Since we do not have a thread yet as the season is about to start I wanted to begin a thread for them, since they deserve attention and conversation.

We have what should be a weaker than normal, but still strong squad coming back this season. We did lose some quality, but Denise has a knack for replacing talent.

We will be led by Jr. Bailey Greenberg and So. Hannah Nihill. Aubree Brown, Niki Metzel and Tereza Kracikova were nice pieces that were limited last season off of the bench that should see quite a spike in playing time this season. Our Dragons were picked 4th by the coaches behind JMU, Elon, and W&M. I do believe JMU is the team to beat as usual, and Elon is a close 2nd. I believe 3rd should be there for the taking for our squad. W&M has some talent, but they have not been able to put it together in the past couple of seasons.

As usual I expect Denise to rotate all sorts of lineups through our non-conference and find the pieces that work and find our what each players role will look like come conference play. This has been a successful strategy that I expect to continue.

We do lack height once again, so the taller teams like JMU and Elon will likely give us fits. We open with 3 straight home games (Quinnipiac, St Joes and Bucknell). 3 very quality games that should challenge our team quite a bit. Hopefully we can get behind our women and cheer them on and hopefully we can steal one of those homes games before they head to their tournament up in Vermont.

(11-05-2018 03:54 PM)dan10 Wrote:  Since we do not have a thread yet as the season is about to start I wanted to begin a thread for them, since they deserve attention and conversation.

We have what should be a weaker than normal, but still strong squad coming back this season. We did lose some quality, but Denise has a knack for replacing talent.

We will be led by Jr. Bailey Greenberg and So. Hannah Nihill. Aubree Brown, Niki Metzel and Tereza Kracikova were nice pieces that were limited last season off of the bench that should see quite a spike in playing time this season. Our Dragons were picked 4th by the coaches behind JMU, Elon, and W&M. I do believe JMU is the team to beat as usual, and Elon is a close 2nd. I believe 3rd should be there for the taking for our squad. W&M has some talent, but they have not been able to put it together in the past couple of seasons.

As usual I expect Denise to rotate all sorts of lineups through our non-conference and find the pieces that work and find our what each players role will look like come conference play. This has been a successful strategy that I expect to continue.

We do lack height once again, so the taller teams like JMU and Elon will likely give us fits. We open with 3 straight home games (Quinnipiac, St Joes and Bucknell). 3 very quality games that should challenge our team quite a bit. Hopefully we can get behind our women and cheer them on and hopefully we can steal one of those homes games before they head to their tournament up in Vermont.

Interesting analysis, but you seem to have a negative slant on things. I think Drexel was picked to finish 4th last year, and managed to fight their way to #1. They're picked by the coaches to finish 2nd this year behind JMU. Elon and Delaware should still be strong. I'm kind of expecting more of the same for Drexel this year. They should get another top 3 finish, with a chance to win the championship, but will likely end up in the WNIT again.

Funny that you say that you're hoping that Drexel can steal one of the first 3 home games as if they're hosting UConn, Notre Dame, and Stanford. These are 3 tough mid-major teams that they are facing, but Drexel is also considered one of the top mid-major teams also and they're playing on their home court. Based on their experience and expectations, not taking all 3 of the first 3 would be a bit of a disappointment.

There is nothing negative about my post. Realistic, sure, negative, not in the slightest. We bring back talent. We lost quite a bit. We are not going to be as strong as we were last year. If we were picked 2nd this year then I merely saw the wrong article on the CAA website. With how Denise uses our non conference, there will be growing pains early on. These are very tough games to open a season with. We would look a lot better on paper to match up if these were later in the non conference

Quinnipiac was a #9 seed in last years tournament who won a game before losing to UConn. They went 28-6 and 18-0 in their conference

Bucknell made the WNIT and lost in the first round to final four team WVU. I Know we beat them last year, but it was difficult. They return nearly their entire team. We have quite a few new players with losses to some major performers from last year

St Joes also made the WNIT and lost in the 2nd round to final four team WVU. We beat them last year and this is clearly a winnable game. These games are always nail biters it seems. How will we respond two days later if game one against the best team on our schedule (Quinnipiac) goes very poorly?

We fell 56-52. I didnt get to watch any of it. How did we look? Box score looks the 3rd quarter was not kind to us but we won the other 3 quarters.

Your problem was having 4 fewer rebounds and Quinnipiac having 15 steals. That gave Quinnipiac 11 more field goal attempts to win while you shot a little better. Quinnipiac dominated points in the paint, 40 to 20, and points off turnovers, 18 to 7. There were 10 lead changes and 6 ties. Your largest lead was 7 and your largest deficit was 10.

I got my first look at this years Dragons today against St. Joseph's. Incredible defensive effort in a 51-34 win. Drexel shut out the Hawks in the 1st quarter 16-0 (first shutout in a period in program history). SJU outscored Drexel in the 2nd and 3rd quarters but couldn't get closer than 7. They were also held to just 11 field goals for the game.

Offense wasn't great...Greenberg and Brown scored 29 of Drexel's 51 points and as a team, the Dragons shot just 38%. But it was all about the defense today, and a very impressive effort again a pretty strong team.

Definitely an excellent win after a tough opening loss. Holding a team to 34 is quite an accomplishment. Keep on rolling.

WOW. Destroyed Bucknell 64-42. Was 14-13 Bison after 1, but Drexel outscored them 38-13 in the middle two quarters. They didn't even shoot particularly well, but forced Bucknell into 19 turnovers to their own 7. Big win for the ladies, this team could have a high ceiling if the defense keeps up like that.

