS basketball area between Maryland, DC, Northern Virginia, Philly, and Central Pennsylvania. Surely, we can get into the living rooms of players who are stars on their high school teams rather than taking players who are on nobody's D1 radar. We're a school that the expectation should be come March, they should be one of the three favorites to win the conference tournament EVERY YEAR. With the exception of maybe 2 of those Marchs, we haven't been able to say that. Hell, we're just hoping to stay out of the play-in game. More importantly, let's look at the transfers under Skerry. We've lost Four (grad transfer), Zane (should have never taken him back this year, which I said when it first happened), Gorham, and Betrand. I know there are others but these are the main ones I want to focus on. When you lose players like these, guys who were starters and key contributors, there has to be an underlying reason besides 'I want to play in a bigger conference'. And you look at what happened with Betrand last year with him torching Drexel in Philly and then going completely AWOL on the court the rest of the way, how does that occur? I suspect it all comes back to the leader of the program and the schemes involved. So, it's time for Skerry to be put on notice and if there isn't a significant improvement in 21-22, it's time to eat that buyout and find someone a little bit more dynamic who can inject some life into the program and whatever is left of the fanbase. I'm not gonna stop there. @Royal Tiger brings up a terrific point about the administration. Certainly, I don't even pretend to know the goings-on in the department but if a coaching change is made, I don't really think I want Tim Leonard making that hire. He has gotten women's basketball, women's lacrosse, and volleyball right and extending Nadelen on the men's lax side was the right move. But if you truly want to bolster this athletic department, you have to hit a home run with a hire in your two big-revenue sports. When fans return to games (hopefully next school year), what is going to give anyone any incentive to come to SECU? The athletic department has largely failed at getting people into the seats and it's truly pathetic that a state school with the enrollment that Towson has can't regularly get 60% capacity in a 6,000-seat arena. And before we start with the 'oh there's other stuff to do blah blah blah', go talk to some friends at Grand Canyon and ask them how they do it. I know I've harped about GCU before but their results both on the court and in the stands support my argument. If you can improve the product on the court, you will improve the attendance in the stands and the excitement within the program. But as Royal asked, do they even care? If they don't, then we might as well be Kennesaw State or Delaware State or Mississippi Valley State -- teams that put warm bodies in uniforms with the school name on it and trot them out to get slaughtered on a nightly basis. The title of this thread is 1,491 days. What it should be is 10,950 days....the length of time since we were in the NCAA Tournament. That's a little more than a week short of *30 YEARS*. I've tried to be patient and see the bright side of things because I know how tough it is in a one-bid league, especially with the amount of luck involved in the conference tournaments (look at what happened to both Vermont and UMBC today). But I'm sick and tired of getting to March and having virtually nothing more than a mathematical chance to win the conference and get our name called on Selection Sunday. It's time that this school shares my frustration and gets serious about its basketball program and makes significant improvements.

Seeing the final quarter and a half plus OT, it felt like we had a ton of chances but just couldn't finish. Whether it was losing the ball out of the stick or shooting wide or a couple of nice saves, they couldn't quite cash in. But the aggressiveness seemed to be there and the opportunities were there. Just gotta finish. The weather was rough on ballhandling and passing for both teams. 49 combined turnovers certainly indicate that. I thought our defense played pretty solid and generated enough pressure in those rough conditions to cause turnovers. Certainly a very tall task next week as we step up in class to take on the Dukies.

Still a bit too early to tell but thus far, 5 sweeps and 3 splits in the back-to-back format. And NE is 6-0 in conference like it's nothing. Drexel had WM down 61-52 with 4:00 left and lost. WM went on a 14-0 run all from the free throw line and didn't have a FG the final 7 1/2 minutes. That's a rarity.

Towson opens as a 4-point favorite, bet quickly down to 3 1/2. Not quite sure how you evaluate a team that has played two games in 5 weeks.

