City of Basketball Love

Adam Hermann (@AdamWHermann)
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Bruiser Flint watched with grim bemusement as a fifth straight Drexel 3-pointer sailed wide.

He turned around and walked slowly past his bench as William & Mary’s offense galloped down the floor. Twenty-two seconds later, Terry Tarpey stroked a 3-pointer of his own for the Tribe. The deficit was growing.

Flint’s Dragons had squandered an early seven-point lead, built on the backs of shots from in close, by relocating their efforts to the perimeter. Out beyond the arc, despite seeing open shots, his guards couldn’t find a rhythm.

Tarpey and Daniel Dixon jumped at the opportunity against a suddenly stagnant Drexel offense, leading William & Mary on a 21-0 run that set the tone for the Tribe’s 72-63 win over Drexel Thursday night at the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

William & Mary head coach Tony Shaver said after the game he watched what was happening in the first eight-and-a-half minutes of the game, and knew something needed to change.

Drexel’s Kazembe Abif was elbowing his way into the paint, working on his man in one-on-one situations in the post, and winning each time. Abif hit his first three shots, and had six points in less than six minutes.

So, at the second media timeout of the evening, his team trailing 16-9 and struggling for answers on the defensive end, Shaver switched things up.

“They had a lot of energy and played really well early,” Shaver said of a Drexel team which hit seven of its first 10 field goals. “I thought they were scoring too easily on us

We went to a little bit of a different zone defense there, and it really turned the tide for us. I think they missed maybe eight straight shots, and we rebounded, and then were able to get our transition game going, which was very important for us. That was a really key point.”

Out of the break, Drexel missed its next seven shots, all jump shots, as William & Mary went on a tear, hitting eight of 10 shots in a five-minute stretch, including four threes.

The jump shots the Dragons missed, including the one that led to Tarpey’s bucket, were open looks. Shaver’s defense focused on clogging the lanes, scooping up available offensive rebounds and pushing Abif to mid-range jump shots.

The Tribe dared Drexel to shoot from deep, and Flint’s team took what it was given, but couldn’t convert.

“We missed a lot of shots,” Flint said afterwards, “and we threw the ball to them. That was it. We missed a lot of open ones, and we threw it to them. That’s when they went on their run. And we threw it to them for layups, not just threw it to them. For layups.”

The Dragons only turned the ball over once during William & Mary’s avalanche of a run, but the Tribe finished with 21 points off of 12 Drexel turnovers, a damaging number on a night when Shaver’s team couldn’t seem to miss. Tarpey poured in 21 points by hitting eight of his first 10 shots of the night, and Daniel Dixon added 19 points, including three from downtown.

As Drexel’s misses piled up, the Tribe capitalized by pushing in transition. Flint’s players hung their heads in sullen disbelief and failed to get back in time.

And William & Mary’s offense, replete with weapons, is not an offense you want to let run.

“People talk about us as a Princeton-style offense, but we love to run,” Shaver said, grinning. “We’re good in transition, very good in transition.”

The defeat marked Drexel’s twelfth loss of the season, the worst start of Flint’s 15-year tenure with the Dragons.

Unlike the last three seasons, in which season-ending injuries sidelined all-conference caliber players, his team has simply failed to produce on an almost nightly basis this season.

Flint was asked after the game if he could have envisioned his team sitting at 2-12 in early January, and he responded at first with a curt, “Nah.”

He paused, letting the question float around the media room for a handful of seconds.

“No, not at all,” he continued. “Every game is we get down, we fight back. It’s not like you’re getting hammered every night. You see what you’re doing. You’ve had a lot of games where you got down, most of it is self-inflicted wounds, and we lose.

“I’ve got to saying, we played good enough to lose. That’s the thing I’ve been telling everybody. We play good enough to lose.”

Thursday night, it was more of the same from Flint’s Dragons. They return to action at home Saturday against visiting College of Charleston.