FEDORA

[PointGuard]

Tiger Blog

Here's the player stats for the Towson Tigers for this past season (Click on image for larger, clearer and readable image and back arrow icon to come back):



And here's the Tigers' Team Stats compared to the best in the nation (Click on image for larger, clearer and readable image and back arrow icon to come back):

[PointGuard]

NCAA Tournament #1 seeds: Oklahoma (31-4), Ohio State (29-3), Kentucky (30-4), Georgetown (30-5)

CAA Teams:

NCAA: Towson (26-6) is a #7 seed in the East Region and will play #12 seed Tulsa (22-10)

NIT: Charleston is the #7 seed in the South Region and will play #2 seed Mississippi

CBI: James Madison is the #2 seed in the East Region and will play #7 seed Detroit Mercy

CIT: Drexel is the #7 seed in the East Region and will play #2 seed Fairfield

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Tournament Results:

CIT:

Round 1:

Fairfield-90, Drexel-73: The Fairfield Stags were in control the entire game. By halftime the Stags led 45-38 and then expanded their lead in the 2nd half to as much as 20 points. PG Ryan Killian led the Dragons scoring with 15 points.

CBI:

Round 1:

Detroit Mercy-88, James Madison-85: The Dukes had a 13 point lead at one point in the first half but had lost the lead and trailed 46-43 at the break. The Titans then moved ahead by as much as 13 points in the 2nd half. James Madison came back to make a game of it, but just couldn’t retake the lead. SG Chris Archey was high point man for the Dukes with 18 points.

NIT:

Round 1:'

Mississippi-74, Charleston-62: The score stayed close the entire first half with Ole Miss wresting a 39-37 advantage at the buzzer. But in the 2nd half, the Rebels took control as Charleston went cold from the field. C Gale Thorne scored 16 for the Cougars and also had 8 rebounds, 2 blocks, and 8 steals.

NCAA:

Round 1:

#24 ranked, 7th-seed Towson-85, 12th-seed Tulsa-70: The Tulsa Golden Hurricanes came into the game with a 22-10 season record, and placed 4th place in American Athletic Conference. Towson (season record of 26-6) scored first and never trailed in this game. Shooting well, rebounding strongly, and taking care of the ball, the Tigers rolled to a 48-35 halftime lead. Towson continued their dominance in the 2nd half, going ahead by 24 points before easing up down the stretch with reserves playing but still winning with ease. C Donny Flint had an awesome game with 28 points, 14 rebounds and 4 blocks. PF Deon Penn dropped in 15 points and had 9 boards. SG Dominick Collins hit for 15 points while grabbing 5 rebounds and handing out 4 assists. PG Shaun White scored 10 and dished out 9 assists. The Tigers dominated the boards 44-30 and had just 10 turnovers compared to 15 by the Golden Hurricanes. Towson scored 32 points in the paint while Tulsa had just 14 and had 15 second chance points compared to 8 by Tulsa.

Round 2:

The Arizona Wildcats are the #2 seed in the region and are ranked #1 in the polls with a season record of 31-4. It’s hard to understand why the Wildcats weren’t a #1 seed. They came into the game with a 13-game win streak and allowed just 59.8 ppg throughout the entire season.

#1 ranked, 2nd-seed Arizona-68, #24 ranked, 7th-seed Towson-60: Towson built a 9 point lead midway through the first half, but the Wildcats came back to take a 39-35 lead to the locker room. The 2nd half was close throughout, but Arizona pulled away late to send the Tigers home. But Towson gave Arizona all they could handle. SG Dominick Collins led the scoring for Towson with 17 points. C Donny Flint was held to 8 points by the Pac-13 All Conference C Travis Earl, but Flint pulled down 8 rebounds and had 6 blocks.

