May, Tarke lead MBB to second-half rally over Northeastern

[Bay Area Tiger]

43 bench points.  
DWill still in a funk from beyond the arc.  
Tarkey gives us a game 

Somehow we are 2-1 in the CAA and I’ll take it.  
 

So happy for May cause like many said he does play hard.  
 

Enjoy the win 

[TSU88]

9 minutes ago, TTiger2024 said:

and a very good shooter

Wait, what? He deserves praise for his play tonight, and I hope it can be a springboard for him, but I’m hard pressed to equate 31% shooting and 23% from 3 with being “a very good shooter.”

[mat1992]

Recap

https://towsontigers.com/news/2025/1/9/mens-basketball-second-half-surge-leads-towson-mens-basketball-over-northeastern.aspx

[TuTigers2012]

 

10 hours ago, TSU88 said:

Strange game in the sense that we played poorly in the 1st half vs a team missing 2 starters who avg a combined 24 ppg. Then in the second half we scored 50 points (I know, inconceivable) and out scored them by 14. Stranger even more so considering we had 3 starters (Suliman, Jones and Hicks) who combined for a total of 9 points, and Tejada had a “meh” game, to put it charitably. 

Kudos to May, with 17 points, double digit rebounds and 5 assists. Now, can he build off this or revert back to a 6ppg guy? And kudos to of all people, Tarke, who I thought had a helluva game. Embeya and Lowery got off to disastrous starts, but both came on at the end. Generally, when they are on the floor, you’re basically playing 1 or 2 men short on the offensive end. 

Announced attendance 1,050, which is accurate, if you counted each person at the game twice.  Troubling that we let this guy Frankel on NE, who came in avg 2.8 ppg, score 16. 

Bottom line, take the W and move on, but this team has so many limitations and flaws that there’s precious little margin for error. Let’s see what happens Saturday in Philly, vs a Drexel team that has no impressive W’s and lost to Bryant, who we beat. If we’re somehow going to challenge for a top-4 finish in the conference, this upcoming game vs Drexel is the kind we need to win 


 

 

Thankful that they got another game against a team missing their starters, 3 of them! Better to be lucky then good!

May's best game as a tiger, rebounding passing and taking good shots. (Cutting baseline is an effective way to score, maybe Pat & co should try that more!) Tarke was solid too, but both remain enigmas.  Here today gone for a month.  

I would bet he reverts to the 35%, 32% & 65% from the line guy that he has been.  Let's not make this into a bigger deal than what it is. He's played 75+ games, much of a track record of what he is, which is a solid mid major bench/role player.

It's Towson so you can't predict most games ahead as we will shit the bed twice or so against bottom feeders (Hampton) and steal one against a top team (UNCW), but if you look at the schedule, the CAA did us LOTS of favors this year.

9 hours ago, mat1992 said:

We'll take 2-1, but Drexel looms big on Saturday. Are we meh or one of the top teams in the league? We need to put two halves together of solid offense and much better defense. I don't expect to shoot 46% from three-point range against the Dragons, but if May is back to form or at least last year's erratic form, we'll take it. Some games he could give you 23 against Charleston and others single digits. But he can take pressure off Tejada and DWill if he can start making threes consistently again. His drives will never be pretty, but I'd suggest trying to dunk everything with two hands or one. He's the anti-CT of dunkers. Two hands usually off two feet. Try to cock it back and throw it down on somebody. Nick had similar issues with finishing but at least he got to the line some. CMay is still thinking about that semifinal miss when he gets to the line. That last miss on the front end late in the game barely hit the side of the rim.

But I digress. Sure we got a break tonight, but it didn't matter if they had Troutman, Matt Janning or the late Reggie Lewis, we weren't going to beat anybody with the way we played in the first half. It's hard to figure that out because if you play like that against Charleston or UNCW, it's a 20-point blowout. Maybe it was the lineup changes, but I assume (hope so) that Dylan starts against Drexel and Tarke continues to come off the bench. Not sure about Sulaiman starting at the 2 or whatever he was doing. Again, need Mekhi to start.

Schedule is favorable, but can we take advantage?  DAC is a house of horrors for us. Cramped, bad lighting, hanging hoops. 

[Tiger93]

I still think if you take the top level of what our guys can do, May is our best all-around player. However, for him to be what we need him to be he needs to have confidence in his outside shooting. I can't believe he hadn't scored more than 10 points this year before this game, and that he hadn't shot over 50% in any game until last night. I don't expect him to go 6-10 FG, 17 pts, 12 rebounds and 5 assists every game, but when he is efficient offensively and can get into the mid-teens scoring wise, we are a lot better.

Tejada and Williamson feel like streaky volume scorers (obviously with Tejada's size he doesn't need the streakiness as much), but I always feel like May is the best on our team at just naturally getting good looks that don't disrupt the offense. With Tarke, Tejada and Williams all having some level of streakiness we need to have something we can rely on from game-to-game. This is all probably wishful thinking on my part. 

[mat1992]

I know we try and post up Lowery a lot and like to see him pass more out of the post, but for some reason we stop cutting. Why not try that with Tejada? Instead of having him attempt to attack up top against smaller and quicker defenders who knows he’s going right, try posting him up some at 6-9 220?

[Tiger93]

1 hour ago, mat1992 said:

I know we try and post up Lowery a lot and like to see him pass more out of the post, but for some reason we stop cutting. Why not try that with Tejada? Instead of having him attempt to attack up top against smaller and quicker defenders who knows he’s going right, try posting him up some at 6-9 220?

Anecdotally that little mini-hook that Lowery has in the lane seems to work pretty well for him offensively. Unfortunately, it seems produce the same stagnation that Charles Thompson's offensive moves had at times in that it takes a while to set up and everyone stops moving. I know Lowery got in foul trouble against Charleston, but it interesting that he only played 17 minutes against UNC-W and Northeastern. I know we have to kind of poke and prod to figure out who is playing the best out of Tarke, May, Tejada, Williamson, Sulaiman, Lowery and even Hicks to some extent, and that will sometimes dictate playing time. However, just from a gut check standpoint 17 minutes feels low for Lowery with all that he can do. 

That being said, we scored a 1.613 per possession clip in the second half (Lowery play eight minutes in the second half), which has to be one of, if not our best offensive half of the year. I feel like we had two great halfs like that last year against Northeastern (one follow up such a bad first half that we lost anyways). It goes to show there is some offensive talent on this team, just not consistency in how it performs. 

[Bay Area Tiger]

Tyler Tejada is 25-30 from the line this season. 

DWill is 24-34 

Tarkey is 52-77 

TT & DWill need to get into the paint more!  
 

[TTiger2024]

On 1/9/2025 at 10:58 PM, TSU88 said:

Wait, what? He deserves praise for his play tonight, and I hope it can be a springboard for him, but I’m hard pressed to equate 31% shooting and 23% from 3 with being “a very good shooter.”

He hasn’t shot great thus far; but if you look at his shot and the shots he’s taking

and …. The fact they run him off a ton screens & flairs —- I’d say he, his teammates and his coaches know he’s a very good shooter .