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Sunday, March 15, 2009
Dancing With Drexel's CAA Stars - Dragons NCAA Bound

By Mel Greenberg
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Drexel’s stars are going dancing to the NCAA women’s basketball tournament as first-time participants.
The Dragons captured their first-ever Colonial Athletic Association regular season title Sunday with a gritty 64-58 victory over host James Madison in Harrisonburg, Va., to gain an automatic bid.
Drexel also won the regular season title for the first time since beginning CAA competition in 2001-02.
Coach Denise Dillon’s team led by as many as 16 in the second half but had to withstand a fierce rally by the Duchesses (23-9) down the stretch.
Gabriela Marginean, the CAA player of the year, finished with a game-high 26 points, including a 14-for-14 effort on the foul line.
Drexel (24-8) matched its all-time win streak set in 1989-90 by taking its 16th straight.
A day earlier, the Dragons bested their all-time season win mark set that same season when Drexel toppled perennial CAA power Old Dominion on Saturday.
The Monarchs had been 51-0 with 17 straight titles in conference play.
Richmond was the last non-ODU team to win a CAA crown in 19991 and Drexel associate head coach Amy Mallon played on that team before she transferred to St. Joseph’s.
The Dragons by winning the bid made sure they did not have to suffer the selection day agony of the men’s team two seasons ago when Bruiser Flint’s group was bypassed for an at-large bid.

-- Back later with much more -- Mel

Posted by @ 6:58 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
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Posted 11:34 PM, 03/15/2009
DrexelDragonFan
WOOOOOOOOO!!!!! They deserve it. Storming the court felt awesome.
About Mel Greenberg
Mel Greenberg covers college and pro women’s basketball for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he has worked for 38 years. Greenberg pioneered national coverage of the game, including the original Top 25 women's college poll. His knowledge has earned him nicknames such as "The Guru" and "The Godfather. He was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Other contributors

Jonathan Tannenwald is a producer with Philly.com. In addition to covering the local college scene, he spent two years as the Washington Mystics beat writer for Women's Hoops Guru. He also writes his own blog, Soft Pretzel Logic, which covers men's college basketball, football, and other sports.

Kathleen Radebaugh is a recent graduate of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. She covered women's basketball for the school's newspaper, The Hawk, and served as sports editor her sophomore year. She was also a four-year member of the varsity crew team.

Erin Semagin Damio covers the University of Connecticut and the WNBA's Connecticut Sun for the blog, and contributes other features. The Storrs, Conn., native also attends Northeastern University, where she is a coxswain on the varsity crew team.

Acacia O'Connor is based in Washington, D.C., where she reports on the Mystics and the college basketball scene in the nation's capital. A graduate of Vassar college, she played on the varsity women's basketball team and was editor of the student newspaper.

Click on any of the contributors' names above to e-mail them.

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