Coach Aura said, “I’m proud of how our guys played in the Big Dance. We played extremely well in both games. But Arizona showed why they’re the #1 ranked team in the nation. We did everything we could to win but the Wildcats defense kept us from breaking out. We usually control the boards, but we couldn’t do it against Arizona’s tough interior guys.”

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Matt Barnes, 2nd Assistant (Recruiting) Coach:

March 26, 2023

We landed our 4th recruit today. It’s SF Mac McCaffery, a 6-7 HS Senior from Hampton, NH. He’s a 4-star recruit who is ranked as the 108th best recruit in the nation. Mac averaged 14.6 ppg, 4.5 apg, 5.0 rpg, 2.3 bpg, and 2.6 spg this season. He’s an excellent outside shooter but also is good inside as well. He’s a good defender and rebounder and has great hands with great blocking and stealing skills. He’s a hard worker who had a solid, albeit not spectacular, showing at the Big Apple Showcase this past summer.
We still have one scholarship left to fill and don’t have a lot of money left in our budget so it might be difficult to fill this one, but we’ll try.
April 3, 2023

OK, I was wrong. We picked up our 5th and final recruit today. He’s C Donyell Porter, a 6-10 JC sophomore from Wilmington, DE. He averaged 14.9 ppg, 4.0 apg, 7.5 rpg, 2.9 bpg, and 1.9 spg this season. He’s an excellent inside shooter and good scorer. He’s a strong rebounder. Since he’s played 2 years of JC ball, we hope he can step in to back up Donny Flint right away next season.

We had some higher ranked interior guys on our list, but had not yet gotten their interest level high enough that we were confident we could sign them.

So here are the 5 recruits:

SF Mac McCaffery, 6-7, HS Sr., 108th ranked—pirmary strengths—outside shooting, scoring, stealing
C Donyell Porter, 6-10, JC So., 210th ranked—primary strengths—inside shooting, rebounding, scoring
C Calvin Williams, 6-8, HS Sr., 217th ranked—primary strengths—inside shooting, rebounding, defense
PF Valery Hensen, 6-6 HS Sr., 223rd ranked, primary strengths—rebounding and passing and a good scorer and defender
PG Jon Spann, 6-0 HS Sr., 266th ranked—primary strengths—outside shooting and scoring with good passing and ball handling skills and an excellent leader

It’s a solid group of recruits. We’re hopeful that some of the high schoolers will come in ready to contribute as freshmen, particular the interior players since we need to add some depth there due to graduation of 3 of our big men.

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Perry Winkle, AD

Tournament Championship Games:

NCAA: Syracuse-87, Wichita State-76
NIT: Alabama-Birmingham-100, Texas Tech-84
CBI: Baylor-82, Stanford-56
CIT: St. Louis-79, IUPUI-72

Awards:

Coach Frederick Aura was selected as the CAA Coach of the Year.
C Donny Flint and PF Deon Penn were selected to the CAA First Team All Conference.
SF Wayne Burrough was selected to the CAA Second Team All Conference.

NCAA News:

This year the following teams had sanctions placed upon them by the NCAA for recruiting violations:
NC-Wilmington, loss of one scholarship next season, head coach fired.
North Carolina, no scholarships for 3 years and 2 year post-season ban, head coach fired.

Staffing:

Coach Aura met (and exceeded) all of his goals. Coach Aura and all his assistants will be returning next season.
Coach Aura met with the board to request an upgrade to our facilities, but the request wad denied. We just don't have that kind of money.

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2023-2024 SEASON

Coach Frederick Aura

Last season’s recruit class was rated as the 44th best in the nation. I’m happy with the 5 players who are joining us this season. My initial assessment is that 4 of the 5 will be solid contributors this coming season and one will likely be red-shirted, but we’ll see.

The next best recruit class in the CAA was James Madison, rated #57. No one else above #112 (William & Mary). I like our group of recruits MUCH better than the recruits those schools landed. But whereas our recruits are unlikely to become starters due to the quality of our returning players, some of the freshmen at other CAA schools may become starters and shine since I don’t think other CAA schools’ returning players are as high quality as are ours.

