By: Aaron Robinson
There is a style of play on the playground known as bully ball, where one uses brute strength to overpower their opponent and put the ball into the basket. This is precisely the approach that Towson men’s basketball took advantage of today, as they punished The University of North Carolina Wilmington Seahawks in the paint en route to a 72-69 victory.
The Tigers scored 44 points in the paint, and out-rebounded the Seahawks by 11, taking full advantage of UNC Wilmington’s lack of size in the frontcourt.
“It was wise for us to go inside, the high low was working for us, and we took advantage of it, which eventually helped us with the momentum,” Solomon Uyaelunmo, who scored a season high 14 points and grabbed nine rebounds, said of his team’s size advantage.
“Solomon is coming off of sitting out with an injury, he’s gotten to really play well, he's really rebounding the ball well,” Towson men’s basketball head coach Pat Skerry said after the game.
Solomon’s older brother Victor scored six points and grabbed seven rebounds in 18 minutes of action, getting two layups on post entries and knocking down two free throws, all in the first half of today’s matchup.
“If we are going to get to where we think we can get to [Victor] is going to be a big piece of it,” Skerry said.
“I’m proud of the way those two guys are working.”
But perhaps the biggest bully of them all was sophomore forward Charles Thompson, who came up just shy of a double double, tallying 10 points and snatching nine rebounds off the bench for the Tigers.
Thompson also knocked down four of six free throws in the final 95 seconds to seal the win for Towson.
“He’s the hardest playing guy i’ve had in my ten years here, and we’ve had some guys that played pretty hard,” Skerry said after the game.
Entering today’s contest, Thompson was shooting 56% from the foul line on the season. But in the last 95 seconds, you wouldn’t have known, as Thompson stepped up to the line three separate times, making four of the six free throws that he attempted to seal the victory.
“I’m not surprised by Charles' play at the end,” Zane Martin, who led Towson with 21 points on the afternoon, said.
“He’s an everyday guy, he comes in and busts his butt everyday to get better, so I wasn’t surprised by it, we should see more games like this from Charles.”
On an afternoon where Towson shot just 1-14 from the three point line, every point and every rebound from their frontcourt guys was crucial.
The play of the trio of bigs for Towson was even more essential because of the loss of senior captain Juwan Gray, who will miss the remainder of the year with a torn achilles.
“Us losing Juwan made guys say ‘oh I got to step up’ because we want to win, everybody wants to win so now we all have to bring something to the table,” Uyaelunmo said.
“Coach always says, ‘what are you going to bring to the cookout’, so you got to bring different stuff.”
It was most certainly a group effort this afternoon for the Tigers, who were playing in just their second game in over three weeks after multiple pauses due to positive Coronavirus tests within the program.
It was the first game since November 27, that Towson’s backcourt duo of Zane Martin and sophomore Jason Gibson had both been on the floor together, so the two are still trying to find their rhythm and chemistry together.
“It’s been so hard with these times with us getting shut down… but you know at the end of the day everyone is going through the same stuff as us so we just have to come in locked in and just try to get better every chance we get,” Martin said.
The next chance that the Tigers will have to get better will be tomorrow, as they will face this same UNC Wilmington team who will be looking to earn a split on the road.
“We have to do a better job on the interior of guarding their post players,” UNC Wilmington head Coach Takayo Siddle said.
“I thought we let them catch it too easily, we laid behind them, we let them catch it too deep, we didn’t pressure the ball so they could throw it in, but we have to sit down and guard and not let them get all the way to the rim, and we can’t let their post guys get deep catches, basically for layups.”
For Towson, they will look to repeat the effort they gave today, and get their first conference sweep of the season.
“As long as we keep them off the free throw line and we know our personnel, and we bring the same energy that we bought in the second half tonight, to the whole game tomorrow, we should be fine,” Thompson said.
Game 2 of the back-to-back is set for Tuesday at 1pm from SECU Arena.