FEDORA

[PointGuard]

Coach Aura:

Pre-conference play has concluded and our 8-4 record looks good. But our record is deceiving. We purposely set up a powder-puff schedule with no really tough teams. So pre-conference play served as a good way to build confidence for our team but may not have prepared them as well as possible for conference play. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

Colonial Athletic Association team records at the end of pre-conference play:



Top Player Stats thus far:

PPG: PF Craig Smith, 10.7 ppg; C Melvin Steele, 10.3 ppg; PG Ryan Taylor, 8.7 ppg; PG Matt Settles, 8.5 ppg

RPG: PF Craig Smith, 6.9 rpg; C Melvin Steele, 5.3 rpg; SF Eric Shannon, 3.4 rpg

APG: PG Matt Settles, 3.6 apg; PG Ryan Holmes, 31 apg; PG Billy Thomas, 3.5 apg

[PointGuard]

Assistant Coach Michael Snoddy:

The media reps who follow Colonial Athletic Association have combined their individual predictions. Their combined consensus is that we will finish 2nd in the conference behind North Carolina-Wilmington. If you believe that they really have any predictive capability, then that puts some pressure on us to perform to their expectations. We’ll just let the season progress and do our best from game to game.

[PointGuard]

Perry Winkle, Athletic Director

DIdn’t want to miss our first conference game. We’re hosting the James Madison Dukes who have a 3-8 Precord but they played most all of their pre-conference games on the road and had some tough competition. So they definitely are better than their record would lead you to believe.

Coach Aura has recently settled on a starting lineup of Steele at C, Smith at PF, Shannon at SF, Evans at SG and Settles at PG.

We have a decent size crowd tonight. I think there would have been even more if the weather hadn’t turned bad which has kept a lot of James Madison fans from making the 3 hour drive from Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia.

We can out flat and it was nearly 5 minutes into the game before the Tigers made a field goal. A minute before that I could hear Coach Aura screaming at his team during the media timeout to get their act together. It worked though and they pulled ahead a couple minutes later at 8-7 after making 3 straight FG’s. But James Madison was dominating the boards and used that advantage to maintain a small lead over our guys. Peter Myers, JMU’s head coach, was really riding the refs and they called a technical on him with 4:30 to play in the half. While he gave up a point, his action psyched up his players who scored 8 straight points to take a 34-28 lead with 2 minutes remaining. The half ended with Towson on the short end of a 37-35 score. James Madison outplayed our team in every area except for turnovers where we held a 13-6 advantage. But if we wanted to win, we needed to attack the boards where we had a 20-9 deficit in the first half. C Nick McPherson was our top scorer with 8 points.

Coach Aura must have gotten on his guys in the locker room because they came out more aggressively to start the 2nd half. We took a 3 point lead but the Dukes struck back to regain the lead. The lead was exchanged several times but then James Madison spurted out to a 72-58 lead with 4-1/2 minutes to go. James Madison took advantage of a subpar performance by the Tigers resulting in a disappointing 87-73 loss at home. The Dukes outshot the Tigers 53% to 41% (and hit 50% of their 3’s compared to just 14% by Towson), out-rebounded the Tigers 39-23 but had 18 turnovers to just 11 by Towson.

PF Craig Smith had 13 points, C Nick McPherson had 12, SG Mitchell Evans scored 11, and SG Ryan Taylor hit for 10.

Hopefully this was just an off night for our guys or it’s going to be a long Colonial Athletic Association season.

[PointGuard]

Jason Minor, reserve PF

Not much of a talker so be ready.

Flew up to Boston for our game against Northeastern Huskies (6-6, 0-1). Luckily we don’t have to spend time outside because it’s absolutely frigid here.

We built an 8 point lead only to give up most of it and led by just 3 at 34-31 at the end of the first half. Eric Shannon topped our scoring with 10 points.

