IS EMBRACING THE MADNESS
His team's performance against Rutgers, however, was anything but Oscar-worthy. Granted, Flint wasn't about to complain.
In his nine seasons at the helm, Drexel has always been known as a scrappy bunch, maybe not aesthetically pleasing to the crowd, but good enough defensively to make up for offensive shortcomings - and to make every game a grind to the finish.
That was the formula the Dragons used in its first two games against Saint Joseph's and Niagara. However, they failed to execute down the stretch and ended up losing both.
It's the same formula they used against the Scarlet Knights.
This time it almost worked.
Drexel's chances of forcing overtime and upsetting Rutgers eventually hinged on the final play. But with the game hanging in the balance, Rutgers sophomore center Gregory Echenique spun inside and dropped in a graceful lefthanded finger role at the buzzer and the Scarlet Knights edged the Dragons, 58-56, at the Louis Brown Athletic Center.
"What do you want me to say? What are we going to do?" asked Flint, whose team dropped to 0-3 on the young season.
Flint couldn't do or say anything from the bench as he watched Echenique catch the ball outside the lane with 1.9 seconds left, take a dribble, turn on Yannick Formbor and convert inside with a nifty layup as time expired to send his teammates onto the court in a frenzy.
"We knew what they wanted to do because we weren't able to guard the kid all night," said Flint. "Our main priority was to not let him catch the ball deep on the block. Yannick Formbor was able to push him up the lane to catch the ball, but our kid thought that once he caught it time would expire so he never moved his feet and allowed Gregory to get the layup."
The game-winner gave Echenique a game-high 16 points and left Flint and his team to wonder what could have been. Despite shooting an abysmal 26.6 percent, the Dragons actually had a chance to force the extra session. That's what happens when you hold Rutgers leading scorer Mike Rosario to meager 13 points as part of a typically stellar defensive effort.
"It's very frustrating that we're shooting bad and we're still getting these chances," said Drexel point guard Jamie Harris, who finished with 10 points and a game-high five steals. "The best thing we can do is just take it as a learning experience and keep fighting."
That's pretty much what Drexel did all game long, rallying from a seven-point second-half deficit to tie the game at 56-56 with 12 seconds remaining after Formbor got a putback off a missed layup by Gerald Colds (team-high 12 points).
But in the end, Rutgers (2-0) was able to escape, unlike Drexel senior forward Leon Spencer, who left the game with an apparent wrist injury and, according to Flint, might miss significant time. A large price to pay for a two-point defeat. *
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