EDIT: Forms a fun mid-major parity circle early on as well, as Bucknell defeated Quinnipiac 75-58. Drexel comes away with the best net point differential of the three teams in games played between them.

Great game indeed. They took 2 out of 3 at home from some tough mid-majors but as I said before the season started, this is still a very good basketball team even with the loss of Lidge and Woods and they still should have won all 3. Anyway, they are playing pretty much an entire mid-major schedule this year. They don't have any power 5 teams to deal with, so hopefully they can continue to play well on the road and win a lot of games before January.

Last night's game was supposed to be a homecoming of sorts for my neighbor down the street, Taylor O'Brien, who is a freshman for Bucknell. I was thinking that the former 2,000 point scorer at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School would have had large fan support last night. Unfortunately the unexpected snow storm kept me and many others from attending the game.

Absolutely a great win. Thats back to back wins over very quality mid major teams. I really thought with who we lost we would take more time to gel and pull everything together. This team looks very good right now. Hopefully they can continue it into the conference schedule without many or any games where we play down to our competition. To come away with 2 wins out of those first 3 games is definitely something our fans need to get behind and support.

I still think we are looking up at JMU and Elon but this team should position itself well to compete. I believe bigger (size) teams will give us all sorts of fits, but our defense and ball movement will always give our women a chance.

We have been very fortunate to keep Coach Dillon around. I don't know enough to comment on whether it's more typical to stick around in 1 place on the women's side when you're successful. It's clearly atypical on the men's side. She could've left in the mid 2000s at the latest to cash in with some Power 5 school.

(11-16-2018 01:04 PM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  We have been very fortunate to keep Coach Dillon around. I don't know enough to comment on whether it's more typical to stick around in 1 place on the women's side when you're successful. It's clearly atypical on the men's side. She could've left in the mid 2000s at the latest to cash in with some Power 5 school.

It is definitely more typical as there is not great money involved in the women's game, so the pressure to move on from coaches and get better results is just not there like in the men's game. However, while we have been very fortunate to keep Denise, I think we all are expecting her to bolt to Villanova once that job becomes available.

Harry is now 63, so it is definitely on the horizon. He has been the head coach at Nova since 1978. Hopefully we can make another tournament or two soon so that the program she has built stays desirable. Drexel should also be promoting the hell out of that program so that we can compete salary wise to keep Denise.

(11-16-2018 01:04 PM)hiroshimacarp Wrote:  We have been very fortunate to keep Coach Dillon around. I don't know enough to comment on whether it's more typical to stick around in 1 place on the women's side when you're successful. It's clearly atypical on the men's side. She could've left in the mid 2000s at the latest to cash in with some Power 5 school.

Hopefully the Villanova rumors about Denise leaving turn out to not be true. But even if she does leave, Drexel needs to make sure that Denise wouldn't take all of her coaches with her, and that there is a true succession plan in place. JMU didn't miss a beat when Kenny left for Virginia Tech. On the other hand, look what happened to ODU after Coach Larry left. ODU was the most dominant mid-major program for many years, and never really recovered from her departure. With Tina Martin at Delaware, she apparently wasn't a very good coach to begin with so that team is actually on the rise after she left.

(11-16-2018 03:19 PM)J.B. Wrote:  On the other hand, look what happened to ODU after Coach Larry left. ODU was the most dominant mid-major program for many years, and never really recovered from he departure.

That, and ODU seemed to go all in on moving up in football to the detriment of basketball in my opinion. I do sort of miss the idiotic posts from the equally idiotic "Timer Sucks" Ah, the good old days of the CAAZone.

ODU definitely sold out for football, but womens basketball was already on the decline as Wendy was on her way out.

ODU won 17 consecutive CAA Women's Basketball Tournaments that ended in the sixth-to-last season in the CAA. In their last five seasons, they went to one Final and lost. In the Men's Basketball Conference RPI in those five seasons, Conference USA was above the CAA in the first two, the CAA was 12 spots above in the next two, and the CAA was 2 spots above last season. The team that was hurt by playing Football was Connecticut. I wonder if they would have been better off dropping Football down to FCS and remaining in the Big East. Three Big East teams play FCS Football, who are Villanova, Georgetown, and Butler. Connecticut would have less travel in the Big East. Now they have sports that don't make much money flying to Tulane, Tulsa, and teams in Florida and Texas.

Dragons beat Siena tonight 51-39 at the Catamount Tournament. Vermont beat Wagner 56-54 on OT. Drexel will face Vermont for the championship Saturday afternoon at 4:00. The game will be televised on ESPN+.

Dragons finish the half on an 11-0 run, with Vermont’s 2 best players on the bench with foul trouble. Drexel leads 35-22 at halftime.

Dragons are the 2018 TD Bank Classic Champions as they use a 25-0 run that ended midway through the 3rd quarter on their way to a 60-44 win that wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated. Drexel used their entire roster today including Mariah Leonard. Vermont made a little run against some of Drexel’s 2nd team players to make the score somewhat respectable.

Denise Dillon can coach up some defense. Since letting Quinnipiac open the floodgates for a whopping 56 point in the opening loss, they have given up 34, 42, 39, and 44. Pretty impressive. They are currently second in the country in scoring defense and could easily be first by the end of the day if Dartmouth gives up more than 46 points in their game today.