Where does a basketball net go after it gets cut down in celebration? The one Towson men’s basketball captured for clinching a conference title last week has gotten around.

Christian May had the piece he cut off wrapped around his ears for two straight days, accompanying him out of TU Arena and to the celebrations that went late into the night. It’s now resting on a dresser in his apartment. Dylan Williamson gave his chunk of the net to his mom and brother, and it hangs in their home. Coach Pat Skerry lost his. He also can’t remember what he did with a commemorative ball he was given earlier this season for becoming the program’s winningest coach — sometimes those things escape him.

“I’m like, the worst guy in the world for that kind of stuff,” said Skerry, who was named the CAA Coach of the Year for the second time Thursday. “If my wife painted our house, I might not know until two years later.”

Could his attention to detail be better? That depends.

“Well, if you’re talking about ball screen coverage, it’d be a lot different.”

Towson cut down the nets after its win Feb. 28 that clinched the outright Coastal Athletic Conference title, as is tradition for victories of that magnitude. And it happened in front of the largest crowd in the arena’s history. Signs of growth are coming on and off the court for this team.

Towson has become a model for low-major programs on how to sustain success. Skerry took over in 2011 after the Tigers experienced 15 straight losing seasons and has captured two regular-season titles in the past four years. His team will be the top seed in the CAA Tournament that begins this week in Washington. They’ve checked nearly every marker of success along their ascension.

Yet those impressive regular seasons haven’t translated to postseason success. There’s been a ceiling: the CAA Tournament semifinals, where their campaigns have ended three years in a row. The Tigers have continually fallen short of that mountaintop where the reward is a ticket to the NCAA Tournament, of which the conference only gets one guaranteed.

“All of us believe if we get to March, we might be able to get an upset in the first round,” May said. “And who knows after that.”

They’re confident this year will end differently, because it’s been different from the start.

Towson struggled with its nonconference schedule and sat at 4-8 in December. The Tigers lost at Charleston a few weeks later to drop their record to 6-9. The defeat agitated Skerry, who knew his team was capable of more. The coach chewed into his players on the bus ride back to the airport. Everyone’s tight-lipped on what precisely he said.

“Let me keep it in the most positive words,” Williamson said. “We needed to get it together.”

“Stuff you couldn’t write,” Skerry added.

He knows that berating didn’t singlehandedly turn Towson’s season around. But players do credit it to giving them an important realization that propelled a dominant run. The Tigers have lost just once since that night and ended the regular season winning 15 of their last 16 games. That stretch included a 12-game winning streak, at the time tied for the longest such streak in Division I.

That slingshotted them to the top of the CAA standings, where they’ve remained for two months. And there were more benchmarks checked off along the way.

Skerry became the program’s all-time winningest coach with his 232nd victory on Feb. 22. Towson exceeded 20 victories for a program-best fourth consecutive year. The 4,750 spectators on hand to watch their team take scissors to the TU Arena nylon was the most in the arena’s 12-year history, the most fitting way to cap this stellar season that was full of records and firsts.

“The peak was high compared to December,” said Williamson, who averages 13.8 points per game and leads the team in assists and 3-point shooting. “We’re still feeling that vibe right now.”

Towson has a pass to the CAA Tournament quarterfinals Sunday. Players hope that positive energy carries over through this extended layoff. Because for longer than most of this roster has been around, their season ended in disaster.

The Tigers haven’t reached the tournament championship game despite being one of the conference’s winningest teams over the past four years. They exited after a 1-1 showing in 2022 as the top seed, then reached the semifinals but lost to Charleston each of the past two trips. Last year, they squandered a seven-point lead with three minutes remaining.

May, Williamson and Tyler Tejada will lead Towson this week. Tejada, a 6-foot-9 forward who was named the CAA Player of the Year, paces the Tigers with 16.8 points per game.

The coach named Nendah Tarke, the team’s third-leading scorer who hasn’t missed a game this season, the group’s most improved player. Senior Tomiwa Sulaiman and reserve Mekhi Lowery, who Williamson called the “glue” players of Towson’s season, form a top six that has found a way to better close out tight games, like the one that sent them home 12 months ago.

“Some games, we would get a little frantic,” May said. “That’s something we’ve worked on. To be able to close games out and win like that is so crucial for us going into this tournament. Especially when you have to win three or four games in three days.”

Towson will lean on its past failures this time around, but memories of those losses haven’t come up this week. It’s more of an unspoken cloud that hangs over every player and coach to keep them focused on the present — the chase for a CAA championship, then to be immortalized in the NCAA Tournament.

“The other stuff, I’m sure someday when I’m not able to do this anymore I’ll think back on it then,” Skerry said. “But right now, it’s all about, how can we get somewhere we’ve never been.”

They’ll need more scissors if that happens.

Have a news tip? Contact Taylor Lyons at tlyons@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/TaylorJLyons.