City of Basketball Love

Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)

--

Entering the final 30 seconds of regulation, it seemed like the opportunity to rebound from a disheartening end to the 2016 was within reach, as Drexel held possession with the game deadlocked.

Just two days removed from an 11-point defeat at the hands of the CAA’s worst team, the 3-11 James Madison Dukes, the Dragons had come into their conference home opener hungry to erase that memory and kick off 2017 on a high note.

As the shot clock winded down and Kurk Lee fired from the left wing, that first league win was right there in front of them.

Only that shot missed, the shot clock buzzer sounded, and the gave went into overtime. 

And Drexel never led again, as the Dragons fell 75-70 at the hands of the visiting Northeastern Huskies.

With the loss, a three-year trend of starting conference play 0-2 continued, as the Dragons fell just short in the extra period despite a 20-point, nine rebound outing from senior Rodney Williams.

In the process, Drexel’s trend of alternating two wins with two losses throughout their schedule to this point was snapped. The Dragons dropped their third consecutive contest, having recently fallen at Penn prior to the James Madison loss. 

“We’re all competitive people, and we aren’t here to get moral victories,” head coach Zach Spiker said. “That’s why this one stings, because we had the lead.”

While they shot poorly as a whole from the beyond the arc, it was their 0-for-7 first-half from three-point range that had Drexel in need of the Williams’ inside scoring presence.

The Dragons shot just 3-of-16 from long distance on the game, with their only triples coming from Major Canady, Miles Overton and Kari Jonsson. 

Overton finished with 13 points and shot 1-of-6 from downtown, while junior Austin Williams had 14, but fouled out with 2:20 to go and the game tied at 57.

“That percentage is a little bit low from what our capabilities are,” Spiker said. “I thought some of our looks weren’t as clean as they have been, and some of the guys that have made them didn’t have as much success.”

After the Dragons’ coldest, stretch – a four-minute period where they made just one of 10 shots – that allowed the Huskies to open a 22-12 lead, Drexel went on a 14-4 tear that included half of Williams’ 12 first-half points to close the half up by one.

Williams also had a key layup to complete a 5-0 Drexel run that pulled them to within one in overtime, but his efforts down low were not enough to put the Dragons on top and overcome the team’s overall poor shooting performance. 

“Rodney’s Rodney,” Spiker said. “As far as I’ve experienced him here in this season he’s been solid. I think he’s playing like a senior should play this time of year, with some urgency, and certainly some passion. I think he fought through a great deal of contact on a couple of plays and I’m proud of him for fighting and not reacting.”

It was after that basket by Williams that Northeastern was able to gain a key loose-ball offensive rebound by Max Boursiquot in the final minute which led to a jam by Alex Murphy that cushioned the Huskies late down the stretch and created key momentum in their favor. 

“That was a scramble, it was a rugby melee,” Spiker said. “I don’t think they necessarily worked harder for that 50-50 ball than we did, in my initial memory...but that was a big play.”

Drexel’s first made three-pointer – which came four minutes into the second half – also constituted the season’s first points for Canady, a redshirt junior, who put his team up 35-33 just before the second half’s first media timeout with a bomb from the top of the key. 

For Canady, the triple was the first basket he had made in over 1,000 days after being sidelined for two years with a pair of injuries – one to his ankle and one to his ACL. 

“If you talk about Major long enough, it would be tough not to get emotional,” Spiker said. “If you put yourself in his body, in his mindset, in his shoes to see what he’s experienced – adversity setback, injury setback, so many things that haven’t gone his way, coaching change, all of that – it was great to see him out there and see him compete.”

As for Spiker, while a loss like this certainly hurts, it doesn’t take away from the kind of progress the team has made.

And for a team that has already matched its win total from a year ago, progress is the main focus no matter how such a tough loss may feel. 

“Anytime you’re talking progress, you’re probably not talking result,” Spiker said. “I promise you, we’re going to talk process the whole time, not matter what the result is. As painful as it feels right now, as hard as it is...there’s a lot of progress in our program.”