City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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Sometimes, a team can only take so many devastating close losses before things to start to get ugly. Take Drexel, for instance, which started the season 1-8, and dropped single-digit losses to St. Joesph’s, High Point, and Monmouth in their opening week, and then Alaska-Anchorage and San Diego during a trip to Alaska over Thanksgiving break.

That’s five --count ‘em, five-- losses by less than ten points, that the Dragons let slip through their finger-tips. Turn a few of those around, and that 1-8 record looks significantly more appealing.

Tuesday night, it looked as though Drexel was in danger of dropping another heart-breaker with the Penn Quakers winding down the clock to their final shot in a tie game. This time, the Dragons survived regulation, as an Antonio Woods driving attempt rolled off the rim and Sammy Mojica came down with it to the sound of the buzzer.

Five minutes later, the Dragons were in a similar position after Tavon Allen, who paced Drexel with 17 points, traveled on an inbound following two Penn free throws, with just 19 seconds left in overtime up by a point.

Then Woods, who was Penn’s leading scorer with 17 points, failed to convert once again, this time on a physically contested floater, and Drexel walked out of the Daskalakis Athletic Center with its first win in almost a month, 53-52.

For once, Drexel was on the winning end of a hard-fought, closely contested game.  

When head coach Bruiser Flint’s team emerged from the low-scoring affair with a much-needed victory over its city rival in what has become known as “The Battle of 33rd Street,” he pointed to two specific aspects that sealed the deal: Defense and free throws.

“They made their foul shots, that’s what they did,” Flint said. “We made foul shots when we needed them. I thought we played great defense all game, we came up with stops, but that was the difference, that we made foul shots. We made some mistakes down the stretch, but we made some foul shots when we need them.”

The Dragons were just 15-of-23 from the stripe overall, but held a percent 6-of-6 mark in overtime; six of their nine overtime points were accounted for by free throws. Had just one of those been missed, this could have been a much different game. They came into the night shooting 66 percent from the charity stripe as a team.

As Flint attested to, the Drexel defense was also clutch in both last-second situations, keeping Woods away from the basket with physicality and forcing him into tough shots.

“We needed it,” Flint said of his defense’s clutch stops against Woods. “Like I said, I thought we played great defense the entire game. The last few games we’ve been holding every team under 40 percent. I thought our defense was good pretty much through the whole game.”

While Drexel’s win was meaningful because it ended their bitter losing streak, Tuesday night’s showdown also ended a streak of three years without a game between Penn and Drexel.

Penn hadn’t come to the DAC to play Drexel since 2009, and this was only the second time the Quakers had in school history.

Drexel, after this victory, has now won six in a row over the Quakers.

“I’m just glad to be playing the game,” Flint said. “I’ve been asked a million times about the Penn game. Not only that we’re playing it, it was easy to do this. They called us, ‘let’s play again,’ I said, ‘you don’t mind coming to the DAC?’ And they said, ‘No problem.’ We hadn’t played them since 2012, so we’re happy to get the rivalry back together, I’m happy they came to the DAC.”

Other than the late free-throw shooting, rebounding was also a key for the Dragons, who were outscored 34-12 in the paint but were able to respond with a 16-4 second-chance points advantage off of 45 rebounds. Penn had 36 boards on the night.

Kazembe Abif’s performance on the glass was a critical part of that advantage. The senior had a double-double--the fourth in his career--with 13 points and a career-high 14 rebounds.

Mohammed Bah also snatched eight rebounds. He and Abif accounted for about half of the team’s rebounding mark on the night.

“Honestly it kept us in the game, (Abif) and (Bah) rebounded the ball, kept us alive, said Flint.

“They gave us a chance to miss again,” continued Flint in a half-joking manner, referencing his team’s poor shooting night.

The Dragons shot just 29 percent on the game, but held Penn to an unimpressive 38 percent mark. The Quakers also went just 3-of-18 from long distance, while Drexel made twice as many threes with the same amount of attempts.

That inability to knock down shots kept Drexel from building a large lead while Penn spent eight minutes in the middle of the second half without a single point.

“I always say you’ve got to reward good defense with good offense,” Flint said. “We didn’t do that, but at least we won [...] We were never able to pull away from them because we just couldn’t score, we just couldn’t make any baskets, but I thought throughout the entire game we played really good D.”