City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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Anyone involved in competitive sports knows that when faced with a golden opportunity to make a statement for your season, you’ve got to take advantage of it.

Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint recognized the importance of not letting those chances slip away, following a game where his Dragons did exactly that, watching a late lead fall through their fingertips in a 77-70 loss to the Towson Tigers Thursday night.

“Have you been watching us all year?” joked Flint, in regards to his team’s penchant for letting such chances fade.

“You’ve got to able to sustain and keep making plays, we just don’t, it’s how we’ve played all year,” he continued. “Tonight, we needed to make plays late in the game--they made tough plays late in the game, I’ll give them credit, and we didn’t. We turned it over three out of five times we had the ball. That’s how we’ve been all year.”

The Tigers entered the game winners of three of their last four, sitting just one game behind the top of the Colonial Athletic Association standings. Drexel on the other hand came in losing four straight, as well as eight of their last nine.

Naturally, when the Dragons led 62-59 with just over six minutes to play in that circumstance, one would expect Drexel to make that final push to close out the game and prove something to themselves and their competitors.

Their response was just the opposite.

In the next minute alone, Drexel allowed the Tigers to rip off a quick 9-0 run to suddenly lead 66-62. A few minutes later, Towson’s lead would sit at 70-64, and the Dragons’ chance to snatch a much-needed stunning upset was all but gone.

“Like I said, you’ve got to make plays when you need to make plays,” said Flint. “In a tight game like this, I give them credit, they made the plays they needed to make, they made some tough ones. We threw the ball away. Though we shot great foul shots today, we missed some tough ones when we needed them in the balance of the game. We missed some layups, in the balance of the game. Threw the ball away, in the balance of the game...That’s what it comes down to.”

All season, closing out games has been a struggle for Flint’s team; of their dismal 17 losses, 10 were by single digits. Granted, several others were much more convincing, but the point still stands that close games have not been Drexel’s best friend.

The key to those late-game struggles, according to Flint, has been his team’s inability to play a complete forty minutes, which he attributes to the fact that, the way he sees it, his guys just aren’t prepared to make the plays they’ve been asked to make.

“One of the things I think I have a problem with my team this year is I’m asking guys to do things that, to be honest with you, they’re not ready to do,” said Flint. “I’ve got guys who, this wasn’t supposed to be their type of responsibility, but I’ve got to play them. Honestly, we play hard, that’s why we don’t get killed. We’re just not ready to make those types of plays, and that’s why we lose games like this.”

One of the biggest points of struggle for the Dragons the whole game had to have been turnovers; Drexel committed nine in the first half and ended with a total mark of 14. Those turnovers turned into 19 Towson points, while Drexel earned just 14 points off of their ten takeaways.

The glass was also an area that hurt Drexel, as Towson rebounded 21 of the Dragons’ 24 missed shots.

One the flip side, Towson, which isn’t known for its three-point shooting ability, was able to make 56-percent of its long-distance shots. Leading the way in that effort was sophomore Byron Hawkins, who led all scorers with 23 points and went 3-of-5 from deep.

“If you’re playing (Towson), the one thing you want them to do is shoot three point shots,” Flint said. “They clobber you on the boards and do all that, but they made them tonight, they were 9-for-16, but you want them to play on the perimeter, that’s what you want them to do because their game is all inside, go get rebounds, drive it, that’s the way they play. Tonight they made the three-point shot, you’ve got to give them credit, Hawkins made some big ones when they needed it, he really did.”

Going forward, it will be important for the Dragons to continue to grow into their roles as playmakers down the stretch if they want to win games. Rodney Williams, who scored ten of his 15 points in the second half, made some key baskets to keep Drexel in it down the stretch, but his efforts--which included a couple of contortionist finishes amidst contact around the rim--weren’t enough.

None of the Dragons’ efforts were enough. That’s been the theme all season, and it will continue to be just that until Drexel finds a way to spread its bright spots across an entire 40-minute game.