FEDORA

[PointGuard]

Dec. 12, 2020: Towson Tigers (2-6) @ Texas State Bobcats (3-4)

Sheriff Roy Partee

I’m a big Bobcats fan. My two kids went to the school and I’ve been livin’ in and about San Marcos my entire life. I try to get to most all our team’s home games. I wear my uniform to help keep the roudiness down. Our boys better beat these Easterners up tonight on our court. Our starting lineup is solid. It’s led by David Harvey at SF who’s averagin’ 12 ppg. I think Davey would play the entire 40 minutes if the coach would let him. Then we got a hotshot SG by the name of J.P. Johnson who’s scorin’ 11.7 ppg but hittin’ 57% of his FG’s and 60% of his 3’s. Buoyin’ us inside at C is Michael Wall who is a beast, scorin’ 10.3 ppg and grabbin’ 7.3 rpg. Teamin’ up with him inside is PF Marcus DeLoach who don’t score so much at 7.9 ppg but attacks the boards to pull down 7 rpg. Directin’ the team at the point is senior Marlon Wilson who scores 9.9 ppg and hands out 5.1 apg. I’m guessin’ these Towson boys won’t be able to handle them. We’ve won 4 of our last 5 games including stompin’ Bradley.

Introductions done and our Nattional Anthem played so let’s get these dad-burned game goin’. The Towson team came out firin’ bullets and took a 13-4 lead but we reeled ‘em back in and with 11 minutes to go the score stood tied at 13-13. David Harvey drained a 3 with just over 8 minutes left to give us our first lead at 20-18. Helluva half even though we are on the short end of a 33-32 score so I gotta believe our guys are getting’ their butts kicked in the locker room. Here I was tellin’ ya that Marcus DeLoach doesn’t score much and he leads our scorin’ with 9 points. Towson’s SG Billy Thomas scored 8 points to top their scorin’.

Towson came out smokin’ again and took a 43-34 lead after just 3 minutes of play in the 2nd half. The Bobcats didn’t lay down though and worked their way right back into the game. We weren’t able to take the lead though and with 3:44 to go we trailed the Tigers 68-66. Trailing by 4 with a minute to go we were forced to foul. Towson kept missin’ their foul shots. But we just didn’t have it tonight though, and I’ll be damned if Towson didn’t go on to beat our boys 76-72.

Michael Wall led the Bobcat’s scorin’ with 15 points and 11 rebounds. David Harvey had 12 and Marcus DeLoach finished with 11. Towson had 3 players in double figures: SG Billy Thomas-16, PG Adrian Brown-13, and C Melvin Steele-10. PG Mateen Carroll came off the bench to score 9 and dish out 5 assists.

[PointGuard]

Dec. 19, 2020: Bucknell Bison (5-4) @ Towson Tigers (3-6)

Towerlight (Towson University student newspaper) article:

Coming off a road win, expectations were high for the Tigers when they hosted Bucknell. “We played with a lot of determination when we beat Texas State,” said senior C Melvin Steele. He added, “It’s important that we assert dominance when playing at home. Having Billy (Thomas) back has been a boost. He’s scored in double figures in all 4 games he’s started.”

The refs kept their whistles active in the first half. Towson made use of the foul line plus some hot shooting from the field to a 38-21 lead with 7 minutes to go in the first half. The Titans ended up hitting 60% of their FG attempts and 56% of their 3’s plus held an 11-5 turnover advantage enroute to a 50-34 halftime advantage. PF Jason Vickers came in off the bench and dropped in 10 points to lead Towson’s scoring.

After opening a 21 point lead, the Tigers let Bucknell cut that lead to just 10 midway through the 2nd half. But Towson rallied again and sprinted to a 93-74 lopsided victory. The biggest team difference was that Bucknell made 23 turnover to just 12 by the Tigers.

Bucknell’s Center, Roberto Wilcox, scored 21 points, hauled down 11 rebounds and had 4 steals and a block. But it wasn’t enough to overcome double figure scoring by 5 Towson players with SG Billy Thomas scoring 15 (and getting 6 assists), PF Jason Vickers and SF Wayne Burrough each knocking down 14 points, and C Melvin Steele and PG Adrian Brown both scoring 12.

