Towson rolls past DIII Goucher, 97-43

John Davis scored 11 points and had a career-high 15 rebounds against Goucher. (Photo Credit: Corey Johns)

In these types of game where a Division I school like Towson plays a Division III team like Goucher what Tiger Head Coach wants to see is his team “doing things the right way.” A win is expected, honestly, a blowout win is expected, but it’s how they get there that matters most.

“Every day you try to get better,” Skerry said. “Your defense has to get better, your execution has to get better. If you get better every day the wins will take care of itself.”

And Skerry was happy with what he saw as his Tigers blew out the Gophers, 97-43.

Very early in the game Goucher did appear to be a much tougher opponent than Towson might have expected. Chris Outing, the only Goucher player with the size to really compete with a much bigger Towson team, scored the opening points of the game and then the 6-foot-7, 220-pounder got inside for another easy layup. On Goucher’s next possession Ibraham Kallon got inside for a second time in just the first five minutes of the game to give the Gophers a 10-9 lead.

It forced a quick timeout by Skerry but from there on the Tigers just utilized their size and athletic advantage to move forward fast. Over the next six minutes Towson went on a 19-2 run and primarily used their inside game to draw fouls as they separated from the Gophers on the score board.

“We’re big, we’re physical and I think they (Towson’s post players) are pretty disciplined,” Skerry said. “Our interior passing is outstanding. We really, really share the ball in the front court and that’s an important trait, it makes us hard to guard and hard to zone.”

Timajh Parker-Rivera (13 points, 10 rebounds), John Davis (11 points, career-high 15 rebounds), and Walter Foster (6 points, 8 rebounds) were just unable to be guarded by Goucher and were all a major part of the team’s 65-29 dominance on the glass, which also helped lead to 21 second chance points while the Gophers only scored four off second opportunities. Towson out-scored Goucher 42-28 in the paint and shared the ball well, totaling 27 assists.

But as the Tigers showed their strength and ability inside, it opened up their outside game. Freshman guard Byron Hawkins who only averaged 2.4 points through the team’s first five games, made five 3-pointers in 21 minutes off the bench for a game-high 19 points. Towson as a team made 13 triples, the second highest total in school history.

“For the first time since we’ve (the coaching staff) been here we have multiple guys who can shoot the ball from the perimeter,” Skerry said. “We want to play inside-out but we hadn’t shot the ball well. We started making three’s against Monmouth but I feel like we have half a dozen guys who can make threes.”

Josh Ivory has three three’s while Four McGlynn had two in his 10 points game. Three other Tigers were successful from distance.

But as Towson had a huge lead for most of the game, 40 or more with 11 minutes remaining in the game thanks to a 22-7 run to open the second stanza, Skerry was able to get a lot of guys into the game for minutes that they probably would not have had in a much closer outing.

Eleven different Tigers played 12 minutes or more and succeeded as the team out-shot Goucher 45.7% to 27% from the field and 48.1% to 7.1% from distance.

“This is the deepest team we’ve had top to bottom with talent,” he said. “I’m not going to site here and say we’re Kentucky but we have 10 guys who can start. It’s going to be different guys on different nights. We’ve never had this type of dept and I think it’s going to pay off long tern. We have a lot of guys who can finish games for us.”

Freshman Mike Morsell, who was averaging only two points per game going into the contest, score 13 points off the bench in 22 minutes of action.

Since dropping their season opener to Alabama the Tigers have won five-straight games as they have gotten off to their best start in over 25 years.

“I think we’ve come a long way,” Parker-Rivera said. “Obviously there is still work to be done, we could be better, but we just got to keep buying in and keep preparing for our next matchups.”

Towson will travel just around the beltway for their next game as they play a struggling UMBC team on Saturday and then host Coppin State in one week.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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