City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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A combined 163 points between St. Joseph’s and Drexel was not something many people were expecting when the two city teams opened their seasons Friday night at Hagan Arena.

Phil Martelli definitely did not see it coming.

“I would have looked at this game thinking 82 (points) would be the total for the two teams,” Martelli said after his Hawks held on for an 82-81 victory.

Yes, it was a one-point game, but only because of a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from Drexel’s Rashann London. The Hawks led the entire way, and it was never even a one-posession contest until after the buzzer sounded. But it was a much different game than the 52-49 affair the teams had a year ago.

DeAndre Bembry, naturally, led the Hawks with a game-high 23 points and got 11 of them at the foul line. But St. Joe’s had a balanced scoring effort with double-digit outputs from freshman forward Oliva Pierfrancesco, Aaron Brown and Isaiah Miles, who had a double-double with 13 points and 10 boards.

The season-opener was a quirky one both on the scoreboard and on the court, and it had two main storylines: There were a ton of fouls and Drexel would not go away thanks mainly to the play of Terrell and Tavon Allen.

Whistles, whistles, whistles

Let’s start with the fouls. There were 52 of them – 31 coming in the first half – and a total of 67 free throws.

With new NCAA rules on stricter foul calls, both Bruiser Flint and Martelli said they were expecting the game to be called like it was. But, especially in the first half, it was tough to view for spectators.

“It’s going to be hard to watch,” Martelli said. “But they have to clean it up, they have to make it less physical. That’s what they say it’s going to be, and if it continues all year, then that’s great."

Not all of the fouls whistled were personal, however. About 10 minutes into the game, after Drexel picked up its ninth team foul, Flint got hit with a technical for giving the ref an earful about it.

The calls started to even out after Flint got T’d up, but he called it a “bogus technical” and said he has done “way, way, way, way” worse and not gotten whistled in the past. The technical was all part of a lousy start for Drexel. The Hawks went up 15-2 to start the game and stretched their lead to as big as 15 in the first half.

“Our start killed us,” Flint said. “We fouled a lot, they called it. I got a technical, we had seven fouls in a row on us, I said ‘Did you think I’d say nothing to you?’ This is college basketball. If you call seven straight against a team, you don’t think a coach is going to say something?”

It got interesting late, but the game itself took about two hours and 20 minutes due to all the whistles. Unlike the scoring output, that was something Martelli foresaw coming into the game.

“What they have to do, in my opinion is, they have to stay the course,” Martelli said. “…To me, in the first half, they started wandering all over the place because they started looking at the numbers and they heard Bru and they know. So they make me do the same thing. So stay the course, and don’t make things up. …This is coming. I’ve told people. Those two-hour games for TV? Forget about it. I don’t know what happened with other games tonight on TV, but that’s exactly what I thought. This is what you have to be: You have to be good on foul shooting and you got to be a zone defensive team for some point in the game.”

T. Allen is important for Drexel

Drexel’s top two scorers were Tavon Allen and freshman point guard Terrell Allen, both playing in some interesting circumstances.

For Tavon, the Dragon’s leading returning scorer, he was coming off an ankle injury that has limited much of his preseason practice and was not in the starting lineup. It didn’t seem to bother him much as he went out and scored a team-best 20 points in 24 minutes.

“I haven’t been able to practice much, I haven’t been able to scrimmage,” Tavon said. “So I had to get my legs under me. At first, my legs weren’t really there, but I felt good in the second half.”

For Terrell, he was making his first collegiate start as a point guard on the road against a city rival. He didn’t let any of that bother him as he scored 18 points on 7-of-13 shooting and added four assists.

Terrell also got to play a team-high 36 minutes as Major Canady was out with an undisclosed injury. But Flint noted he earned the starting job either way.

“He’s been playing like that the whole time,” Flint said of Terrell. “He played like that in scrimmages. He still has a lot to learn, don’t go anointing his ass, but he played well. He’s been real consistent.”