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Kerr drops 27 points as USciences shocks Drexel, 54-52

12/04/2014, 12:00am EST
By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Wanting another home game on its schedule but unable to find a Division I opponent willing to come to the DAC, Drexel scheduled neighbor University of the Sciences, a Division II program, somewhat last-minute this October.

In the nine prior meetings between the two programs, USciences had never visited Drexel’s on-campus arena. It’s an invitation that the Dragons aren’t likely to make again any time soon, thanks to Garret Kerr.

The Devils’ senior forward and returning D-II All-American had 27 points and hit the game-winning 3-pointer with two seconds left, leading his team to a monumental 54-52 upset over the Dragons on Thursday night.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” USciences head coach Dave Pauley quipped, referencing a famous 1897 editorial in the New York Sun. “Really, there’s two plays in basketball–Romeo and Juliet, and Give Garret the Ball.”

It was the first home loss by a Division I program to a non-Division I opponent this year in over 200 games.

Kerr, a 6-foot-4 forward, was a force to be reckoned with in the first half, when he had 14 points to lead the Devils to a six-point advantage at the break. But he didn’t get going in the second until 5:25 remained, when his 3-point played started a 9-0 run for USciences that put them up 49-44 with 3:39 to play.

Drexel recovered, however, and took a 52-51 lead with 30 seconds remaining when Mohamed Bah found Damion Lee for the go-ahead layup.

USciences never called timeout, however, and with the clock running down under five seconds, Kerr curled off a screen on the right wing, took one dribble and knocked down the biggest shot of his career.

“Coach Pauley says it’s not his philosophy to call timeout in that situation,” Kerr said. “All that we’re really looking for is to get a good look at the basket…I don’t normally shoot with that much arc, but once I let it go, it actually did feel pretty good–I was just watching it, watching it, watching it, watching it, it felt like it was in the air for 15 seconds.”

Pauley interjected–“Never a doubt, right?”

Kerr said it was the second-biggest moment of his basketball career, after winning the South Jersey Group 2 title back in his senior year at Middle Township.

He finished with 27 points on 9-of-19 shooting, adding in 10 rebounds against a Drexel front line that easily had three or four inches on him at minimum. Sho DaSilva was the only other Devil in double figures, with 15 points.

“I don’t want to say that we didn’t think we could hang with a team like that–it’s the first time in my career that we played a Division I team, preseason or regular season,” Kerr said. “I was looking forward to the challenge, I don’t necessarily think that a lot of teams in our region get enough respect that we could play with a lot of these teams.”

Kerr had some reason to be optimistic–after all, fellow area D-II Philadelphia University took down James Madison in an exhibition game last month and then gave Pitt a run for its money as well. He knew, as did the rest of his teammates, that it was far from an impossibility that they could come out with a win.

It was a lesson that Drexel failed to heed.

“They came to win the game, it was important to them, which we told our players,” Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint said.

Drexel took control out of the halftime break by clamping down on the defensive end, holding USciences without a basket for the first six-plus minutes of the second half as they went on a 17-5 run that gave the Dragons a 39-33 advantage with 12 minutes to play.

But the Devils didn’t fold against their Division I opponent.

This was, to be fair, a group of Dragons that wasn’t at its strongest.

A Drexel bench that already was short due to season-ending injuries to Major Canady (ankle) and Kazembe Abif (knee) consisted of just two freshmen–Tyshawn Myles and Sammy Mojica–plus grad student Sooren Derboghosian, with freshman big man Austin Williams (foot) and junior wing Tavon Allen (knee) also in dress clothes for this one.

But their coach wouldn’t use that excuse as a crutch.

“This might be my team,” Flint said. “Everybody’s like ‘well, you didn’t have all your guys,’ but honestly the way we’ve been going, this might be it. Guys have got to be ready to play.

“We can’t cancel the season because we’ve got four, five guys on the sideline. Guys got to be ready to play. Every day. And if you don’t, this is what’s going to happen, I don’t care who we’re playing against.”

Derboghosian, a 6-10 big man who scored a grand total of two points in his two seasons at UCLA prior to arriving in Philadelphia, set a new career high with nine points and seven rebounds in the win. That number equalled his total scoring output in his three years at the Division I level after playing two seasons at a junior college.

Lee led Drexel with 17 points, while sophomore forward Rodney Williams had 17 and 10 rebounds for his second career double-double.

Drexel gets a nine-day break before they host La Salle next Saturday at the DAC. USciences gets back to its D-II schedule with a home game against Nyack (N.Y.) on Saturday.


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