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Coaches Meeting
(Head Coach Frederick Aura-HC; 1st Assistant Kenyon Haynes-1A; 2nd Assistant Matt Barnes-2A; 3rd Assistant Nate Culuko-3A; Graduate Assistant Adrian Brown-GA)

HC-I want you all to know how pleased I am with your work the past year. It was a great season. Our success was definitely a result of your outstanding efforts, so thank you. I’m really happy that all of you are continuing on with us to provide consistency for our program. Now it’s time to begin focusing on the upcoming season. We lost 4 scholarship players and 2 walk-ons to graduation. Where do you think that leaves us for next season?

3A-When you look at our team stats for last season, we ranked high in most all categories. But there was an area where we were low…shooting…for FGA’s, 3PA’s, and FTA’s. It’s rather surprising we did so well when we shot so poorly. Hopefully our guys knock down their shots better this coming season.

1A-The main thing is that of the 6 departing players only Deon Penn was a starter. And while we’ll definitely miss Deon, I like what I’ve seen on Kevin Holmes. We knew he played well as a freshman for Georgetown, and he practiced hard for us while sitting out last season year of ineligibility caused by his transfer. I believe he improved almost all aspects of his game. He’ll be a sophomore this coming season eligibility-wise. His rebounding strength is approaching what we saw with Deon, he isn’t afraid to put the ball in the hoop from anywhere on the court, and has good defensive instincts.

3A-Yeah, I agree that we won’t see much of a downturn at PF and Donny Flint, who came to us as a interior stud, has continued to develop at C, so think we’ll be strong inside. Two of our new interior players, Donyell Porter and Calvin Williams should be able to adequately spell Donny and Kevin inside.

GA-We’re also going to be improved at the guard positions with two starters Shaun White and Dominick Collins returning. I believe Matt Faust and Copley Dwiggins will be improved coming off the bench and freshman Jon Spann seems to be solid as well. So I think our guards could be the strongest part of our game this coming season.

1A-And we knew we were going to be deep at SF with Wayne Burrough back to start and Ross Davis a stronger reserve. Freshman Mac McCaffery probably will need some time to move up from high school ball to compete successfully for us, but he has such a sweet shot that he should be a good scorer for us in the future. It’s possible a year of redshirting would be good for him but he just might surprise us once our practices kick into gear.

2A-Shaun White took a while to hit it off with his teammates but he made good progress toward the end of the season. Matt Faust has a tendence to rub some of the guys the wrong way, so we need to keep helping him fit in. Kevin Holmes came to us with a bad rep about being a disruptive force, but he really got along well with the team and all of us, so that was a pleasant surprise. The same with Donny Flint. I hear that Calvin Williams can sometimes have a hard time fitting in, but I don’t know that’s a fair evaluation of the guy. So overall, I think team chemistry will be as good and probably improved over last season.

HC-You guys covered everyone except Valery Henson and Robert Jefferson.

2A-From what I saw of Valery he seems to have some rough edges that need to be rounded off, so he could be a development project but a guy who can be very productive in the future. I think he’s a definite candidate for redshirting this season. As to Robert, my opinion is it’s pretty much a wash as to whether we keep him or let him go.

3A-Robert Jefferson is our lone remaining walk-on. We’re stacked at SF so I don’t seem him getting any minutes there. But he could possibly fill in if needed at PF. He’s a good guy and is well liked. We’ll be able to take on another walk-on, so I’d say stick with Robert. I doubt that if we cut him, a new walk-on will do more for us that what Robert can do.

1A- Overall I believe we’ll have an even stronger starting five that we had last season and our bench could be better as well, depending on how the new guys really play.

