(12-05-2016 11:26 AM)Seahawk Nation 08 Wrote:  Is it too soon to label Drexel as the "surprise team" of the CAA in non-conference play? When they beat a bad Hartford team in Philadelphia, that wasn't a big deal. Then they pummeled North Texas on the road. NTU isn't very good either but a 19-pt road win for a team with a new coach, new system, and relative depleted roster was nice.

Then after a loss to Niagara, they played a close game against La Salle, Won a road game @ Lafayette, then scored their biggest win of the season on Saturday, a 78-72 victory @ High Point.

We at least had an idea of what Elon could do, but Drexel being in the RPI Top 150 a week into December is definitely more than a little surprising. Not too shabby, Dragons. Their upcoming game against St. Joe's could be telling.

I like your enthusiasm. At which point I will say don't tune into the game against St Joes. It could get ugly. I would say we have been surprising and we are seeing improvments each and every game, but the teams we have beat are not good ball clubs this year and losing to teams like Niagara is not good either.

It appears Spiker really smartly built an OOC schedule with the intent of building confidence by playing bad teams or at least teams at our own level. This has certainly allowed them to make mistakes but also stay competitive and win games. This may be the worst OOC schedule Drexel has had since we joined the CAA. He has been really tinkering with lineups to see what works and what does not, regularly using 10 players a game. It has been interesting and fun to watch this team perform under Spiker. Our expectations are still not high, but we can definitely see that Spiker has them down the correct path going forward. We have also seen some major changes in style as well as approach that we did not see under Bruiser, namely in game adjustments.