FEDORA

[PointGuard]

Interview of Towson’s graduating seniors

Scotter Ward [W] of WBAL Sports Radio

(Group response [G])

[W]: We fortunately have with us today the five graduating seniors from the Towson Tigers basketball team. They are: Melvin Steele [S], Mateen Carroll [C], Adrian Brown [B], Billy Thomas [T], and Matt Heard [H]. First guys, congratulations on a very successful season and making it to March Madness.
[G]: (muffled mix of voices) Thanks. Good being with ya.
[W] Did you expect to make it to the NCAA Tournament and what was it like?
[T] I think we all thought we at least had a chance, but it was great to make it through the CAA Tourney with 3 straight wins.
[C] Playing in the NCAA Tournament was fantastic. Huge crowd. Media all over the place. Coach kept telling us to put all that aside and just play our game.
[S] Unfortunately we dug ourselves into a hole in the first half, but the second half we played Utah State pretty evenly, maybe even outplayed them a bit. But sure would have liked to get to the next round.
[W] Adrian, how’s your back doing?
[B] Still kind of sore, but I think it’s improving.
[W] Was it tough not being able to play in the CAA championship game and then the Big Dance?
[B] Darned right it was. I woulda given anything to be out on the floor with these guys.
[W] Coach Aura got everyone else into the game, right?
[H] He sure did, even me. That meant a lot to me.
[C] We were all happy to see Matt and Alex (Haywood] score. Everyone got to contribute.
[W] What’s it like playing for Coach Aura?
[S] It’s been terrific. Coach Fed has made such a difference in our program from what it was before he came and when I played here as a freshman. He’s gotten everyone to accept the “team” concept. He’s been upfront with us all along telling us there won’t be pro scouts checking us out, so individual stats are meaningless without team success.
[B] Yeah, if you’re good in high school and at a JC (like where I played before coming to Towson), everyone knows that to get a college scholarship your individual stats need to stand out. But Coach Fed has told us all that your stats don’t put points on the board. Rather it’s how you’re playing at each and every moment of the game that’s important. And having the most ppg or rpg pales compared to how much you’re helping your team to win each minute you’re on the court.
[T] Melvin’s a good example of that. His screens, his blocking out defenders, his outlet passes to guys that are open might have resulted in him scoring less or not getting a rebound here or there, but made it possible for others to rebound or get off shots they otherwise couldn’t have or would have been less likely to knock down.
[H] Since I’ve had a front row seat from the bench for all 4 years I was on the team as a walk-on, I can tell you that the team has become much more cohesive each and every season under Coach Fed. Even though I don’t get into all that many games, Coach Fed plays a deep bench so everyone feels like part of the team and as walkons, Alex and I have been able to contribute in games as well as during practice.
[W] We’re running out of time here, but thanks for being on my show and for playing so well for the Tigers.
[C] Sure. I just wish I had another year with the team, because it looks to me like next season the Tigers will be even better.

[PointGuard]

Coach Frederick Aura

Several colleges contacted me about head coaching jobs. While they were upgrades (as far as prestige of programs goes), I feel like there is more for me to accomplish here at Towson so I’m not leaving.

Omar McDade, my first assistant coach, retired. Michael Snoddy, my 2nd assistant coach, wanted to be promoted and requested too much of an increase for us to afford so he will look for a coaching job elsewhere. I also decided not to extend the contract of 3rd assistant Harry Iacona. That meant I needed to hire an entirely new set of assistant coaches. Our budget constraints made that exceedingly difficult.

Surprisingly though the hiring of new 1st and 3rd assistant coaches went quickly. But hiring of a 2nd assistant was a lengthy process. I ended up making offers to 4 different coaches, but they weren’t interested in the salary we offered. I finally went back to my first choice and edged my offer up a couple times and finally landed him. My new assistants aren’t necessarily strong across the spectrum of functions, but each is good at the particular area for which they will be responsible.

My new assistants are:

• 1st Assistant Coach (player development): Kenyon Haynes, age 65. 3 yr contract, was a JC head coach previously
• 2nd Assistant Coach (recruiting): Matt Barnes, age 51, 5 yr contract, was 2nd assistant at Milwaukee previously
• 3rd Assistant Coach (scouting): Nate Coluko, age 53, 4 yr contract, was 2nd assistant at Maine previously
• Graduate Assistant Coach: Adrian Brown…our starting PG from the two seasons he was with us.

After that I spoke with Perry Winkle and requested a budget increase. The board came back with an approval for a $7,750 increase.