Billy Thomas said, “The team played great together tonight. We got production from everyone.” When asked about his return from an injury, Thomas replied, “I’m loving being back on the court and in the lineup. My teammates were so supportive while I was unable to play and have really helped me get back into the flow of our offense.”

[PointGuard]

Dec. 26, 2020: Towson Tigers (4-6) @ South Alabama Jaguars (5-4)

Jason Minor, PF

Thoughts before the game:

Our final pre-conference game and tune up for conference play. And another freakin’ road game! We’re 3-5 in the away games we’ve played thus far. Some might say that’s not so bad, but I wanna win.

Martin, our team stats guru, came up with a comparison between positions (combining the stats by the starters and subs for each position). Here’s the breakdown (ppg/rpg/apg/topg):

PG—14.9 ppg/3.7 rpg/ 6.8 apg/5.5 topg
SG—14.7 ppg/4.4 rpg/3.7 apg/2.3 topg
SF—15.8 ppg/7.4 rpg/2.6 apg/2.5 topg
PF—13.9 ppg/6.1 rpg/1.9 apg/2.7 topg
C—14.0 ppg/8.4 rpg/2.2 apg/2.8 topg

So scoring is pretty much equally distributed and the other stats are pretty much like you might expect, but I’m intent on getting the PF position’s rebounding numbers up higher. The trouble is that Jason Vickers is a good scorer but not a strong rebounder yet.

3 out of the 4 South Alabama losses have been extremely close: by 5 points (in OT), 4 points, and 2 points. But one of those losses was to Bucknell, which we beat. T.J. Nahra, their center, is averaging 16.9 ppg and 7.0 rpg. So we’ll be double teaming him.

Warmups:

For some reason we had trouble getting used to their court. There just seemed to be a softness to it. That was throwing us off. Hopefully we can shake it when the game begins.

1st Half:

After taking a 4-1 lead over the Jaguars, we fell behind. While we kept trying to retake the lead, we kept getting within a point or two but couldn’t get over the hump. At the break we trailed 35-34. They got to the line 8 more times and scored 3 more points there than we did. SG Billy Thomas was our leading scorer with 7 points. I had a bad half. No points, 1 rebound plus Devin Lake, the Jaguars’ PF scored 10 to match C T.J. Nahra’s 10 points.

2nd Half:

Both of our centers, Melvin Steele and Nick McPherson, picked up their 3rd fouls in the first few minutes, so Coach Fed put me in the C position. With 15:55 to go, Jason Vickers hit a jumper, was fouled on the shot and sunk the free throw to finally put us on top, 43-41. Immediately after than I got tagged for my 3rd foul. It’s not easy guarding Nahra. We went up by 7 but then the refs wrecked our momentum with repeated picky fouls that sent Steele off with 5 fouls and loaded up 4 on McPherson and me. We fell behind 53-51 with 10 minutes to go. McPherson went out with 5 fouls with 9:10 to go. We fell behind by 11 before closing a little at the end, but still lost 69-63.

We were unable to muzzle T.J. Nahra who scored 21 points and pulled down 12 boards. SF Wayne Burrough and SG Billy Thomas both scored 13 for us with PF Jason Vickers adding 11. My night was far from memorable and one I definitely want to forget.

I don't wanna talk about this game anymore.

[PointGuard]

Perry Winkle, AD

I’m not happy that our team has a 4-7 record. There’s been complaints lodged against me for the number of away games, but it’s not easy getting teams to commit to coming to visit us. And I did work with Coach Aura to create a schedule with opponents that weren’t all that tough. We should have done better. I certainly hope the team gets it together for conference play.

Two players I thought did well were: SF Wayne Burrough, who as a freshman is averaging 10.5 ppg and 5.5 rpg; and SG Billy Thomas, who came back from a year-long injury to average 10.6 ppg.

