Drexel ousts Bruiser Flint after 15 seasons as head basketball coach

IN A PROFESSION filled with spin, James "Bruiser" Flint apparently does not understand the concept. His news conferences after Drexel games, win or lose, were classics. There were no hidden agendas, no players immune from his tough love, no questions avoided. In fact, if the right question was not asked, Flint would find a way to explain concepts that the questioners never considered.

I will miss those times. And I will miss the moments after the press conferences when Bruiser would linger to talk about what was going on in the city and how his great friend John Calipari was complaining that Kentucky was "only" 26-2. I get that it is hard to survive 6-25 after 11-19 and 13-18 two seasons before that. Still, it is never easy when an esteemed member of this tight-knit city basketball community loses his job, as Flint did Monday.

"Fifteen years is a long time," said Flint, ever the realist.

He also understood the bottom line. He saw the end coming for a few weeks.

"It wasn't just this year,'' he said. "We were bad the year before. That was it right there. The people there were great to me. I said thanks, they said thanks.''

Philly through and through from Episcopal Academy to Saint Joseph's, to a season at Coppin State with Fang Mitchell, then Calipari's right-hand man when UMass went from nowhere to the 1996 Final Four and five seasons as the UMass head coach before coming home to coach Drexel in 2001, Flint has been a college coach since he graduated from St. Joe's in 1987, almost 30 years now.

Over 15 seasons, his Drexel teams were known for defense, toughness and terrible luck with injuries. When Flint arrived, the Dragons were moving from the American East to the Colonial Athletic Association. During his tenure, the CAA sent two teams to the Final Four (George Mason and VCU). It was great for the league, terrible for its other coaches when athletic directors began to wonder how "they'' were doing it.

Flint often did it with mirrors as the Drexel basketball facilities are in a dead heat with La Salle's for fifth in the city and nowhere near what most of its CAA competitors have. If Flint ever complained about that, I never heard it.

His best records came in 2006-07, when the Dragons (23-9) won road games against Villanova, Syracuse, Temple and Saint Joseph's, and 2011-12 when the Dragons (29-7) were a machine down the stretch of the regular season before making a gallant comeback in the CAA championship and losing what was essentially a road game against VCU in Richmond, Va.

I think Flint's best team was going to be in 2013-14. Chris Fouch, back after missing all but three games the previous season, Frantz Massenat, Damion Lee and friends got off to a huge lead against Arizona in the preseason NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. They were still leading when Lee went down with an ACL injury that cost him the rest of the season. With those three playing, I think that was a definite NCAA team. Drexel finished 16-14.

"We talk about that all the time," Flint said. "We might have been a little young, but we had enough guys. We had some depth, but it fell apart.''

When I asked Flint if he ever had any luck, he laughed out loud and said: "I thought that for a while. That's one of the reasons I'm not the coach.'' There were games when Drexel had more coaches on the bench than substitutes.

When Lee, after getting hurt again at the end of last season, decided to use the graduate-transfer rule to play his final season at Louisville, the Dragons' 2015-16 season was doomed. And so was Flint.

Hard to pin down a reason, but Flint's teams had little success in the CAA Tournament, even with players that were good enough to win it, or at least go a long way.

Still, when I think of Flint's teams, I remember relentless overachievers like Frank Elegar, Bashir Mason and Samme Givens. Offenses were typically not pretty but defense was a constant. The Dragons were going to make life very difficult for whoever they were playing.

Flint holds the Drexel record for wins, but now another coach will get a chance. Doug Overton is a logical name after a Big 5 Hall of Fame career at La Salle, a long NBA career and time as a college and NBA assistant. Overton's son Miles, a St. Joe's Prep grad and transfer from Wake Forest, sat out this season at Drexel and will be eligible in November.

Time will tell on the next coach. Flint's time at Drexel is up, but he will almost certainly be staying around the game.

"I got a lot of people calling me about doing certain things, maybe take a year off, think about doing some TV, go get a job," Flint said. "I have some time. I'll see what I want to do. I think I'll have some options."

@DickJerardi