The good news - we won’t go winless this season. The bad news - don’t think anyone in the CAA will shoot free throws that poorly or will get hammered on the boards like Coppin did. And they only lost by 5. Had they not gone into an offensive funk beginning at the 10:00 mark, they win that game. In other words, we’re not very good right now. Part of that is still trying to figure out a rotation after the Covid pause. But a lot of it is we just have very average players and that leads to the wild inconsistencies that we have seen at the offensive end of the floor. Thompson can be a force but he needs to get meaner. The U’s need to be quicker and better coordinated. Mims and Allen definitely show some promise but Mims has gotta stay on the floor. We have a pretty good idea of what we have with Timberlake and Gibson. Hopefully, Gibson is back very soon. When you take the sum of the parts, I don’t see much to get excited about right now. Maybe that changes once conference season hits and we find the CAA isn’t all that good either. And then there’s Zane. My jury is still out on him. Today didn’t help his cause. Yes, the 8 boards and 4 assists were helpful on a day he couldn’t shoot. The steal for the dunk was the catalyst in the 15-2 run to take the game. But he’s also a flippin 5th year guy. And 5th year guys are supposed to be smart. Driving for a layup in a 9-pt game with :46 left and the opponent not interested in fouling is not a smart play. Stand out there and kill the clock. Instead, he misses, Coppin gets a 3, and the game becomes unnecessarily close. After a stunt like that, I really don’t have much confidence in him when it’s a 2-pt game and 30 seconds on the clock.

The CAA has been incredibly quiet in the non-con season. That changed today as Hofstra went 10 of 20 from 3 and walked away with a 7-point win at Richmond. That’s an insanely good win against a team most think can make the Sweet 16. In the other CAA/A-10 tilt today, Madison got down big in the first half but made it a game late, losing to VCU by 1 at Siegel.

And only beat Salem by 3. That would have been a rough way to begin the season had it gone the other way.

If the reason why the Coppin game was dropped was because of a positive that came back the day of the game as a false positive, why was the door slammed shut on playing the game? Same goes for this UMBC game. If that 'potential' positive comes back as a false tomorrow morning, why not still play it? It's not like there's any travel issues in place like what happened in the ACC with Clemson and Virginia going to Florida State. Prepare as if both teams are going to play and then if the test turns out false, then proceed as normal.

Postponed due to potential positive test to a Towson player. At least we got those first 3 games in.

Basketball life has changed and thanks to the analytics world and NBA teams like the Houston Rockets (and to an extent, Villanova has embraced it as well), the 3 is more important than a low-post game. Our defenses have NEVER been good at being able to get out and defend perimeter shooters. It often feels like teams have their best shooting nights of the season against us. Whether it's scheme, lack of awareness, lack of quickness (which I doubt), or miscommunication, it's almost comical how much we give up behind the arc. And then when we do rotate out on a 3-point shooter, we foul them. The facepalms while watching or listening never seem to end. Mainly because they fit his system. All coaches do it and it's frustrating when players are recruited and signed and you might get excited for them and then they come in and don't produce the way you think they can. As stated above, the 3 is the new way of life in basketball. We haven't been able to bring in a dead-eye shooter because the scheme calls for defense and rebounding. It almost feels like sometimes that we recruit in the hopes that if we can score 60-65 points, it'll be enough to win games.

I like how our website's headline writers say a player 'earned' a certain amount of points. Sounds like we have a rookie sportswriter in our midst. My impressions from this weekend are few. We went 0 for 3 against teams that are likely better than anyone in our conference. We played 3 games in 3 days and our shooting showed it today. Most alarming is the effort on the boards and at the defensive end of the floor. I get it that Buffalo was bigger than us but height only gets you so far with rebounding. There has to be effort and depending on how much contact is allowed in practice, I'd be borrowing Izzo's Spartan drill when they get back into the gym. That and the complete ignorance of shooters, which has been a giant problem in the past, bothers me the most. 33 3's allowed in the first 3 games is inexcusable (though, 5 of 21 allowed today is a step in the right direction).

San Fran just beat Virginia so I don't know if I'd feel as bad about losing to them.

28 3’s allowed in 2 games. That’s pathetic.

Wait, what?

Stats can lie a lot. If you had told me coming into this game that we'd shoot 37% from the field, go 7-16 from the 3-point line, 11-14 from the free throw line, have only 10 turnovers, and only get outrebounded by 8 and said, I'll give you Towson +25, I'd have figured I was going to make a lot of cash. So from a stats perspective, it's not awful. But wow, the old defensive flaw of not recognizing shooters really popped up today. Giving up 15 3's is really really terrible and this has been a problem in the past few years. As said earlier, the play by the bigs leaves a lot to be desired but, hey, Virginia is a number of steps above class. The next two games will hopefully give us a better gauge.