Road unfriendly to Drexel this week

Drexel coach Bruiser Flint had to lean on one of his pet theories after each of the Dragons' last two games, which resulted in losses on the road and poor performances offensively.

"You play the game in the gym, and you talk about it later," Flint said on Thursday.

With that in mind, Drexel boarded its bus and watched a movie while heading home after going down at William and Mary, and then George Mason, over the last eight days.

The Dragons got buried by the latter of those two teams, 71-47, on Wednesday. The defeat dropped Drexel to 11-6 overall and 3-4 in the Colonial Athletic Association. The Dragons went 17 for 52 from the floor; 12 for 23 from the free-throw line; and were outrebounded, 40-31.

Then, they traveled home from Fairfax, Va., and arrived back on campus at 3 a.m.

"They don't feel it like you do," Flint said with a laugh about his players' reactions sometimes to a loss. "We put on the movie and keep it going. I've never been one to tell kids to ride for three hours in silence. That's not going to happen."

Drexel, which had a 9-2 start that included an impressive win at Louisville, now has much ground to make up if the Dragons are to secure a good seed for the CAA tournament. And with four games between Saturday and Jan. 29, Drexel will have its opportunity.

In all, the Dragons have 11 CAA games remaining. They will be the home team in six of them, with Northeastern coming in on Saturday and Georgia State on Monday.

Virginia Commonwealth and Hofstra are tied for first place in the CAA with 6-1 records.

"We've had some rough road trips, and maybe the second half things will break our way," Flint said. "We'll have a lot of games at home."

Of course, there was that George Mason tape to watch on Thursday.

"It's a great tape to watch because you can see we're playing good-enough defense to win," he said. "We just have to play better on offense. We'll hold the other team to 2-for-10 shooting, and we'll shoot 0 for 10. We're not finishing plays and making shots."

Drexel is second in the CAA in scoring defense with 61.2 points per game, and next-to-last in field-goal shooting at 42.9 percent.

After getting beat on the boards only once in its first 15 games, Drexel was outdone by both George Mason and William and Mary, which hadn't won a league game before knocking off the Dragons.

Dragons forward Samme Givens leads the CAA in rebounds with 10.4 per game, and guard Chris Fouch's 16.8 points per game rank him third in the league.