FEDORA

[PointGuard]

Baltimore Sun sports section article:

Towson Lands Talented Recruit

With college basketball teams readying to begin fall practice for the upcoming season, Towson University announced that Wayne Burrough has accepted a scholarship offer. Burrough is a 6’6” small forward who is attending high school in Kane, Pennsylvania. Last season Burrough averaged 12.8 ppg and 4.6 rpg.

Perry Winkle, Towson’s Athletic Director, said, “We’re very pleased that Wayne Burrough will be joining us next season. He’s a solid scorer and excellent rebounder who also plays well defensively. He’s ranked as the 95th best recruit nationally so getting a player of his caliber speaks well of the recruiting efforts by Coach Frederick Aura and his staff.” Aura was hired last spring as the head coach for the Tigers.

[PointGuard]

AD Perry Winkle:

Its mid-October and Frederick Aura just informed me that PG Adrian Brown has accepted our scholarship offer. We both were rather surprised since Brown’s interest had seemed to wane just a week ago. Brown is from Noble, Oklahoma where he’s attending junior college. Therefore when he arrives for next season he will have 2 years of eligibility remaining. He’s 6’0” tall and is a great passer and outside scorer. He’s also a good defender and rebounder. He’s ranked as the 152nd best recruit in the country. Brown is a 3-star player and will join 4-star Wayne Burrough on our team for the 2020-2021 season. We still haven’t heard from 4-star SF Keiron Stone or 2-star PG Mateen Carroll but will let our scholarship offers ride and see what happens with them.

[PointGuard]

This is 3rd assistant coach Harry Iacona. I just heard from the tutor for SG Billy Thomas that he’s really doing an outstanding job with his studies and getting excellent grades in all his classes this term. Looks like Coach Aura’s guidance has got Billy making great strides in setting himself up for getting admitted to law school after he graduates from Towson. On the other hand, SF Bart Rose, who had a tutor the past month hasn’t made much progress but he still has a 2.3 GPA. Coach Aura talked with him again and rather than assigning a tutor again got him to commit to studying harder.

[PointGuard]

2nd assistant coach Michael Snoddy:

Practice is going well. Some good competition for starting spots. It’s still too early to tell who we’ll be starting, but the guys are working well together. Offensively we’re working flex, high post, and motion sets and defensively we’re going to mainly be man-to-man but when we use a zone it will be a 2-3. Our pressure defense will be mostly man-to-man but we’re also practicing a 1-2-1-1 press that we probably will mostly use late in the game if we need to make a small comeback. It’s new for most everyone on the team, so will take a while for us to perfect.

[PointGuard]

Baltimore Sun sports article

Third Recruit Commits to Towson

Towson University now has 3 recruits who have provided verbal commitments to play basketball for them next season. Mateen Carroll, a 6’1” PG now playing junior college ball in Union Bridge, Maryland will join PG Adrian Brown and SF Wayne Burrough as new players for Coach Frederick Aura at Towson a year from now. Aura reports that Carroll is a good game general who distributes the ball well, gets more than his share of steals, and also fights for rebounds. Last season Carroll averaged 11.7 ppg, 5.4 apg, 4.7 rpg, and 3.1 spg in his freshman year at his junior college. “Mateen is a hard worker who is good at setting up teammates,” said Aura. Carroll is ranked as the 616th best recruit in the nation.

[SouthernRebel]

brutal recruiting doesnt seem so brutal. Seems more realistic I think

[PointGuard]

brutal recruiting doesnt seem so brutal. Seems more realistic I think

That's my general opinion...at least once you're pretty familiar with recruiting. I think it helps to slow improvement of the team...not stop it, but slow it, which I believe is more realistic. It makes the challenge (within DDSCB) greater..and I think that's good. But it can make things a bit frustrating at times since recruits are much more likely to hang up on you, gaining info on their interests is a little more difficult, their interest in your program develops much slower if at all, fewer recruits are willing to do campus visits and their opinions may often be more negative or at least less enthusiastic, and they're often less likely to accept your scholarship offers. But if you're at Podunk U, that would pretty much be the case, right? At a real low level program, it's extremely likely you will get a top 50 recruit (or even a top 100 recruit), so having the game more closely resemble that is good in my opinion.