Just 2 of the 10 teams in the Colonial Athletic Association have records above .500: James Madison is 7-4 and Northeastern is 6-5. Three other teams have 4-7 records like ours and the remaining 4 teams have worse records.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 2, 2021: Towson Tigers (4-7, 0-0) @ Elon Phoenix (2-9, 0-0)

Harry Iacona, 3rd Assistant (Scouting) Coach

I have to be honest with you. I think we’re a better team that Elon but maybe not better enough to beat them on their own court. That’s disturbing because we should be strong enough to win the road games against weaker Colonial Athletic Association teams. I’m certainly not saying that to any of the other coaches or to anyone on the team, but I’ve warned everyone not to be fooled by their poor record. Their pre-conference schedule was tougher than ours and 7 of their 11 games were on the road. Their losses include games against Pittsburgh, Boston University, Wichita State, St. Mary’s, and #21 Indiana.

My scouting of the Phoenix has shown they like a lot of offensive freedom but prefer the shuffle offense when they run a set offense. They like to slow things down and are only averaging 61 ppg…but they scored 70+ points in three of their games. Defensively they run man-to-man primarily and don’t press that often. They’ve given up just under 75 ppg thus far. PF Darius Cockle is averaging 13.5 ppg and SG Adam Sasser 12.3 ppg.

By the way, grades from last term just came in and 12 of our 15 players have GPA’s from 3.1 to 4.0 so that’s great. But we have 3 players with GPA’s of 2.3 to 2.6…and all 3 of those are our PG’s. Not sure what’s up with that, but we’re going to put them all on study tables to make sure they spend enough time on their courses to not drop below 2.0 this coming term and stress the need to get good grades.

Elon is a small suburb (population under 10,000) of Burlington, NC and Elon University is the main employer. We play at Schar Center and there’s a pretty decent crowd for the game.

The refs tore us throughout much of the first half. Because of that we had 4 players benched with 2 fouls apiece and the game stayed close. But in the last 5 minutes of the half, the fouls began evening out and the Phoenix made many of their 10 turnovers for the half. That allowed us to pull away to a 40-31 lead when the buzzer sounded. Even though C Melvin Steele was one of our players saddled with 2 fouls, he led our scoring with 8 points.

Elon kept cutting into our lead in the 2nd half and with just under 8 minutes to play they were within a single point. Then with 7 minutes to play they tied the game at 63-63 and a minute later the Phoenix were ahead by 5. We fought to get back into it and with 28 seconds, Jason Vickers made a nice pass inside to Wayne Burrough who threw down a slam to tied the game at 74-74. Elon’s C Amir Dissinger was fouled as he put up a shot, but fortunately missed both free throws. We called time out with 6 seconds left to set up a final play. We got the ball to Wayne Burrough but his shot from 20 feet rimmed out and the game with to OT.

In the overtime Elon scored on their first possession, but Wayne Burrough counted with a nice 3. Elon retook the lead with a steal and breakaway layup. We finally edged ahead 79-78 when Jason Miner hit a jumper from the end line with 2-1/2 minutes remaining. With no further scoring, we called a timeout with 46 seconds left to set up a pick and roll play. The play failed when we threw the ball away. Both teams simply could not score and we got control of the ball with 15 seconds to go. The Phoenix fouled and Adrian Brown made both foul shots to put us up by 3 with 9 seconds on the clock. Coach Aura instructed the team to intentionally foul after we pressed and once the ball got over the midcourt. It looked like a good plan as Elon’s Darius Cockle was fouled. But the refs ruled he was in the process of getting off a last second 3 that went off the rim and awarded 3 shots to Cockle with a single second remaining. He swished the first…his second shot was offline…his final shot went in but made little difference. I think Cockle was trying to get a soft bounce off the rim with the hope a teammate could tip in the miss, but the shot was just a fraction off and went through the hoop. After holding our collective breaths and giving off a collective sigh of relief, we felt like we had stolen the 81-80 overtime win.

We were outshot by Elon 54% to 46% but were +2 in rebounding and held a 26-15 turnover advantage. SF Wayne Burrough dropped in 18 points, C Melvin Steele hit for 14, and PF Jason Miner scored 12 with PF Jason Vickers scoring 9, pulling down 3 rebounds, dishing out 4 assists, and getting 3 steals and a block.

Interesting side note: All five teams playing on the road in the Colonial Athletic Association were winners tonight.

