Towson men’s basketball was in need of a minor shakeup.
After going 5-8 in nonconference play, the Tigers split a two-game road trip to begin CAA play. In a 77-69 loss at Charleston, redshirt senior guard Nendah Tarke played just 14 minutes despite starting and picking up just two fouls. He also hadn’t exceeded 22 minutes in any of his previous three starts despite not being in foul trouble.
Towson head coach Pat Skerry opted to move Tarke to the bench after that, eventually settling on a starting lineup of point guard Dylan Williamson, wings Christian May and Tyler Tejada, forward Tomiwa Sulaiman and undersized center Messiah Jones. Tarke’s minutes immediately picked back up, settling in as a scorer off the bench for a team that won the outright CAA regular-season title with a 16-2 mark in league play.
“I’ve always been a team-first guy,” Tarke said. “We started winning when it happened. I don’t necessarily think it was a demotion. I didn’t view it that way. I just viewed it as we needed a change. We’re losing all these games, it’s like, ‘Let’s just try something different.’ I feel like as the older guy I can kind of take that a little bit. Embrace it and just come in and be aggressive. At the end of the day, it’s a team sport, so if the team’s doing better with me on the bench, then that’s how we’re going to roll.”
Tarke is averaging 11.3 points per game on 38.5 percent shooting from the field and 30.4 percent shooting from 3-point range while adding 4.6 rebounds and 1.4 assists per contest. Most recently, the 6-foot-4, 210-pound guard scored 20 points on 7 of 9 shooting in a 75-72 win against Hampton to close out the regular season.
Tarke has come off the bench in 16 of his 31 outings, playing with a blend of calmness and physical, downhill drives. He was named CAA Sixth Man of the Year on March 6.
“Sometimes you think he’s half asleep and then you look up and he’s got 16 and 8,” Skerry said.
A native of Gaithersburg and graduate of Bullis School, Tarke played three seasons at Coppin State from 2020-2023. He averaged 12.2 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 84 games, earning MEAC Rookie of the Year honors in 2020-21 and MEAC All-Defensive Team honors the following two seasons.
Tarke moved on from Coppin when former head coach Juan Dixon was let go. He committed to Nicholls State in June 2023 but flipped to Towson a couple of months later. Now, he has a chance to cap off a five-year college career and a two-year stint at Towson with a CAA championship and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Tarke’s 2021-22 Coppin team lost in the MEAC finals to Norfolk State, 72-57. Time to make amends.
“It would mean a lot because at Coppin we made it to the finals and lost, so I know what it feels like to go day by day, win-win-win and then … get to the finals and lose,” Tarke said. “Not a good feeling, so having an opportunity to have these three games — obviously take them one at a time, but we’ve got to leave it all out there because this is my last year, [the seniors’] last year. We want to make history, and it’s going to take everybody.”
Top-seeded Towson has a double bye to the quarterfinals in the CAA tournament, which takes place at CareFirst Arena in D.C. from March 7-11. The Tigers will take the court on March 9 at noon, facing the winner of the Drexel-Elon game from a day prior. Towson has never made it to a CAA tournament final and hasn’t earned an NCAA Tournament bid since 1991.
The Tigers are hoping for a little help in D.C. The team drew 4,750 and 4,705 fans in its final two regular-season games at TU Arena, creating big-time atmospheres. Now the players want to bring that south.
“I just hope we have that same support going into D.C.,” Sulaiman said. “We appreciate you guys a lot. Pull up to D.C. You guys bring the energy, I’m going to match whatever energy you guys got and more.”
“We hate going to D.C. and seeing Charleston and UNCW fans pack it out when we’re close,” senior guard Rahdir Hicks said. “Let’s pack it out and show them.”
Towson took every team’s best shot in conference play, particularly down the stretch as the environments at TU Arena got better and better. That won’t change as the top seed in D.C. regardless of what teams stand in the way of a title.
“That’s the challenge as a coach, can you do a good enough job to have your guys on high alert,” Skerry said. “Someone said, ‘Do you want to play a team you beat twice or once?’ Well, we’re 16-2, so there’s a good chance we’re going to play someone we beat. Hopefully we flush that out and we just have a good game plan and we execute.”
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