In April 2011, Pat Skerry took over a program that had endured fifteen straight losing seasons. His first Towson team went 1-31 — one of the worst seasons in Division I history. Fifteen years later, Skerry is the dean of CAA coaches, a two-time conference Coach of the Year, and the architect of the most sustained success Towson basketball has ever known. The Tigers have won at least 18 games in eleven of the last fourteen seasons; in the fifty-three years before Skerry arrived, they'd done it nine times. That's not a rebuild. That's a resurrection.
The gritty Medford, Massachusetts native was a Tufts point guard nicknamed "the General" — a coach on the floor, his college coach said, the best leader he'd had in thirty-three years. Skerry spent seventeen seasons as an assistant (Pittsburgh, Providence, Rhode Island, Charleston, William & Mary, Northeastern) before getting the Towson job, and he coaches like a man who waited his turn: relentless on the recruiting trail, demanding in practice, loyal to his players. In 2022-23 he was named the Skip Prosser Man of the Year, the sport's award for coaching character and integrity.
The breakthrough came in 2021-22: 25-9, 15-3 in the CAA, the regular-season championship, an NIT berth — the program's arrival as a conference power. The peak got higher in 2024-25: a twelve-game winning streak in league play carried the Tigers to another CAA regular-season title at 22-11 and 16-2. Tyler Tejada was voted CAA Player of the Year, Nendah Tarke took Sixth Man of the Year, and Skerry earned his second CAA Coach of the Year honor. For two months, Towson was the best team in the league by a distance.
The encore was bumpier. The 2025-26 Tigers went 19-15 and 9-9 in the CAA, tying for seventh — a step back after the graduations and portal departures that follow every great mid-major season. But here's the Skerry-era context: even the "down" year was nineteen wins, and the program's floor is now higher than its historical ceiling. The Tigers stayed competitive in a deep league and kept the standard intact.
The ghosts of the program's golden age still hang in the building — literally. Towson made the NCAA tournament in 1990 and 1991 under Terry Truax, back-to-back Big South championships that remain the program's only Dances. Thirty-five years later, ending that drought is the obsession that drives everything. The Tigers play in TU Arena, the 5,200-seat jewel that opened in 2021 to replace the beloved Towson Center — one of the CAA's best venues, loud when full, and the physical home of the program's ambition.
Towson basketball under Skerry is Baltimore basketball: physical, defensive, relentless on the glass. The Tigers defend like their season depends on it — because in the CAA, it does. They're the team nobody wants to see in March: big, tough, disciplined, and utterly unafraid of a rock fight. Skerry has built the program on player development — finding overlooked recruits and turning them into all-conference players — and on culture: under his leadership, Towson has the highest Graduation Success Rate in the CAA. The pitch is simple: come to Towson, get better, win.
The Tyler Tejada arc is the program in miniature. He arrived as the CAA Rookie of the Year in 2024 — 81 percent of the team's scoring returned around him — and by 2025 he was the conference Player of the Year, the centerpiece of a 22-win champion. That's the Skerry pipeline at full power: identify the overlooked talent, develop it relentlessly, and let the results recruit the next wave. Towson doesn't win signing day. It wins junior year.
The city rivalries give every season its spice — Loyola Maryland across town, Morgan State in the Baltimore battles — and the CAA itself is a nightly grind: Charleston, UNC Wilmington, Delaware, Drexel, Hofstra. There's no easy night in this league, which is exactly why Skerry's consistency stands out.
TU Arena itself tells the story of where this program is headed. The 5,200-seat building, opened in 2021, gave Towson one of the finest mid-major venues in the country — a modern, loud, purpose-built home that signaled the university's belief in what Skerry was building. When it's full and the Tigers are defending, it's as intimidating as any gym in the CAA. The 1990 and 1991 banners hang there as both inspiration and accusation: this is what the standard looks like. Now go match it.
Year sixteen begins with the same goal as year one: win the CAA tournament and end the drought. The league is winnable every single March — that's the beauty and the cruelty of it. Skerry has built the program that should win it; now comes the part that can't be built, only seized. Three days in March, and thirty-five years of waiting on the line. In Towson, they believe it's coming. The General has earned that faith.