Bob Ford: Drexel's Flint knew his team was a long shot

Bruiser Flint told his guys ahead of time not to get too excited. The players are young, and they haven't been through this as many times as the coach.

They look at their 27-6 overall record, and a 19-game winning streak along the way, and a 25-2 record since Dec. 3, and they think there is no way the NCAA tournament committee can keep them out. Maybe the Colonial Athletic Association isn't the Big East, and maybe Drexel isn't Syracuse, but all those wins and all that work couldn't really be put aside because of one bad half against Virginia Commonwealth. Could it? Well, yes.

"Everybody was just silent," Flint said just after Sunday evening came crashing down on the Dragons. "What are you going to say?"

They watched together in the locker room as the brackets were filled by other at-large teams, which would have been equally crushed had their names not been called. It goes like this every year, and you can pick apart hundreds of numbers and reams of statistics, but the only number that mattered was 37 - the number of at-large slots on the board - and Drexel didn't get one of them.

Were the Dragons No. 38? Were they 37 until St. Bonaventure beat Xavier in the Atlantic Ten championship game? Would that make it any easier?

Drexel got the consolation of an automatic bid to the NIT for winning the CAA regular season. It was cold comfort at the moment, but Flint knows there are worse things.

"For us to be able to go to the postseason is big for a school like Drexel," Flint said. "It's big whether it's the NCAA or the NIT. We wanted to play in the other tournament, but they didn't let us."

This is familiar ground. Five years ago, Drexel played a representative schedule, won a lot of games, and gathered around the television only to be disappointed. This year, the schedule wasn't as good, but the Dragons were almost unbeatable, and they didn't get in again.

"The last time we had a legitimate argument about not being in," Flint said. "This time, I don't know about that. I know we were good enough to win games. I was disappointed last time. This time, I'm disappointed because I think they left a really good team out of the tournament."

Drexel's curse is that good teams will play the Dragons, but they damn sure won't do so at the Daskalakis Athletic Center. There is nothing to gain for those teams in that situation and a lot to lose.

So, Drexel either has to do what it did this season - play a soft schedule and hope for the best - or suffer through a meat grinder that might not come out any better. The Dragons played just two games against an opponent that finished with an RPI in the top 50 in the nation. Both were against VCU, a win at home and a loss in the conference final.

Their top nonconference opponents were Virginia and St. Joseph's, and they lost both of those. When the tournament committee looked at Drexel's season with a hard eye, they saw a 27-6 record, but they also saw 15 of those wins against teams with an RPI over 200. Welcome to the CAA.

"I can't get nobody to play me at home, and you do kids a disservice by always going on the road," Flint said. "My strength of schedule wasn't because I wanted it to be that way."

It became apparent early in the selection show that nothing much mattered but the numbers, and that would be bad news for Drexel. When VCU got no better than a 12 seed as the first region was announced, the handwriting was on the wall, and when Brigham Young and Iona were awarded one of the at-large play-in games, as 14 seeds, that sealed it.

Drexel dragged an RPI of 66 into the proceedings and a strength of schedule of 213. BYU was 46 and 104; Iona was 41 and 144. If that matchup was going to be on the 14-line, with only the dregs of automatic qualifiers below it, it was time to get ready for the NIT.

"When I saw that, I knew that was it," Flint said. "Iona? I mean, I don't want to put another team down, but . . . when I saw them I knew we weren't getting in."

How close did the committee slice it? Drexel was 4-3 against teams with RPIs in the top 100. Iona was 5-3. All the other results are also comparable - and Drexel didn't lose to Hofstra and Siena - but if it was a coin flip, it didn't fall the Dragons' way. Instead, Flint had to sit around and wait another two hours for the NIT selection show.

"You all going to stick around for that?" Flint asked the reporters who had come for the celebration or the consolation.

He knew the answer, just as he knew ahead of time not to get too excited about the first show.