'Nova, Drexel trying to get home

Villanova and Drexel's basketball teams wandered off to play in the winter weather and did not come immediately home.

The Wildcats lost at Providence on Wednesday night. They stayed overnight in Rhode Island, practiced this morning at Brown University and were waiting this afternoon to take a charter flight home.

The Wildcats are home — well, the Wells Fargo Center —on Saturday, playing Georgetown at noon.

Drexel is a different story.

The Dragons, who traveled by bus, had weather issues and mechanical problems on their trip to Harrisonburg, Va., up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Drexel lost on Wednesday night to James Madison.

"Right now, we're at Tysons Corner Center," Dragons assistant athletic director for communications Mike Tuberosa said this afternoon. "The plan was to come back [after the game], but the decision was made to stay because of the weather.

"We got up early and had breakfast at 8. We made it to the Washington D.C. area and something goes wrong with the bus. They were working on the bus for an hour. We decide to walk around the mall for an hour. The bus still wasn't fixed, so we ate lunch at the mall.

"Our new bus is scheduled to arrive at 2:30. It's getting close to rush hour. We're hoping the roads aren't going to be too bad. We're hoping to get home by 5:30 or 6:30.

"The players will go to class tomorrow, we'll probably have a practice and leave for Hofstra [on Long Island].

"It has been some trip. It's not as bad for us as it is for people at home trying to shovel out their driveway but it has been something."

— Chuck Bausman