[PointGuard]

Frederick Aura:

My two sons are both doing well with basketball. Omari is a freshman in high school and starring on his high school’s freshman basketball team. He’s still growing so is playing PG. If he gets a growth spurt, we’ll see what position they will want him playing next year. Malik is a 7th grader and playing on two teams, his junior high school team and a club team. He’s doing well on both. I try to get to see some of their practices and as many of their games as my schedule will allow. Janeka and I are trying to keep them focused on their academics as well. Devany is 4 now and in pre-school. She’s taking swimming lessons and becoming quite the little fish. Janeka played volleyball in high school and college and has worked with Devany a little on that sport. Devany also likes dribbling a basketball against her big brothers.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 5, 2021: William & Mary Tribe (3-9, 0-1) @ Towson Tigers (5-7, 1-0)

Matt Heard, walk-on SF:

I’ve gotten into one game, a single minute on the court when we played Bucknell. Was able to grab a rebound and was fouled and hit both free throws. My teammates were ecstatic that I scored. Otherwise, I continue to relegated to the far end of the bench where I’m still the team cheer-leader. One thing I do is to help psych the guys up before a game, not with a cheer but with a short, intense rap session. Since my Mom is of Chinese descent and because I spent a summer in China a year-and-a-half ago, I now speak Chinese pretty well. So I have one rap in Chinese that the guys love. The guys get into it and I think it’s helped them get rid of pre-game nerves and rev them up for the start of the game. But actually I think they like me most because my Mom sometimes brings some of her Chinese food specialties for post-game snacks.

Here’s how things went against William & Mary (from my viewpoint on the bench):

The refs tagged PF Jason Miner with two quick fouls so he joined me on the bench less that 2 minutes into the game. Melvin Steele joined us with 2 fouls 3 minutes later. Jason Vickers was on fire, scoring 11 points in his first 7 minutes of play. The team was shooting well overall and we led 27-20 midway through the half. Because of the foul problems on our front court, Wayne Burrough was moved over to play PF when Jason Vickers needed a rest. The half ended with us on top 48-38. We hit 57% of our shots while holding the Tribe’s shooting to 42%. Jason Vickers led our scoring with 13 points.

In the 2nd half, the Tribe cut our lead to 5 points a few times and then our hot shooting, particularly by SG Ryan Taylor, allowed us to spurt to a 15 point lead with 11 minutes remaining. I was getting hoarse from all my yelling. We went on to roll to an 85-71 win. We knocked down 55% of our FG’s and 50% of our 3’s. The only thing Coach Fed might get on us about in practice is our 15 turnovers.

Jason Vickers and Ryan Taylor had big nights with 17 points and 16 points, respectively. Jason also had 7 rebounds. It made me happy for two subs be our top scorers. Adrian Brown scored 11 and Melvin Steele had 10 points even though limited on playing time due to fouls.

The win means we’re tied with Northeastern and Delaware for 1st place with 2-0 records.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 9, 2021: Towson Tigers (6-7, 2-0) @ Charleston Cougars (4-10, 1-1)

Jason Vickers, PF

The game was close for the first 10 minutes with the lead shifting between the two teams. But then Charleston went on a run that put them up by 10 points. We got within 2 in the next 5 minutes only to fall behind by 10 again before rallying at the end of the half to trail 51-47 at the break. Our defense obviously sucked since we gave up 51 points. We let them hit 59% of their FG attempts and their SG Damous Ferguson singed the nets for 21 points even though we double-teamed him. The Cougars played very aggressively defensively which held our shooting under 40% but put us on the line a lot so that we were able to stay pretty close. For us PG Adrian Brown topped our scoring with 12 points.

The entire second half was close with neither team going ahead by more than 4 points until the very end. With 2-1/2 minutes left he scored was tied 81-81. Charleston then hit a 3. We couldn’t hit our shots and the Cougars go ahead by 5. We close to 86-83 with 37 seconds remaining when Melvin Steele scores inside. Charleston hits a jumper to go ahead by 5 again. We call a time out and get off the desired 3 point attempt but its off the mark and the Cougars rebound. We’re forced to foul. The result is a 90-83 loss.