Continued to hold a small lead in the 2nd half. We finally got a 10 point lead with 5 minutes remaining. We held on to achieve a 70-65 road win. Outshot the Huskies 46% to 38%.

Leading scorers: Eric Shannon-15 pts; Melvin Steele-12 pts (and 7 rebounds); Matt Settles-11 pts; Nick McPherson-10 pts; Craig Smith-9 pts (and 6 boards).

We’re now 9-5 for the season and 1-1 in conference play.

[PointGuard]

Bad News:

PF Jason Vickers broke his foot and will likely be out for the remainder of the regular season. If he heals quickly he may be available about the time the conference tournament kicks off.

He joins Billy Thomas as players out for the season. Vickers unavailability means that Jason Miner needs to step into the breach as the primary replacement when Craig Smith goes onto the bench. Miner has shown some scoring ability but unlike Vickers, is not an outside threat.

[PointGuard]

Frederick Aura

We play the North Carolina Wilmington Seahawks tonight. I’m not sure which of my teams will show up: the focused, diligent, take no prisoners one or the don’t give a damn, let’s just get this over one. To say we’re inconsistent is a massive understatement. Since NC-Wilmington is favored to come out on top of our conference standings, no better time than on our own court to begin reshaping that expectation by trimming the Seahawks flight feathers. A big problem with that is that Bryan Borman, the Seahawks center is averaging 22.7 ppg and 7.9 rpg and not only that, but they have two other players averaging double figures. Borman has score 28-31 points in 5 of their games so far this season. He’s scored 29 points in each of his last 2 games, so is on a roll. Even though NC-Wilmington is 5-8 (1-1), they’ve overcome an early season 6-game losing streak and have won 4 of their last 6 games.

1st Half: Yet another slow start. It took us over 3 minutes to score. Fortunately after going ahead 5-0, the Seahawks shooting cooled and we caught up. The refs were quick to blow their whistles, but midway through the half it hadn’t helped us since we had sunk just 2 of 11 free throws. We couldn’t hit from the field either plus were making far too many turnovers and with 5:44 left in the half we trailed 22-13. At that point our defense evaporated and we lost complete control of Bryan Borman. By the end of the half we trailed 44-28. We were outshot 54% to 33% and hit 5 of 15 free throws. We mad 11 turnovers to just 4 by the Seahawks. We did have a 24-18 rebounding advantage, but overall we played horribly. Matt Settles and Melvin Steele had 6 points apiece, but Byran Borman killed us with 17 points for North Carolina-Wilmington.

2nd Half: We were behind by 15 with 10 minutes to go. It could only get better from there, right? Wrong! We absolutely sucked. We fell behind by 28 at one point and were bludgeoned to an 82-62 beatdown. We hit 41% of our FG’s, 17% of our 3’s, and 35% of our FT’s. We had 18 turnovers. We let Bryan Borman score 27 points and haul down 10 rebounds. Matt Settles scored 17, Craig Smith had 11 points and 9 rebounds, and Eric Shannon scored 10 while pulling down 7 boards.

It’s back to the drawing board. Right now we aren’t competing well in Colonial Athletic Association play. We’ve now lost 2 straight at home and are 1-2 in conference play. Additionally, the team was totally unresponsive to all efforts to invigorate them. It’s not surprising that our fans were walking out of SECU Center throughout the 2nd half. Michael Evans scored no points and disappeared on both offense and defense …maybe a wakeup call will come after I start Ryan Taylor at SG instead of Michael in our next game.

The loss was so disappointing that I tried to cheer myself up by buying this new fedora which I think is pretty darned classy:

[PointGuard]

Michael Snoddy, 2nd Assistant Coach

Ryan Taylor is the starting SG for the first time in his collegiate career. He’s played well coming off the bench but starting adds a new level of pressure. I sure do hope he copes well with it. Additionally, with Jason Vickers now our of action due to the broken bone in his foot, another Jason (Miner) is needs to step up as a fill-in at PF when Craig Smith goes off the court for a breather.