Want to know what happened to my ex-assistants?

• Omar McDade did retire. He’s travelling around the world. His wife said that he’s no longer tied down to a basketball court that they need to make up for their inability to travel in the past. Today he’s on a cruise through the Norwegian fjords.
• Michael Snoddy is now the 2nd assistant coach at St. Francis (PA).
• Harry Iacona is the new 3rd assistant coach for Washington State.

We failed to fill our 4th scholarship this season so either will pick up a transfer player or have one additional scholarship to offer next year. I think that not being able to fill all the scholarships the past 2 years is partly why Omar McDade decided it was time to retire. But it wasn’t his fault. The principal reason for not being able to land a final recruit was our bare-bones recruiting budget. Hopefully the budget increase we received for next year will help us avoid these kind of problems in the future.

[PointGuard]

2022-2023 Season

Perry Winkle, A.D.

Our team prestige improved from 17 to 22. That pleases me immensely.

SF Keiron Stone has decided to transfer. Keiron has a lot of potential but still has a long way to go to achieve that potential. He was unhappy that he wasn’t getting more playing time. Coach Aura says he’s sorry to lose him but with the talent level we have at the 3, Stone still likely wouldn’t have received enough playing time this coming season to satisfy him. Let’s hope he’s happier at wherever he transfers.

That now means we have up to two scholarships we can fill with transfers in June to avoid having too many scholarships to fill through recruiting this coming year.

[PointGuard]

Transfers

Coach Frederick Aura

We were looking to get 2 transfer players. We got one, missed getting a couple others, and then pulled back since the remaining players available weren’t strong enough to bring aboard. The player we signed was PF Kevin Holmes, a 6-7 Sophomore from Iselin, NJ. Kevin played a year for Georgetown. As a freshman he played in all games, averaging 18.6 mpg, scoring 6.1 ppg and getting 4.0 rpg. He’s a solid player who has a lot of upside potential. He has a strong work ethic, but has a personality that could make him disruptive. Since there will be no pressure while he sits out this season due to the transfer, we hope practicing with our team for a year will improve his skills, get him familiar with our strategies, and set some good relationships with teammates and coaches. Since all of our PF’s will be graduating after this season, it’s important the Kevin is ready for following season.

We’ll add the unfilled scholarship into our recruiting efforts this coming season.

SF Keiron Stone who transferred away from us after his sophomore year, ended up transferring to Iona. I hope he does well for the Gaels.

I’m a little pissed off at Iona, but for a different reason: A quality PG transfer player that we were pursuing ended up choosing Iona rather than us to transfer to.

[PointGuard]

Recruiting, late June 2022

2nd Assistant Coach Matt Barnes

The two years I was an assistant coach at Milwaukee, we won 20 and lost 41. I didn’t see much hope for the future so am really happy to be with a head coach who is improving the program and achieving success. I’m not making more salary here, but I think I’ll be happier. I like the present roster for the Tigers. Now to just make it even stronger in the future!

The overall basketball budget at Towson is less than what it was at Milwaukee, but Coach Aura has structured things so that a bigger proportion of the budget goes directly to recruiting (meaning he’s not paying us assistants the big bucks). Due to budgetary concerns, we only purchase the basic Atlantic East Report. I was hoping to also get the national report, but Coach Aura said he wants to keep sufficient funds so that we can recruit all the way through the year and not be hamstrung in the spring.

We also will limit our camp attendance to just Big Apple Camp. So our recruiting of high school players will be pretty much limited to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast areas. Sure would like to see a couple studs from Maryland in the top 100.

We have five scholarships to fill through recruiting this year. We definitely need some interior help for next season with 3 of our “bigs” graduating this year, leaving just Donny Flint and transfer Kevin Holmes as scholarship players for our two interior positions the following season. So we’re going to be looking to shore up the C and PF positions, hopefully by landing 3 recruits for the C/PF positions. It would be nice to get a good SF and PG as well. But the immediate need at either of those positions isn’t critical. So we’ll just see what recruits look good and whom we can get interested in playing for Towson.

I mostly recruited in the Midwest while at Milwaukee, but our reputation doesn’t lend itself yet to getting Midwestern high schoolers to come to the Baltimore area. So I need to get familiar with the mid-Atlantic area real fast.

[PointGuard]

3rd Assistant Coach Nate Culuko

Now that school has started we assigned tutors to our players who we think may need some help academically. Most all of them are new to our program. Those now set to work with tutors for at least the next month include: PG Shaun White, PG Matt Faust, SG Copley Dwiggins, SF Robert Jefferson, PF Deon Penn, and C Jonathan Jackson.

