Two nights after losing, 61-52, at James Madison in the Colonial Athletic Association opener for both teams, Towson nearly gave up an 18-point lead in the first half before holding on for a 57-53 win against Elon at SECU Arena on Monday night.
After last year's squad went 13-3 in the CAA and advanced to the league tournament final, coach Pat Skerry knows it won't be as smooth in the conference this winter.
"There won't be many easy nights in this league," he said Tuesday morning during his weekly conference call arranged by the CAA. "I think our guys are slowly and surely getting to understand that. For us, we played more like we needed to play. We got back to guarding. We had a longer, spirited practice on Sunday, which normally we wouldn't have between games.
"But to JMU's credit, they carved us up on Saturday with our worst field-goal percentage that we've ever given up in conference play in the last couple years. We got back to guarding, and that's kind of who we are. We've had success because we've guarded and rebounded. I think we're a work in progress on offense, and there will be some incremental improvement with that. But we've got to hang our hat on our ability to defend and rebound, and we did a much better job with that against a really good Elon team."
Monday's victory snapped a six-game losing streak for Towson (8-7), which had last won Dec. 3 against Coppin State. It also evened the team's record in the league and might boost the confidence of a team that graduated its top four scorers from last season.
"I think a lot of us are looking for longer stretches of consistent play, and at times, that's challenging with a lot of new guys," Skerry said. "But I look back at it, and the first three games that we lost, those teams were just better than us. And then we started figuring out ways to kind of lose games, which really we hadn't done in the past couple years.
"So I'm hoping last night was good for us because we were up 18 in the first half and then Elon's good and they got back in the game, and we had to really scrap it out late. We were fortunate to come up with the victory. So hopefully, coming from success and adverse conditions will help us moving forward."