While we held advantages on the boards (4 more), with turnovers (3 less) and on the foul line (+6 points), we were outshot 56% to 40% on FG’s and 38% to 15% on 3’s. Charleston’s Damous Ferguson scored 28 points. We were led offensively by PG Adrian Brown’s 16 points, SF Wayne Burrough’s 14 points, C Nick McPherson’s 11 points, and C Melvin Steele’s 10 points. I scored 9 points and had 5 rebounds and Jason Mine had 7 points and 6 rebounds so that was a combined 16 points and 11 rebounds for the PF position.

After just 3 games into the conference play, there are no undefeated teams. So even though we lost we remained tied for first place (with 5 other teams). Looks like there will be brutal competition within the conference this season.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 12, 2021: Hofstra Pride (4-10, 0-3) @ Towson Tigers (6-8, 2-1)

Bart Rose, SF

This is my second year at Towson. Last season I got into most all of the games but didn’t play much in any of them. I thought I’d get to play more this season, but so far I’ve again got into most games, but have not gotten any more playing time. I’m not all that concerned about that, but I believe my skills have improved. Wayne Burrough came in as a freshman this season and there’s no doubt he has a lot of talent so he’s starting and getting most of the playing time with Ross Davis getting the most of the remaining court time. But I’m hitting over 60% of the FG’s and 3’s and have been far more productive in the limited time I’ve gotten to play than Ross. But nothing I can really do about that…just do the best I can when I get a chance. Coach Fed and the other coaches are OK, but again, I’m not going to kiss their butts just to get playing time. I’m pretty much the odd man out on this team anyway. I’m not really into being all buddy-buddy all the time. Most of the other guys on the team want to do things together. Not me. I work hard in practice and do what is needed, but don’t hang around to suck up to others. I value my personal time too much for that. I’m not here to win a popularity contest. My parents live in Frederick, Maryland which isn’t too far away. But they’ve pretty much given up coming to games since I play so little. Fine by me.

Coach Fed keeps warning us not to take Hofstra lightly. He keeps saying that the Pride have wins over Tennessee (at Tennessee) and Boston University so it’s obvious they can be dangerous. They have two guys (PG Kenny Rice and C Colin Leith) who are averaging in double figures and hitting a high percentage of their FG attempts. It’s game time so let’s see how it goes.

The first half was close most of the way and ended with Hofstra on top 39-36. C Melvin Steele scored 8 points to top our scoring.

The Pride held onto the lead until midway through the 2nd half when we went on a 8-0 run to pull ahead 57-55. We were unable to pull away though and Hofstra hit a 3 with 27 seconds to go to take a 2 point lead. Coach Fed called a time out after which we executed a successful give and go to tie the game at 74-74 sending it to overtime.

Neither team could get more than a 2 point lead in the overtime and it also ended in a tie at 84-84. In the 2nd overtime, we took control and steadily pulled away to win going away 98-88. Hofstra held a 50-40 rebounding advantage but we made just 14 turnovers compared to their 25.

Jason Vickers had a big game scoring 19 by hitting 6 of 7 from the field and all 7 of his free throws plus having 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. C Melvin Steele scored 15 and grabbed 8 rebounds. PG Adrian Brown hit for 15 points and pulled down 9 boards. SG Billy Thomas scored 14, had 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 6 steals and a block. SF Wayne Burrough scored 11 and C Nick McPherson added 10. For Hofstra, C Colin Leith scored 20 points and had 8 rebounds while PF Jonte Gates had a double-double (17 points and 12 rebounds).

We’re tied with Northeastern and Delaware for 1st place in the conference.

[PointGuard]

Jan. 16, 2021: Towson Tigers (7-8, 3-1) at Drexel Dragons (6-9, 2-2)

Melvin Steele, C

We hit 55% of our shots in the first half and spurted out to a 40-26 halftime lead. PF Jason Minor dropped in 8 points and pulled down 7 rebounds.

We continued to dominate the Dragons in the 2nd half and steadily extended our lead to end up with a 75-53 drubbing of Drexel. We hit 49% of our FG attempts and 9 of 16 from beyond the arc. We held Drexel’s shooting to 32%. The win kept us tied with Delaware for 1st place in the Colonial Athletic Association.

I was really happy that PF Jason Minor had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds. He’s had some games where he has struggled. SG Ryan Taylor scored 11 and SF Wayne Burrough and SG Billy Thomas both popped in 10 points.