City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2016-17 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 11. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season, click here.)

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Each of the last two summers, Rodney Williams went home to his hometown of Richmond, Va., to spend time with his family, recharge his batteries and go on vacation.

But senior year brings with it a new sense of responsibility, a fresher sense of urgency. And like many in his final year of college eligibility, Williams sensed that this summer needed to be different.

So he spent this offseason largely in Philadelphia, working out with fellow senior Mohamed Bah and redshirt junior Miles Overton, getting ready for a season where he has no choice but to leave it all on the court if he wants to help establish a winning tradition in Drexel basketball again.

“I told my family I wasn’t coming back this summer because I wanted to prepare to be the best I could be with this last go-around,” he told CoBL before Drexel’s first practice last Friday. “That’s what I did and actually paying off. I’m in great shape and I’m able to just work on my game and I’ve gotten a lot better.”

Okay, it wasn’t all work.

“I did go on a couple vacations,” Williams admitted with a laugh. “But (the) majority I was just here running, me and Mohamed Bah were just here the whole summer trying to make our senior year the greatest. I can definitely see that translating now, to where I’m first in sprints or my shot’s looking good because I haven’t really taken any time off.”

There’s no denying it’s been a rough first three seasons for Williams and Bah, who have played on teams that have gone a combined 33-58 (.362) overall, including a program worst 6-25 (.194) last season. That was the final year for head coach Bruiser Flint, as the administration removed him after 15 seasons at the helm and installed Zach Spiker, a 40-year-old who spent the last seven seasons at Army.

Williams, a talented 6-foot-7, 220-pound forward originally out of St. Christopher's (Va.), has steadily improved his personal numbers each year, averaging 10.5 ppg and 5.6 rpg as a junior. But he knows that even that isn't quite living up to the potential he displayed in high school, when he was a dominant two-way force and named the Prep League Player of the Year as a senior.

To help turn his team around, Williams looked to his father for inspiration.

Williams has always been one of the team’s more outspoken personalities, with a warm smile and an encouraging word for his teammates; it’s no surprise that his father -- Rodney Williams, Sr. -- is a former military officer turned preacher down in Virginia.

“I do watch him, I do take some of my characteristics and mannerisms from him,” Williams said. “I talk to him every day. He talks to me about ‘this is your year son’ and ‘this is what you need to do to galvanize your troops’

“Last year, when we got down, nobody rallied the troops, so he’s kind of been pushing that with me this whole summer and this upcoming year,” he continued. “I’m going to take some of that from him and take some from Spiker and try to be the best leader possible.”

It’s been, frankly, a depressing few years around the program overall. Injuries have devastated the roster for several seasons, costing numerous players entire seasons (or multiple seasons) and preventing the team from getting any sort of winning mindset together. Last year was certainly a new low, with Damion Lee transferring to Louisville in the offseason and a rotation that was as short as six scholarship players deep at points due to injuries struggling from the outset.

Suddenly flipping that switch from losing to winning is not so easy as just forgetting the past. Installing that mindset was priority No. 1 for the coaching staff when they started to work with the players over the summer.

Sitting in his office a few hours before the team’s first full practice of the season, Spiker was a quiet sort of focused, as if he was trying to break down the task ahead piece-by-piece.

“No one’s going to let us win games,” he said. “You have to deserve it.”

Deserving to win wasn’t something the Dragons did much of last season, giving away numerous late-game leads and other close games down the stretch.

There was a Jan. 14 loss at Hofstra, where Drexel led 56-54 with just over five minutes to play. At home to UNC-Wilmington on Jan. 24, when it was a 59-58 game at the same mark. Down 61-59 to rival Delaware with four minutes to play, and lost by nine. The last loss of the regular season, 61-59 to Northeastern, saw Drexel up 49-39 just past the 10-minute mark before the Huskies went on a 15-0 run.

“Ultimately, I feel like it brought us closer together as a team going through so much hardship,” Williams said. “Seeing the light on the other side, to know that we have another chance to make some noise...and even with the games last year, they weren’t that far off. You’re up, you’re down, you’re up and you can’t finish.

“It’s just, let’s finish this time,” he continued. “Let’s do what we have to do. We have a new leader. Let’s follow him to the best of our ability...let’s make some things happen.”