City of Basketball Love

Jerry Beach (@defiantlydutch)
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BALTIMORE—The 15th season of the Bruiser Flint Era at Drexel ended with the head coach lamenting what might have been as he and the program headed into an uncertain future.

Ninth-seeded Drexel put forth an impressive effort Saturday but never led top-seeded Hofstra, which eliminated the Dragons, 80-67, in a CAA quarterfinal at Royal Farms Arena.

Drexel finished 6-25—the worst season in the program’s Division I history—and is just 17-54 the last two years. But 16 of those losses were by seven points or fewer or in overtime, which left Flint wondering what the Dragons could have done if they weren’t besieged by injuries and unexpected transfers.

Guard Major Canady missed his second straight season, this time due to a knee injury, while guard Ahmad Fields, a transfer from Utah, played in just three games due to his own knee injury. That came on the heels of a 2014-15 season in which forward Sooren Derboghosian was limited to eight games before undergoing knee surgery, Kazembe Abif missed all of it with a torn ACL and guard Damion Lee, a viable candidate for CAA Player of the Year, suffered a broken hand that ended his campaign in mid-February.

Drexel was dealt an unrecoverable blow months later, when Lee chose to graduate and play a fifth year while pursuing a graduate degree at Louisville. 

“I think we’ve got enough talent—the talent is good enough, we’ve got to prove it and put them on the floor,” Flint said. “We haven’t been able to do that the last couple years.”

Drexel should have a pretty good core returning. Four starters—led by freshman guard Terrell Allen, who made the CAA’s all-rookie team  the ACC’s all-rookie team—are scheduled to return. Junior forward Rodney Williams recorded his third double-double of the season (20 points, 11 rebounds) Saturday and found plenty of room to operate against foul-plagued Hofstra big men Rokas Gustys and Andre Walker.

Flint’s future is decidedly less certain. He is believed to have one season left on an extension signed following Drexel’s run to the NIT quarterfinals in 2012. He is the longest-tenured coach in the CAA but has never directed the Dragons to the NCAA Tournament, though a real case could be made they were robbed of at-large bids in 2007 and 2012.

Flint was not asked about his future Saturday, when he spoke optimistically about the Dragons’ incoming recruiting class. He told CSNPhilly.com last week that he has operated with the expectation he’ll be back next season.

“Nobody’s come to me and told me my job’s in jeopardy or anything like that,” Flint told CSNPhilly. “So every day I try to win some games, keep coming to practice, keep trying to work.”

If Flint’s tenure at Drexel ended Saturday, he went out in familiarly fiery style. He stalked the sideline, chomping on his gum, stomping his feet and gyrating at the officials until he finally received a warning in the second half.

The Dragons trailed by as many as 20 and never got any closer than nine points in the second half, but Flint called a pair of timeouts in the final 94 seconds and scribbled on his dry erase clipboard as if it were a one-possession game.

His players followed suit and gave Hofstra just enough trouble so that the Pride, who only play eight players, ended the game with four starters on the floor despite the lopsided final score.

In the end, though, the Dragons’ final offensive sequence of the season summarized a frustrating five months. Rashann London missed a shot and graduating senior Kazembe Abif (18 points) grabbed the rebound and put it back. He missed his shot too, though, before getting his own rebound and laying it in.

“I don’t think we quit all season,” Flint said. “We kept fighting. That’s the one thing we’ve always talked about, about this being a boxing match. They hit hard, we gotta hit harder. We didn’t hit hard enough tonight. I think they gave it all they could all year. We fought all year, we lost a lot of close games.

“I thought we had that all season. Just couldn’t get it done.”