William & Mary has won 7 and lost 7 this season and has a 2-1 conference record. The Tribe has road wins against South Carolina, St. John’s, and #13 Wisconsin, so they’re going to be a tough opponent, particularly since we are playing them on their court. PG Michael Phelan is averaging 13.7 ppg and 4.4 apg. Other double digit scorers are PF Matt Holt (10.1 ppg) and reserve guard Tyson Brown (10.0 ppg).

In the first 4-1/2 minutes we’d carved out a 9-0 lead but Ryan Taylor got called for 2 fouls. We forced the Tribe to make 5 turnovers and held them scoreless for 6 minutes and had an 11-0 lead by the time they hit a FG. But William & Mary just began creepin', creapin', creepin’ up on us. With 7-1/2 minutes left in the half they trailed just by a single point. We then tenaciously held onto a small lead but the Tibe tied us at 30-30 with 1:47 remaining in the half and took a 2 point lead with a minute to go. The half ended with us trailing 34-32. Craig Smith and Melvin Steele combined for 19 points and 10 rebounds.

We quickly fell behind by 7, then rapidly came back to get within a single point only to fall behind by 7 again. But we again struggled and took a 46-45 lead with 12:49 remaining. The Tribe came back and began pulling away, taking a 64-53 lead with 6 minutes left to play. We cut their lead to 3 with 2:55 on the clock. A 3 pointer by Matt Settles cut the lead to 68-67 with 1:38 to play. William & Mary reciprocated wit a 3 and then stole the ball on 2 consecutive possessions to put 4 more points on the board, making it 75-67 with less that a minute to go. The difference was too great as William & Mary handed us a 77-70 defeat. That dropped our conference record to 1-3 and put us in a tie for 8th place.

Topping our scoring was C Melvin Steele with 15 points. PF Craig Smith had 13 points and 12 rebounds. PF Jason Miner scored 11 points in 14 minutes of play. William & Mary’s PF Matt Holt hit for 22 points, grabbed 9 boards, and had 3 steals and a block.

[PointGuard]

Article in Baltimore Sun sports section:

Towson Burned by the Phoenix

The Towson Tigers loss streak grew to three last night when they fell to the Elon Phoenix 81-80. In a game that was close throughout with 13 lead changes and 9 ties, the Tigers let a late lead evaporate. Trailing by a single point, they were unable to get the ball in the hoop on their final possession keeping them from pulling off a last second win.

A 37-37 halftime tie was only a prelude to a 2nd half in which the teams battled back and forth without either able to pull away. Team stats were as close as the final score. Towson was led by Craig Smith with 18 points and 9 rebounds with Mitchell Evans adding 13, Melvin Steele 12, and Ryan Holmes 12.

The Tigers, whose conference record is a dismal 1-4, are now mired in a 3-way tie for last place in the Colonial Athletic Conference. Coach Frederick Aura said, “We’re definitely struggling. I think we’re a better team than our record indicates. We had opportunities tonight, but just didn’t take advantage of them.”

[PointGuard]

Billy Thomas, Injured PG

This season has been so disappointing. Tearing up my MCL after playing just 2 games was such a downer. Then watching from the bench as the team has struggled lately has been tough.

Tonight, though, the guys were on fire early and put the visiting Drexel Dragons in a 46-29 halftime hole. We then held them at arms’ length throughout the second half to score an 80-69 win in from of our fans. Craig Smith was again the rock of our team, scoring 19 points. Mitchell Evans hit every shot he took and scored 13 while his replacement at SG, Ryan Taylor, scored 11.

Hopefully this win is the beginning of a long winning streak.

[PointGuard]

Janeka Aura

Late-January: A pneumonia-like illness is spreading in China. They’re calling it a novel coronavirus, meaning this is the first discovery of the strain of this type of virus. A large city in China has gone into a complete lockdown, but the disease is continuing to grow within the population there. We’re scrambling at the hospital to quickly learn about it.