City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
––

(Ed. Note: This article is part of our 2023-24 season coverage, which will run for the six weeks preceding the first official games of the year on Nov. 6. To access all of our high school and college preview content for this season click here.)

~~~

Last year, Drexel’s offense was complicated, but ultimately simple.

Step 1: get the ball to Keishana Washington. Step 2: let her go to work.

That was the luxury of having the nation’s third-leading scorer (27.7 ppg) in the backcourt, the 5-foot-7 Canadian guard capable of getting her shot off in any situation, almost never coming off the court. 

That was no problem for Hetta Saatman. A 6-2 forward from Lancaster and a first-year starter last season, she knew exactly what her job was.

“We had a great screening relationship, is what my coaches always called it,” she said. “Just knowing my job was [that] I was going to get her the best shot I could get for her, and if I get something along the way, cool.”

But now Washington and her 2,363 career points — second all-time in Drexel women’s history — are gone, off playing professionally in Poland. And that’s not all. The team’s starting point guard Maura Hendrixon (third nationally with 7.8 apg) also graduated, a significant loss on her own; second-leading scorer Kylie Lavelle (11.1 ppg, 3.7 rpg), a talented 6-1 freshman forward, transferred to Penn State. 

That’s more than two-thirds of Drexel’s scoring and right about half of its minutes off a team that went 21-10 (13-5 CAA) last year. For the program to surpass the 20-win mark for the seventh season in a row — the shortened COVID season not included — they’ll need a solid supporting cast to step up into starting roles, helped out by a couple impact newcomers.

Dragons head coach Amy Mallon’s not worried. She’s seen the program go through a similar situation just a few years before.

The fourth-year head coach was an assistant when the program won 22 games in 2016-17 and graduated its top three scorers, led by 1,600-point scorer Sarah Curran. The following year, a group led by sophomore Bailey Greenburg and senior Kelsi Lidge, role players the year before, went 27-8 overall, winning the CAA regular-season title with a 16-2 league record before losing to Elon in the league championship.

Saatman, who averaged 5.7 ppg and 3.7 rpg in 26.1 mpg last year in her best collegiate season yet, is one of the players in line for a more significant role offensively. 

But that’s not why the Linden Hall grad, part of the last class able to take advantage of the COVID year, originally decided to extend her college career. With a goal to be a college coach following her playing years, it was her ability to relate to her teammates that was why Mallon wanted her to stay at Drexel as long as she could.

“When Amy originally had asked me back, her biggest thing was, yeah we want you on the floor, but also bringing that leadership piece,” Saatman said, “and that’s something that I’ve been striving to do my best job at. Thankfully it kind of comes a little bit naturally for me, so I’m thankful for that, but being intentional with that every day, and being the leader for my teammates on and off the court has been my biggest focus for my fifth year and I want to end the fifth year feeling like I did my best job of that.”

Sophomore point guard Grace O’Neill, a 5-7 guard from Archbishop Carroll who averaged 7.0 and a team-high 5.1 rpg in a strong debut season, joins Saatman as returning starters. That pair will be helped significantly by the arrivals of Amaris Baker and Brooke Mullin. Baker, a 5-7 guard, averaged 27.0 ppg at Harcum College last year, the Cardinal O’Hara alum’s output best in all Division II junior colleges. Mullin, a 5-9 Neshaminy grad, comes to Drexel after four years at Villanova, where she averaged 3.7 ppg, 2.4 rpg and 2.2 apg. 

Those four are penciled into the starting lineup; the rest of the rotation has a number of potential options. No matter who’s on the floor for the Dragons this year, they’re all going to have to be more offensive-minded. No more Hendrixson to set the tone, no more Washington to get buckets.

“This year it’s like, we’re running the same sets we ran with Kei, but [instead of] knowing we’re going to get her the ball in this situation, it’s more like, let’s read the defense,” Saatman said. “We’re not going to force it — we maybe would have last year, because we know (Washington) can create off the dribble wherever. We’re going to take what’s open, and those people are ready.”

Senior wing Chloe Hodges (5.0 ppg), junior forward Jasmine Valentine (4.1 ppg, 4.4 rpg) and senior wing Erin Sweeney (1.3 ppg) all return. Junior Momo LaClair, a 5-10 guard from New York, is healthy after a couple injury-filled years, and both Saatman and Mallon singled her out as someone who could jump right into the mix. 

“I feel like we’ve got a group that’s inexperienced in the sense of [being] on the floor, but I think they’re really excited to get on the floor and actually prove that they can do the things we do at Drexel from a basketball standpoint,” Mallon said. 

“I tell them your roles are always evolving here,” she added. “We have players returning who have worked hard, they’ve been (here for) the last three years, last two years, and they’ve been part of teams that have done really well. So they know what it takes. Now they have to do it.”