Drexel falls to UNC Wilmington in double OT as inconsistency continues to serve as ‘hard lessons’

It’s recently been a bit of a seesaw campaign for the Drexel men’s basketball team.

On Saturday, the Dragons suffered an 81-79 double-overtime loss to North Carolina-Wilmington at the Daskalakis Athletic Center.

This loss was just the latest in a string of frustrating defeats that seem to follow each feel-good win for Drexel (13-12, 5-7 Coastal Athletic Association).

First, a 16-point victory on the road against Stony Brook in mid-January was followed by an overtime loss to first-place Towson at home.

Then, a blowout win against rival Delaware was followed by a double-overtime loss at Monmouth and later a one-point loss at first-place Towson, where the Dragons had what was initially ruled to be a buzzer-beating game-winner called back after an official review. Now, after an impressive 20-point win over a good William & Mary team on Wednesday, the Dragons self-destructed with 4.7 seconds left to allow UNCW (20-5, 10-2) to escape with a win.

In the aftermath of yet another unfathomable loss, the word coach Zach Spiker kept returning to was “frustrating.”

“We keep seeming to be on the other end of these [results],” Spiker said. “However, I’m proud of our guys. They competed, it’s who we are. I’m just tired of us being on the other side of it.

“We’re going to learn, we’re going to get better, we’re going to move on. There were a lot of times we could have folded our tent today, [but] I don’t think we did. But it’s frustrating. Very, very frustrating.”

This matchup was the latest edition of a high-scoring offense running into Drexel’s stellar defense. UNC Wilmington has the CAA’s best scoring offense, averaging just over 80 points per game, led by graduate student Donovan Newby’s 16.1-point average. Through regulation, however, the Seahawks had just 61 points, and Newby was held to just five points.

The Drexel offense was equally stagnant, however, as primary scorers Kobe MaGee (16 points) and Yame Butler (17), struggled. Jason “Deuce” Drake finished with a team-high 21 points on 8-for-16 shooting. Shane Blakeney added 13 points and five rebounds while also being a defensive menace, producing three steals and a block.

UNCW’s size and physicality in the paint proved to be a real problem for the Dragons throughout the game, with the Seahawks’ Khamari McGriff (16 points) and Harlan Obioha (14), menacing Drexel’s bigs all game long.

For the vast majority of the game, UNCW was in the driver’s seat, leading by as much as nine points with 7 minutes, 36 seconds left in the game. However, the Dragons fought until the very end, sending the game to overtime behind a Shane Blakeney hook shot.

In overtime, it seemed like the Dragons had lost the game as they trailed by five points with 30 seconds left, but Drake had other plans, hitting a clutch three-pointer in the face of a UNCW defensive miscue.

In double overtime, the Dragons again had their backs against the wall, this time trailing by six with 35 seconds left. Two MaGee three-pointers later, the Dragons had tied the game with 4.7 seconds left. All signs pointed toward triple overtime, but a disastrous defensive possession allowed Greedy Williams to go coast-to-coast with almost no pressure, laying in the game-winning basket as the buzzer sounded.

The final possession was both head-scratching and infuriating. As the shot went in, Drexel fans and players alike looked stunned, while Spiker nearly spiked his water bottle into the floor.

Despite this defensive miscue, Spiker sees Drexel as a locker room full of “winners” with some fixable problems to be ironed out.

“Everything’s correctable, everything’s fixable,” he said. “We’ve got a great locker room; we’ve got high-character people. We’re learning hard lessons. Everybody is, myself included.”

The Dragons look to rebound on a two-game swing through Virginia, starting at Hampton (12-13, 4-8) on Thursday (7 p.m., FloSports) and then a rematch against William & Mary (14-11, 8-4) on Saturday (2 p.m., FloSports).

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