School: Towson
Location: Baltimore County, Maryland
Est.: 1866
Enrollment: 17,500 (undergraduate)
Nickname: Tigers
Famous alumni: John Schuerholz (former Atlanta Braves GM), Kevin Clash (voice of Elmo), Stacy Kiebler (google it)
Conference: CAA
Last year's record: 4-26 (0-18)
Players to watch: #1 Isaiah Philmore,(correction: Philmore transferred. Apologies for the mistake) #11 Dre Connor
What they do well: Towson took care of the ball reasonably well last year, turning it over on only 18.5% of its possessions, which was 76th in the country. In CAA play they turned it over even less, on 16.7% of their possessions. They shot 35.6% from three and 72.3% from the line, each in the top 100 nationally.
What they do poorly: Nearly everything else. The Tigers were 342nd in PPP allowed, 338th in eFG allowed, and 343rd in 3pt percentage allowed. They were also a poor offensive and defensive rebounding team, ranking 269th and 277th respectively.
Defending Towson:
Towson shoots a lot of twos. Relatively, they were 228th in terms of shooting threes. Unfortunately for them, they're not very good at shooting twos as they shot just 47.4% from inside the arc last year. Furthering their offensive paradox, Towson doesn't really like to run (though they're not completely averse to it), with a tempo right around the national average last year. Though as you'll see from the video below, their offense doesn't really look to have much flow in the half court, a notion backed up by the fact that their assists per field goal made was 304th in the entire nation last year.
Towson Men's Basketball vs. Princeton (via TheTowsonTigers)
Attacking Towson:
Due to Towson's relative lack of depth (just 25% of their minutes went to bench players last year, 296th nationally) the best move seems to be run, run, run. Due to our own depth problems that might not be the best idea, but I do think our best chance to score overall this year is going to be running more often than not. On the other hand, this is probably a good game to practice the offense. Thomas Robinson should have a field day in this one, as Towson's tallest player stands just 6'9" and as a team they allowed opponents to shoot 52.5% from two last year, and they were the worst two point defense in the CAA. To be fair they sucked at three point defense as well, but I have always viewed that as more luck driven than anything else.
Judging from the snippets of video I have watched on Towson (and there aren't many available where they do poorly, naturally) it looks relatively easy to drive to the hoop on them as well, so Tyshawn should have a field day. Case in point:
Towson Men's Basketball vs. Navy (via TheTowsonTigers)
Hopefully that starts at the proper time, but if not fast forward it to the 1:00 mark.
In the end, this should look more like how the Pittsburg State and Ft. Hays State games looked than a game vs. an actual D1 opponent. Something in the 90-60 range seems like a plausible score, but it will be a nice tuneup for Tyshawn and Elijah to get acclimated to playing in a game with the first teamers.
If you want more Towson videos to do your own scouting, you can check out