While there a few scores on the first Friday of the college hoops season — Rider thumping 19th-ranked Mississippi State, San Diego knocking off Stanford, the Idaho Vandals pillaging Utah — the result that almost shocked me enough to put down my beer, turn the LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo clash for the MLS Western Conference crown off, and rip-off a post was the Miami Redhawks 81-72 loss at Towson. I didn’t see the game, but that just doesn’t seem like it was Miami as we’ve come to know them during Charlie Coles tenure as coach.
During the 2008-09 season, the Redhawks gave up 80 or more points exactly twice, and both times it was against squads from the Big East that were among the best in college hoops. Pitt dropped 82 on them in an 82-53 shellacking and West Virginia routed the Redhawks 82-46 in December 2008. Giving up 81 to a Towson team picked to finish towards the bottom of the Colonial is an entirely different matter.
It’s too early to draw conclusions, but the backcourt tandem of Kenny Hayes and point guard Kramer Soderberg combined for eight turnovers, which is too many. According to the box score for this game on my new favorite webssite, Basketball State, Hayes and Soderberg were just not that efficient. One thing Charlie Coles’ system requires is that the guards be exactly that.
As for the Tigers, I’m not about to pronounce them contenders in the Colonial. I am prepared, however, to say that the two other MAC sides that are traveling to Towson this season — Buffalo and Bowling Green — had better be ready to play, because the Tigers seem to have some bite this season.
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