HC-Thanks! I value your perspectives. I too am optimistic about the coming season. Let’s continue working on getting all our guys some camp time this summer so they sharpen their skills. I’ll be talking with each of you privately to find out what skills each of our players needs to improve most. I want to give every one of them a list of areas we’d like them to work on the next 5 months before our practice begins in the fall.

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Matt Barnes, 2nd Assistant (Recruiting) Coach

We have four scholarship players on our team who will be graduating after this season. So we’ll be looking to fill those 4 scholarships this year. We’re losing White and Faust at PG. Even though I believe Jon Spann will be ready to become a starter after this season, we still need to recruit at least one, and preferably two, PG’s. Neither of our two SG’s will be graduating so no need to add a player at the 2. But we’re also losing two players, Burrough and Davis, at SF. So that’s another position we definitely need a good recruit even though Mac McCaffery will likely be ready to start at the 3 following this coming season. None of our five interior players is graduating, so I think we can just go after the strongest player, irrespective of position, that we can land for the 4th scholarship.

I’m going to encourage Coach Aura to buy the basic Atlantic East Report. I’d like for us to get the Gold-star Report, but know we don’t have a big enough budget for that. Maybe I can get him to go along with also buying the basic National Report. And I’m pretty sure we’ll go to the Big Apple Showcase, but I’d also like to attend one of the national camps. Not sure I can talk Caoch Aura into that, though.

None of our players are transferring, so that’s good news. So all of our scholarships are filled for this season…meaning we won’t be going after any transfer players.

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Matt Barnes, 2nd Assistant (Recruiting) Coach

Well, Coach Aura agreed to purchase the basic Atlantic East Report, but as expected, not the Gold Report. He also didn’t feel there would be enough players outside our region in the basic National Report that we’d be successful pursuing so nixed buying that also.

We don’t have any scholarships to offer to transfer players. But I still reviewed the transfer players and there are several who are very interested in our school. There also is Nick Calhoun, who scored 14.6 ppg for James Madison last season and was the CAA Freshman of the and a 1st-Team All-Conference player. Calhoun does have the rep of being a tough guy to get along with, though. There also is a PG from Northwestern I’d very much like to go after, but we have no room at the inn. Another guy that I’m salivating about is a 7’0” center from North Alabama who was the Atlantic Sun Player of the Year, Freshman of the Year and 1st Team All-Conference.

Calhoun transferred to Long Island University…that’s good…he’s out of our conference.

I was able to talk Coach Aura into attendance at not only the Big Apple Showcase, but also a national camp, the East Coast Jam. Yeah!!!

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3rd Assistant (Scouting) Coach Culuko reporting to Coach Frederick Aura:

Hey boss, I got some good and some bad news for you from the summer training camps.

I best start with the bad news first. Reports are that C Calvin Williams has seemed overmatched. He’s a tough kid and not dogging it or anything, but maybe he’s gonna need a lot more work than we expected before he’s ready to step on the court for us. And as we’d sort of thought, PF Valery Henson is talented but green. So our initial thoughts about him being redshirt material, just likely were correct. SF Mac McCaffery is holding his own but has been inconsistent. Some days he’s strong, other days he seems a bit overwhelmed and lost out there.

On a more positive note, C Donyell Porter is looking good, pretty much what I think we expected. So he should be ready to back up at either C or PF. And the really good news is that PG Jon Spann is tearing things up. He’s been exceptionally strong…so strong that he could possibly challenge for a starting role.

With Valery and Calvin possibly not being ready to be solid backups for the interior positions, maybe we should consider running a 3-guard offense when our interior starters are on the bench, particularly since it looks like we’re going to have 3 excellent guards. And also we could maybe use Ross Davis as a backup at PF even though he’s a natural SF. Ross’ rebounding has really strengthened. We’d suffer height-wise, but all 3 guards (White, Collins and Spann) know how to mix it up on the boards and we’d have some outstanding ball handling and passing.

But we have a couple more months of summer to go and we gotta hope that some of our new players will make upward turns during that time.