Another feather in Skerry's cap
Towson coach Pat Skerry may have received a sign that The Streak was about to end.
The Tigers snapped their Division I-record 41-game losing streak by beating the UNCW Seahawks 66-61 on Saturday. Skerry's wife called shortly before the game to report what she thought was an owl — it was then identified as a hawk — had crashed through a porch window at their house.
"Obviously during this streak, I'm trying keep the guys loose," Skerry said. "I told the guys, 'Look, the Skerry household just killed a hawk. We've got to try to go out there and slay the Seahawks.' Our guys got a little bit of a kick out of it."
The window will cost about $1,200 to fix, he said.
Skerry, an assistant at Pittsburgh in 2011, said the celebration reminded him of the Panthers' locker room after they won the Big East regular-season title last year. Erique Gumbs, the only holdover from last season, "swelled up pretty good."
"We certainly don't plan on having to wait as long to get the next one," Skerry said.
Knee surgery for ODU's Taylor
Old Dominion coach Blaine Taylor underwent arthroscopic surgery Monday to repair torn ligaments in his right knee. Associate coach Jim Corrigan said Taylor plans on being at practice this week and on the bench for Thursday's game against James Madison.
Taylor suffered the injury as he was jogging to the locker room at halftime against Missouri on Dec. 30.
"We've got somebody who's right behind him as we run to the locker room at halftime to make sure he's OK," Corrigan said.
Sadistic scheduling?
Georgia State coach Ron Hunter called the Colonial Athletic Association's scheduling format "murderous" for the Panthers and lobbied for a change during Monday's teleconference.
The CAA plays 18 league games. One conference game is played in December. The other 17 are squeezed into eight weeks between Jan. 1 and the CAA tournament in March. That includes a pair of three-game weeks, one because of the league's participation in the BracketBusters weekend.
"For Georgia State, this is murderous," Hunter said. "We have no bus rides. So when some teams get home right after the game, we don't get home until the next day, and that's if the flights work out. If we're delayed, like we were the other day, we don't even get a chance to practice. For us, this is brutal."
Hunter said his players are missing classes because of the travel.
"At the end of the day, what would alleviate this is if we just move one of our games and put it in December," he said.
Tim Pearrell
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