[PointGuard]

Michael Snoddy, 2nd assistant coach:

We redshirted freshman SF Ross Davis today. Ross worked hard in practice but needs a lot of maturing before he can get minutes in a game. So Coach Aura and I decided it was best to give him a year to work with the team and develop his skills while maintaining his 4 years of eligibility. Although he obviously was disappointed, Ross took it pretty well. I told him we’d be working with him throughout the year to develop all aspects of his game.

[PointGuard]

This is Coach Aura back with you. I’m so happy that the season is beginning.

We got through summer and fall recruiting and have 3 very good recruits who have committed verbally. While I’m pleased with the 2 PG’s we lassoed, they’re both JC players. My initial plan was that one of the two would be coming to us directly from high school, but sometimes things work out differently than we expect. To be honest I didn’t expect Adrian Brown to pick us. When he did, we considered dropping the offer to Mateen Carroll since I think we could have picked up a pretty good high school PG in the spring. But we stuck by our offer since Carroll has shown so much interest in playing for us. We still have a scholarship offer pending to SF Keiron Stone. But we’re continuing to make phone calls to create interest in recruits on our list and get information about their interests and those of their parents. I’m optimistic about Stone, but if he decides to go elsewhere, I think we’ll have some good options in the spring for that 4th and final scholarship.

Fall practice also finally is over. It went well but I was getting impatient get our guys on the court playing games against opponents rather than scrimmaging. We’ll soon see how well prepared we are to compete with the teams on our schedule. We begin this week with two home games. The first is against San Jose State and then later in the week we will host North Carolina-Greensboro.

Our interior starters are pretty solid. Craig Smith, a 6-11 senior will start at C. He’s probably our best all-around player. He’s primarily played at PF in the past, but has the size and strength to handle the center position. Freshman Jason Vickers will start at PF. Jason is 6-7, and while still developing, may have the highest upward potential of anyone on the team. Backing those two up will be 6-7 sophomore Melvin Steele and 6-8 junior Nick McPherson. 6-7 walkon Mike Edwards might also see a few minutes at C.

At PG we have decided to give sophomore Billy Thomas a try. Billy who is 6-1 initially was contesting for the starting SG position, but he has the skills and ability to handle the PG position. Most likely he will get some time at SG as well.

At SG will be last season’s starter, 6-0 senior Mitchell Evans. His experience should be a settling factor for our lineup.

Both 6-1 senior Ryan Holmes and 6-4 senior Matt Settles will back up at both of the guard positions and 6-1 freshman Ryan Taylor will sub at SG. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Ryan and Matt starting some this season as well.

We were weak at SF since the SF’s on our roster all have little experience and it showed in practice. So I’m going to start 6-5 junior Eric Shannon at SF. Eric is a true SG but has the height to defend at SF and get inside to fight for rebounds. 6-8 freshman Bart Rose and 6-6 sophomore Matt Heard will come in off the bench at SF but unless they start performing better than they did this past month, we may also use others when Shannon is off the court. We very well may go with a 3-guard offense at times. I guess you could say we are when Shannon is playing the 3 position anyway.

After one on final practice, AD Perry Winkle pulled me aside and said, “Looks like your team is coming together, Coach. I just realized that I’ve never provided you with any goals. So how about you win at least 10 game.” Inwardly sighing with relief, I also was thinking that while he may have said we are getting it all together, he didn’t believe it. Then he added with a wry smile, “And finish in the top 3 in conference play.” This time my thought was “Oh s**t!”, but I held that within and just meekly replied, “We’ll do our best, Perry.”

[PointGuard]

Janeka Aura:

Frederick seems relieved to finally be having the season begin. Even though he’s gone through recruiting and fall practice many times, its only been as a player or assistant coach in the past. This year the pressures were different. Of course, the pressures for him will be different when the team takes the court also, but he seems fairly confident. Once he had the lineup set he actually spent more time with the kids than he had been doing…for which I’m extremely happy. They have missed his attention.

I’ve begun talking with the hospitals here because I also want to get back to work. Omari and Malik are in the 8th and 6th grades in their new school and are doing well and we’ve identified a great pre-school for little Devany to attend. I’m missing work and will just ensure I can adjust my work schedule to allow me to be home the days Frederick is away with the team for road games. I’ve also made friends with Rexa Cartwright, a student at Towson and she’s willing to come over to help with the kids when needed.