Coach Aura wants all our players to do as well as they can academically, so we’ve stressed the need to study to all players.

[PointGuard]

Recruiting, Fall 2022

2nd Assistant Coach Matt Barnes

My dad passed away three years ago and then just as we were getting into the summer recruiting season, my mom who lives in Phoenix became incapacitated and needed daily help. I don’t have any brothers or sisters and there was no other family member who could help out. When I told Coach Aura about the situation, he immediately encouraged me to go and take care of her. He said he’d handle the recruiting along with 1st assistant coach Kenyon Haynes. I headed west. It wasn’t until late October that I was able to return to Towson. By then summer and fall recruiting had been completed.

Coach Aura had made pretty good inroads into getting quite a few recruits at least somewhat interested in Towson in the summer. In early September he offered scholarships to 5 really talented recruits and made home visits to each. Four accepted offers to higher prestige programs. So only one of those five accepted our offer:

C Calvin Williams, HS Senior from Woodbridge, VA, averaged 16.5 ppg, 1.5 apg, 5.0 rpg, 1.9 bpg, and 1.3 spg last season. Excellent scorer and inside shooter. Very solid defensively and as a rebounder. Great passing skills. We rate him as an A and he’s presently ranked #217 nationally but has been ranked higher. We’re concerned though about his academics and whether he will achieve a good enough SAT score to qualify for our school.

Coach Aura immediately moved on to pursue other recruits and offered scholarships to four more.

Then in October he got another commitment:

PF Valery Henson, a high school senior from Hawthorne, NJ. Very good scorer from inside and outside. Excellent passer and very strong rebounder. Very good defensive skills with acute shot blocking ability. Last season he averaged 13.8 ppg, 1.7 apg, 7.8 rpg, 1.8 bpg and 1.8 spg.

So now I’m back handling recruiting. I’d like to think we would have had more scholarships filled had I been here during the primary summer/fall recruiting period, but who knows. We still have 3 unfilled scholarships but have two offers pending and one to offer at some point in the future. I’m busy working with recruits trying to build and expand interest and also hoping to nail down the 2 offers we have pending.

I’ve also been encouraging Calvin Williams to work hard on his academics and trying to get his high school coach to get involved. Calvin’s willing but did poorly in school early and doesn’t have a good foundation, so it’s difficult. I think that him doing well enough on his SAT’s is really touch-and-go. So we may have an additional scholarship to fill in the future.

[PointGuard]

1st Assistant Kenyon Haynes

Practice began in early October. We have some talented players so that’s a real plus. But a few of the guys have personalities that can be sour at times. So there’s been some friction and inappropriate comments between teammates that have already created some problems. Coach Aura has had several players in his office to lay down the law. But I have the feeling that maintaining good chemistry within this group is going to be a challenge all season long.

In addition, SG Copley Dwiggins has a lot of potential but he requires a lot of development before that potential can be realized. I think he’d benefit from redshirting, but we may have a bunch of incoming recruits next year who will be freshmen and having Dwiggins adding to that freshman class after redshirting this season could create a glut in that class. So we have decided to not redshirt him. I just hope he doesn’t become dissatisfied by not getting the playing time he probably wants.

Coach Aura and Perry Winkle, the AD, have scheduled more challenging pre-conference competition that in past seasons. In addition, 3 of our 5 starters have never played for us so it may take time for the team to gel. To make things more difficult, only 3 of our 11 pre-conference games are at home. The pre-conference games should prepare us well for CAA conference games, but our record going into conference play may not be pretty.

Our goals this season are to come out on top in the CAA, get back to the NCAA Tournament, and get beyond the first round in that tournament.

Here’s our starting 5:

PG: Shaun White, 6-0, JR, good ball handler and passer, strong defensively
SG: Dominick Collins, 6-0, SO, good scorer and rebounder
SF: Wayne Burrough, 6-6, JR, scores well from outside and inside, strong on the defensive boards
PF: Deon Penn, 6-6, SR, good scorer and rebounder, last season’s MVP
C: Danny Flint, 6-9, SO, extremely strong rebounder and excellent defender

Bench:

PG: Matt Faust, 6-1 JR and Alex Haywood, 6-2 SR walk-on
SG: Ryan Taylor, 6-1 SR and Copley Dwiggins, 6-1 FR
SF: Ross Davis, 6-5 JR and Robert Jefferson, 6-8 JR walk-on
PF: Jason Vickers, 6-7 SR
C: Jason Miner, 6-6 SR and Jonathan Jackson, 6-8 SR walk-on

