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Coach Bruiser Flint says Drexel is the best basketball team in the city

Drexel coach Bruiser Flint is a habitual needler, world-class. His players, writers, anybody else who walks by. He'll get on you and punctuate his point with a laugh. He should charge for the service.

"I think we're the best team in Philly. I think we can beat anybody in the city," Bruiser Flint said. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)
"I think we're the best team in Philly. I think we can beat anybody in the city," Bruiser Flint said. (Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)Read more

Drexel coach Bruiser Flint is a habitual needler, world-class. His players, writers, anybody else who walks by. He'll get on you and punctuate his point with a laugh. He should charge for the service.

"Ask him about his turnovers," Flint said when a writer grabbed Dragons point guard Frantz Massenat after Wednesday's Georgia State game, Drexel's eighth straight trip to the win column.

That's the way Flint usually talks about his team, getting straight to the deficiencies. Except Flint believes the rest of us are missing the big picture. His team, 16-5 going into Saturday's game against Delaware at the Daskalakis Athletic Center, is playing some ball. No team has scored 60 points against Drexel since December. Georgia State managed just one point in the first 10 minutes of the second half. How can they be ranked fourth in the city, as The Inquirer had the Dragons this week?

Pressed afterward, Flint said, "Actually, I think we're the best team in Philly. I think we can beat anybody in the city. And I'm not saying that because you all are sitting here. I think we can do it."

Here's the thing people are missing, he said later. Drexel, always the little brother in the perception of the Big Five-minded, isn't so little.

"We're big," Flint said.

What he means is that he has three starting guards who all go at least 6-foot-4, plus a 6-9 inside player who usually gets subbed by a 6-8 player. Only senior Samme Givens is undersize as a 6-5 power forward, and opposing teams all know Givens is a handful inside, the savviest of vets.

It's true that having guards that size is a game-changer when they are committed to defense, as Drexel's have been. The average height of Drexel's starting five is a shade under 6-6, a shade taller or smaller than Villanova, depending on which lineup 'Nova starts. La Salle averages a little under 6-4. Temple goes just over 6-5. St. Joseph is 6-5 even.

You don't judge teams by their height, but Flint's larger point is that we don't know what we're looking at with his team.

"I get the whole Drexel-Philly thing," Flint said at the news conference. "We've always had to make everybody believe. Nobody thinks we should be as good as those other teams in the city. I get that. But I get [angry] because I don't think people been watching. Our conference is just as good as the Atlantic Ten. In order for us to be a good team in the CAA, then we should be able to beat the other teams in the city. And that's the thing that probably [makes me angry] more than anything else. . . .

"I'm like, 'Yo, what are you looking at?' "

Flint knows one of the problems is that other city teams don't (as in won't) play the Dragons as much as each other and rarely venture into the DAC. Drexel's only city game this year was at St. Joe's in late November, and the Hawks rolled, 62-49. Flint pointed out that Creighton, ranked No. 19 at the time, also got rolled there 10 days later, and the same thing happened to Villanova. Nobody was beating St. Joe's at home during that stretch, he said.

But he said there was a reason VCU and George Mason have made it all the way to the Final Four from the Colonial Athletic Association in the last five years: that CAA play is physical, preparing teams for postseason play. And the Dragons are undefeated at the DAC this season.

"It's just fuel for the fire a little bit," said Flint, a former St. Joe's point guard and a former A-10 head coach at Massachusetts. "I like that. And I respect all the Philly schools, y'all know that. They've got great coaches, they've got good players. I know that. It is what it is. And I get it."

He said Maalik Wayns is the standout player in the city but added that Villanova, 3-6 in the Big East and 10-11 overall, would have trouble with his team this season. He said Massenat is a first-team all-city talent and Damion Lee is the best freshman in the city. Since Drexel scrimmaged Temple before the season, he said he knows the Dragons can match up and play with the Owls.

Personally, I think Temple is No. 1 in the city right now - the Owls are the only city team currently considered in the NCAA field as an at-large - and the rest is a jumble, changing week to week. I told Flint the game I'd really like to see right now is Drexel vs. 15-6 La Salle.

"We were with those guys at the airport - too small," said the top-ranked needler.