Towson basketball rebuilding project is ahead of schedule

“Then he got in his car and drove to Massachusetts to see six high school games on Sunday. That’s the reason we’ve gotten so much better so quickly.”

There are four transfers on the team.

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The most notable being Benimon, a 6-foot-8 junior who graduated from Fauquier High School and averaged about 10 minutes a game off the bench in two years at Georgetown.

He came to Towson to play more and score more and has done plenty of both, averaging 17.1 points and 11.6 rebounds. Saturday, he was double-teamed almost every time he touched the ball and still finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds, the 11th time this season he’s been in double figures in both categories.

“When I played at Georgetown we won all the time,” he said. “But we never won any championships so this doesn’t feel any different.”

Except for the numbers and the double-teams. “I’m used to it by now,” he said. “I know every game that’s the way it’s going to be.”

On Saturday, Towson jumped to a 25-13 lead and looked like it might cruise to a fifth straight win and a 4-0 conference mark before Northeastern Coach Bill Coen switched to a 3-2 zone that baffled the Tigers and kept them out of the lane for most of the last 25 minutes.

That was small consolation to Skerry, who, like any coach, thought his team should have adjusted better. The Tigers clearly got frustrated in the second half and began launching quick three-pointers, making just 6 of 24 (25 percent) for the game. Nineteen turnovers didn’t help, either. At the other end, Northeastern made 8 of 16 from long range and shot 46 percent for the game, eight percent higher than teams had been shooting against Towson before Saturday.

Even so, even as the crowd began leaving early to get home in plenty of time for the Ravens-Broncos NFL playoff game, it was apparent that there’s more light around here than the sunlight streaming in through the open doors at the end of a game that tipped at noon.

Towson’s grade-point average as a team was 2.9 last semester. The basement of the creaky, not-built-for-basketball Towson Center looks like a construction zone because it is one. Next door, the new 5,200-seat Tiger Arena is rapidly taking form and will be open in time for next season. Only one player — Bilal Dixon — graduates (in fact he’s already graduated) and another transfer, Four McGlynn, who was the America East rookie of the year last season at Vermont, waits in the wings.

In the meantime, Skerry pushes his players as if they were the defending conference champions rather than a team that considered a single-digit loss a victory a year ago.

“We have to learn when we’re up 12 because we’re shooting well we can’t let up because we miss some shots,” said Jerome Hairston, the talented freshman guard. “We need to put the pedal down and make that lead 20.”

Skerry smiled when Hairston said that. That’s exactly the kind of thinking he wants from his players.

There’s one other thing he likes about his players: They can play. “You want a loss to be disappointing, not business as usual,” he said. “We’re not there yet. But we’re on our way.”

More news: a Towson coach who thinks his team has a bright future — and no one is laughing when he talks about it.

For more by John Feinstein, go to www.washingtonpost.com/feinstein