Ineligible due to transferring:

PF Kevin Holmes, 6-7 SO

[PointGuard]

Nov. 16, 2022: Towson Tigers (0-0) @ Cal Poly Mustangs (0-0)

Kenyon Haynes, 1st Asst Coach:

San Luis Obispo is a beautiful little city and the weather is great. We think that Cal Poly’s offense will primarily come from their guards. The Mustangs’ SG James Garrett has averaged in double figures all 3 years he’s been playing for Cal Poly and PG Dan McFadden also averaged in double figures last season.

We hit 7 of our first 8 FG’s to jump out to a 14-4 lead. The Mustangs cut our lead to 6 but we then took control and gradually increased our lead to be on top at the half 46-28. PF Deon Penn and PG Shaun White shot the lights out and scored 16 and 13 points, respectively. We knocked down 51% of our shots and held a 21-11 rebounding advantage. My only concern was that our 5 reserves, who collectively logged 30 minutes of playing time, didn’t score a single point. Coach Aura gave them encouragement during the halftime intermission to try to increase their confidence.

Cal Poly scored the first 10 points in the 2nd half during which the refs called 4 fouls on us. Midway through the half our lead was down to 54-50 and four of our starters had 3 fouls apiece. With 8 minutes to go our lead was just 3 points. Our guys finally grasped that they could lose this game and tightened down defensively so that with 5 minutes remaining we were up by a 63-53 score. We escaped with a 77-67 victory, but our 2nd half effort was a disaster. We shot under 40% in the 2nd half dropping our FG% for the entire game to 44%. We also had 18 turnovers, but fortunately the Mustangs had 23.

Four of our starters scored in double figures: PF Deon Penn had 25, PG Shaun White 21, SF Wayne Burrough 13, and C Danny Flint 10. Our reserves played a total of 55 minutes and together scored a paltry 4 points, hitting just 1 of 11 FG attempts and 0 for 7 from beyond the arc. They’re going to need to pick it up in the future. Four of those five bench players played a good amount of minutes last season and did well, so hopefully this was just a horribly poor game for all of them. For our starters, SG Dominick Collins was weak offensively but played well defensively and C Danny Flint had an OK game but wasn’t as dominant as we’d hoped he’d be. But it’s only the first game of the season and we did get very strong games from Deon Penn, Shaun White and Wayne Burrough.

[PointGuard]

Nov. 19, 2022: Towson Tigers (1-0) @ Montana State Bobcats (1-0)

Danny Flint, C:

The Bobcats rely on their perimeter players. I expect that Deon and I will dominate inside and on the boards and that should be the difference in this game.

Damned [bleeping] refs called 2 fouls on me within the first 10 minutes of the game. It took us a while to shake the Bobcats but we finally got a lead and led 35-27 at the end of the half. I don’t know what’s up with the [bleeping] refs but they tagged me with 3 fouls in the half. We had a 22-18 edge in rebounding (5 of which I pulled down) and outshot Montana State 43% to 30%, but we never got even one free throw attempt because of the hometown refs. Neither one of the Bobcats’ starting guards scored. SF Wayne Burrough hit 100% of his shots and finished the half with 11 points.

Coach didn’t let me start in the 2nd half because of my foul trouble. Sucks. [Bleep] the refs! The Bobcats crept to within a single point and Coach Fed put me in. We gradually expanded our lead. Montana State cut into our lead late in the game as their 2-3 zone kept us from getting off good shots, and with 5 minutes to go they tied us at 64-64. The Bobcats hit a 3 with 1:33 remaining to go ahead 69-66. We fell apart after that and dropped the game 78-71. Montana State hit about 60% of their 2nd half shots and scored 10 more points than us at the free throw line. Because of the lousy [bleeping] refs we were victimized and only got 2 foul shots the entire game. We choked some in the 2nd half, but should have and could have won this game if it weren’t for the [bleeping] hometown refs. But it’s tough to win when we play 5 against 8.

Our top scorers were SF Wayne Burrough with 20 points, SF Dominick Collins who hit for 14 points, and PF Deon Penn with 12 points. The Bobcats’ 2-3 zone made it difficult for me to get free shots and affected our rebounding which was frustrating. PF Jason Vickers was our only sub who played well. These guys gotta start playing better. We starters can’t play the entire 40 minutes.