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Strong second half lifts Drexel over Old Dominion

The Old Dominion basketball team came out of the locker room shooting blanks in the second half Thursday night at the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

The Old Dominion basketball team came out of the locker room shooting blanks in the second half Thursday night at the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

Drexel did not.

The Dragons dominated the visitors in the last 20 minutes of a 62-57 Colonial Athletic Association victory.

Drexel took control of the game when it limited Old Dominion to 1-for-13 shooting to start the second half. The Monarchs scored only three points during the first 12-plus minutes, and the Dragons had a 47-35 lead with a little more than eight minutes remaining.

Drexel snapped a six-game losing streak against the Monarchs, although the visitors did not go quietly.

"It was a boxing match tonight," said Drexel coach Bruiser Flint, whose team shot 46.2 percent in the second half and outrebounded Old Dominion, 47-37. "We didn't take up the physical battle in the first half. They manhandled us. We knew the game was going to be a slugfest; both teams play that way."

Drexel received a game-high 16 points from guard Chris Fouch, while forward Daryl McCoy finished with 11 points and 16 rebounds. Forward Samme Givens and guard Gerald Colds scored 12 points each for the Dragons.

Old Dominion was led by guards Kent Bazemore (13 points) and Ben Finney (12), along with forward Keyon Carter (13).

Drexel improved to 11-4 overall and 3-2 in the CAA. Old Dominion, which had won seven of its previous eight games against Drexel, fell to 12-4 and 3-2.

"When you don't make shots, that's a lot of misses for the other team to corral," said Old Dominion coach Blaine Taylor, whose team came up short on the boards for the first time this season.

Flint was back on the bench. He served a one-game suspension Saturday after being ejected from his team's loss at Virginia Commonwealth.

After trailing by eight points at intermission, Drexel evened the score at 34 with less than 15 minutes to go on consecutive three-point plays by McCoy and Givens. When reserve guard Fouch nailed a trey from the left wing, then another from the left corner, the Dragons were leading, 40-34, with 11 minutes, 5 seconds left.

The game did not start out in a promising way for Drexel.

Givens, who went in as the CAA's leading rebounder at 10.9 per game, picked up a foul on the first possession. With only 3:02 gone, Drexel's second-leading scorer was whistled a second time and replaced by freshman Dartaye Ruffin.

Before six minutes had expired, Old Dominion was up by 15-6.

Fouch, the Dragons' leading scorer, entered the game at the 14:53 mark and hit a three-pointer from the top of the key the first time he touched the ball to cut Drexel's deficit to 17-11.

Later in the half, Old Dominion went on a 6-0 run that included a dunk by Chris Cooper, a jumper from afar by Finney, and then his tip-in off an alley-oop pass as the Monarchs went ahead by 30-18.

That set the stage for Drexel's second-half surge.

"It's definitely a big win for us at this point in the season, because we're trying to figure out how good we can be," Colds said.