Undermanned Drexel ousted in CAA tourney opener
Freddie Wilson scores a team-high 17, but the shorthanded Dragons fall to Charleston in the first round.
BALTIMORE-- Freddie Wilson knew the result as soon as he rose up.
With 2 minutes, 48 seconds remaining on the game clock and the score tied, Wilson found himself wide open on the wing and attempted his ninth 3-pointer of the game.
It missed everything.
"As soon as I jumped I felt it," the senior guard said. "I didn't really get off my feet so I knew my legs were done."
After more than 37 minutes on the court, Wilson was gassed. And who could blame him?
Wilson led the seventh-seeded Dragons with 17 points on the night but played every minute of the game.
Down the other end after Wilson's miss, No. 10 Charleston took the lead and never gave it up, outlasting Drexel 56-48 to end Drexel's season in the first round of the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament.
After leading scorer and First-Team All-CAA guard, junior Damion Lee, went down with a broken hand following February 21's overtime loss to third-seeded Northeastern, Drexel finished the regular season with just seven healthy players and entered the conference tourney with the same.
Lee joined Major Canady, Sooren Derboghosian and Sammy Mojica with season-ending injuries
The Dragons knocked off the CAA's top dog, William & Mary last Saturday to round out the regular season. Wilson scored 24 in that game. But they couldn't find similar magic in Baltimore.
"We ran out of gas, what are you going to do? We ran out of gas," Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said. "They did a good job of sort of making us play full court pretty much the whole game, especially on offense. We just got tired."
Wilson and Allen, one of just three healthy guards on the roster, played the duration of the game. Allen scored 15 points but only 4 of them came in the second half. Freshman guard Rashann London played 37 minutes and scored six points.
For much of the night, the Cougars forced undermanned Drexel to run the length of the floor, guarding man-to-man for 90 feet.
"We didn't have any guard subs. So that makes it hard," Flint said.
Drexel led for the first 30 minutes, 29 seconds of the game before Anthony Stitt gave Charleston its first lead with a jumper from beyond the arc.
The Dragons got the lead back, 45-44, with 4 minutes, 19 seconds left when Allen sunk two free throws, his first two points of the half. But the tired group couldn't execute down the stretch. Allen's layup with 27 seconds left got the deficit down to 52-48 but the three minute scoring drought which preceded it was enough to seal the Dragons' fate.
The Cougars finished the game on a 12-2 run over the final 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
"We were trying to keep the intensity up in the second half but came up short in the end," Wilson said.
"They never quit," Flint said of his team. "We had a lot of things happen to us this year and every time we thought we had some momentum, something else happened. I give the guys a lot of credit because they just kept playing hard.
"Once [Lee] went down, we could've said, 'Alright, man. That's it.' But they didn't."
Charleston sophomore forward Canyon Barry led all scorers with 19 points, 14 of which came in the second half. Barry gave the Cougars the lead for good with two free throws with 2:20 remaining on the clock. He scored eight of Charleston's final 10 points to close the game. Joe Chealey added 11 points for the Cougars. Terrance O'Donohue tallied four points and grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds.
Drexel opened the game outscoring Charleston 14-5 as the Cougars went 6 minutes, 29 seconds without scoring until Cameron Johnson got a layup with just under 10 minutes left in the first half.
Chealey got fouled by Allen on an attempted 3-pointer with 0.1 seconds left on the first half clock. He made just one free throw, sending Drexel into the break up 29-24.
Wilson, who joined the program during last season after transferring from Seton Hall, and Derboghosian, a graduate student who came from UCLA, will be the only Dragons not back next year.
"I wasn't woe is me [afterwards]," Flint said. "If you have like five seniors then you might shed a tear. This wasn't one of those. Get ready, because we got a lot of guys coming back for the next couple of years."
"I told Freddie I appreciate what he did for us. I think as a kid he's come a long way. He played like a senior. He played like a guys whose career was ending the last couple of weeks."