Drexel women blown out of CAA tournament in semifinals with 76-54 loss to William & Mary

WASHINGTON — A year after being the only Big 5 team to make either NCAA Tournament, the Drexel women’s basketball team’s dreams of a second straight Coastal Athletic Association title went up in smoke on Saturday.

And it was a bonfire’s worth.

William & Mary blew the Dragons out of CareFirst Arena, hitting 12 three-pointers and putting the clamps down defensively in a 76-54 rout. A day after upsetting No. 1 seed North Carolina A&T, the Tribe (14-18) looked nothing like their No. 9 seed — the first such seed to make a CAA women’s semifinal — in ousting the fourth-seeded Dragons (17-13).

“We just did not put the ball in the basket the way we wanted to, and for us, the result was not what we wanted,” Drexel coach Amy Mallon said. “But I’m so proud of my team to be in this position in this year, especially with six newcomers on the team.”

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Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only way the Dragons didn’t help themselves. They won the first quarter, 19-18, but the second quarter started disastrously: five turnovers, five fouls, and a 14-2 William & Mary run in the first 7 minutes.

The rest of the period went better, with Drexel mounting an 8-0 swing. But it was still 34-29 Tribe at halftime, with Dragons star Amaris Baker limited to just 3-for-7 shooting — including 0-for-2 in the second quarter. Deja Evans was the top scorer in the half with 12 points. She’d finish with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Baker scored a team-high 20 points.

The rest of the Dragons who entered the game shot a combined 6-for-34, including Cara McCormack’s 3-for-10 performance, a day after she scored 26 in the quarterfinal win over Monmouth. She had nine points Saturday.

“Obviously, Cara had a great game yesterday, but we needed other people to step up today,” Mallon said. “I always look at it [as] if we didn’t get good looks, then I feel like, hey, we didn’t do our job. But I felt like when you’re getting good looks and not knocking them down, at this point in the year, you’re not going to win games, and we certainly didn’t hit the ones we needed to today.”

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Erin Dickerson Davis, William & Mary’s charismatic coach, said she prioritized guarding McCormack after her big game Friday.

“Cara McCormack just has that, like, grit, grindiness — it’s incredible, that heart and that soul and that passion,” Davis said of the fifth-year senior who transferred from Holy Cross for this season. “She was our main [focus that] we need to get our best defender on her, which then allowed Baker to score a little bit more. We were fine with that, as long as it was working.”

It definitely worked. William & Mary started the third quarter as strongly as the second, and Drexel started just as poorly. The Tribe pushed their lead to 49-32 with 3:18 on the clock before Mallon finally called a timeout with her team shooting 2-for-13 in the period.

That did not stop the slide, as William & Mary’s Bella Nascimento hit her third three-pointer of the day. Not even Evans getting to the free-throw line after a shooting foul helped, as she missed both attempts. Only when Baker scored the last five points of the quarter did the drought finally end, but it was 56-39 Tribe by then.

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Nascimento led William & Mary with 20 points. The Tribe now will face No. 3 seed Campbell, an 80-59 winner over No. 2 Charleston, in Sunday’s final (2 p.m., CBS Sports Network).

With all 12 Big 5 teams out of their conference tournaments, the only one with any hope is the St. Joseph’s women. They have a tiny chance at an at-large bid, but nothing more. Drexel was the team with the best shot of saving the Big 5 from its first-ever 0-for-12 appearance in March Madness. Now the Dragons are done, and that ugly milestone is drawing close.

“We by no means thought that William & Mary was a team that we were going to step in and be able to beat without doing the things we need to do, and the focus really was on us doing the things we need to do,” Mallon said. “For me, obviously disappointed — you always want to be in a position where you’re contending for a title. But I feel like we did everything we could do today, and credit to William & Mary. I think they played great.”

Mallon and Drexel athletic director Maisha Kelly said they haven’t thought yet about whether they’ll try to play in one of the other women’s postseason tournaments this month. There probably won’t be room in the NCAA-run Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament, but the privately run WNIT could be an option.