– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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WASHINGTON — If you’re in the know in college basketball, you know who Pat Skerry is and where he has resided in becoming one of the best coaches in college basketball. Maybe the rest of the uninitiated will get the idea if his Towson Tigers can finally get over the CAA mountaintop.
The quarterfinals of the CAA Conference Tournament started withSkerry’s Tigers, the No. 1 seed in the tournament, handle eighth-seeded Drexel 82-76 to once again advance to the semifinals. Dylan Williamson scored a career-high 32 points, including making seven three-pointers on 10 attempts, while CAA Player of the Year Tyler Tejada had 20 points.
Skerry, the 2025 CAA Coach of the Year, has done almost everything during his 14 years revitalizing the Towson program, and his Tigers won the outright CAA regular season title for the first time in program history. Skerry guided Towson to its fourth consecutive 20+ win season, a program first, and the Towson’s 16-2 record in CAA play made it just the sixth team in CAA history to finish with that record. But as far as the CAA Tournament is concerned, Skerry and the Tigers have never even been the bridesmaid, let alone the bride. None of the Tigers’ forays into the CAA Tournament have resulted in a finals appearance, and Towson has lost in the semifinals in three consecutive tournaments, including in 2022 when it was the No. 1 seed before falling to eventual champion Delaware. In last year’s semifinal, Towson held a 55-48 lead against top-seeded Charleston at the under-four media timeout before the Cougars ended the game on a 13-1 run to snatch the win.
This year has to be the year for the Tigers, right? Well, it just might be, especially after the second game of the day, when No. 12 seed Delaware stunned fourth-seed William & Mary by hanging 100 points on the Tribe in a 22-point victory that sends the Fightin’ Blue Hens to tomorrow’s semifinals against the Tigers.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Sunday’s quarterfinals, with photos taken by DC-area photographer Michael R. Smith. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page, Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 20 pictures in total.
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