Since we are a day away from tipoff, figured they should get their own thread for discussion.

Game1: Marist.

This will be a tough opponent. They seemingly always have a tough squad. They finished 18-4 last season after bowing out in the first round of the NCAA to Louisville. They return just 2 of their starting 5. 1 transferred to Boston, 1 transferred to UNCW and the other graduated. Their entire bench returns. So this will be a more veteran team, though first game of the season they may have to chemistry issues, which means an opportunity for our girls. This will be their best home opponent in the OOC, and may end up as the best OOC opponent they play this season.

Tough loss. Brutal shooting night for our ladies and we managed to tied it with under 30 seconds remaining (first tie of the 2nd half) with 2 chances to force OT but missed and fell 52-50. Marist is a quality opponent, but you cant shoot 34% overall and 21% from 3 and expect to win.

With that said, great job on the boards. We had 14 offensive rebounds. Brugler is going to really help us in the CAA against bigger teams. Connolly looked good too. We took 18 more shots than Marist for the game and still out rebounded them by 5

We also only played 7 (mainly just our starters) and had 0 bench points.

we were pretty bad yesterday against a team we should beat. i'd be more worried if this didn't follow our typical pattern of essentially throwing away the non-conference schedule. we'll get better. nihill and washington couldn't have played much worse. it wasn't just their bad shooting. they were making bad decisions with the ball.

brugler does look like a nice player. hopefully she got her missed layups at the end of a game out of her system. it seems like she got more comfortable as the game went on which made it more surprising that she missed those shots. we can be really dangerous if we keep her going and nihill/washington play up to their standards.

I dont believe that we throw away our non-conference. We tend to underperform, no doubt. And early on Denise was famous for trying out different lineups, but not sure that has been true of Amy so far. She seems like she send out what she sees as her "normal" lineup. With that said, we need to find a way to not start slow, especially against decent teams. We are a team that wins enough that we can enter the realm of an at large, but that is only possible if we win games like this, losing puts us squarely on the CAAT only train. As a program if we want to elevate where we are, we have to win games against equal or slightly better opponents much more often than we do.

i think we underperform because we're more worried about finding out what we have than winning. hence throwing away the nonconference...or however you want to put it. agree though that i can't judge how amy approaches it since i haven't seen enough.

i do hope to see more depth as the season goes on. it looks like we have a few injuries...but i would've expected to at least see hyduke and maybe valentine. hopefully we can get some minutes for freshmen to see what we have there. depth is usually our strength so i was a little surprised to not see more minutes for the bench especially with our starters struggling.

Not related to 2021-22, but the women received 4 signed commitments yesterday.

Another doubleheader tonight. Men first, then the women. The women drop their championship banner tonight. Hope we have some more offense and can win with some ease over the hawks. They always seem to give us fits.

(11-12-2021 10:07 AM)dan10 Wrote:  Another doubleheader tonight. Men first, then the women. The women drop their championship banner tonight. Hope we have some more offense and can win with some ease over the hawks. They always seem to give us fits.

The Brugler sisters will be competing against each other tonight. Tess is a grad transfer for Drexel who played well on Tuesday and appears to be joining Nihill and Washington as one of the leaders on the court. Talya Bruger is a freshman for SJU.

Despite SJU being in the Big Five and Atlantic 10, Drexel holds a 10-9 advantage in the history between these two West Philly rivals. Drexel won the last four meetings.

(11-11-2021 12:24 PM)Timer Wrote:  Not related to 2021-22, but the women received 4 signed commitments yesterday.

And they just announced that a 5th player signed today. So that's a 5 person freshman class to replace 6 players who will be leaving the team this year. Next year's team will have a very different look to it.

(11-12-2021 10:55 AM)J.B. Wrote:  

(11-11-2021 12:24 PM)Timer Wrote:  Not related to 2021-22, but the women received 4 signed commitments yesterday.

And they just announced that a 5th player signed today. So that's a 5 person freshman class to replace 6 players who will be leaving the team this year. Next year's team will have a very different look to it.

Definitely a large entering class!

up 40-23 at half over St Joes.

up 46-31 with just under 5 remaining in the 3rd quarter

54-35 end of 3. Good showing. Limited bench still. Brugler is going to have a huge impact for us this season.

We won 63-55. Sounds like we just coasted to the end with just a few points in the final 7ish minutes

(11-12-2021 09:46 PM)dan10 Wrote:  We won 63-55. Sounds like we just coasted to the end with just a few points in the final 7ish minutes

St. Joe's intensity was much higher in the 2nd Half and 4th Quarter in particular. I think our short bench may have contributed to that as well.

The game had the feeling that even when Drexel had a big lead early in the 2nd half, we knew it would be a close game. Drexel shot extremely well in the 1st half. SJU didn't quit and they did play with more intensity in the fourth quarter. But good teams find a way to hang on, and Drexel didn't let them get closer than 6. It was a nice win for Drexel tonight.

The Bruggler sisters battle was really fun to watch tonight. Big sister Tess got the best of little freshman sister Tayla, though I remember one battle where Tayla did get the best of Tess and Tess was called for the foul. I could see a little smirk on Tess's face, as I'm sure the two of them had battled each other like that hundreds of times on the driveway. Their parents were in the stands wearing custom sweatshirts that had Drexel on the right and half St. Joseph's on the left.

[quote='J.B.' pid='17847384' dateline='1636774885'

The Bruggler sisters battle was really fun to watch tonight. Big sister Tess got the best of little freshman sister Tayla, though I remember one battle where Tayla did get the best of Tess and Tess was called for the foul. I could see a little smirk on Tess's face, as I'm sure the two of them had battled each other like that hundreds of times on the driveway. Their parents were in the stand wearing custom sweatshirts with have Drexel on the right and half St. Joseph's on the left.
[/quote]

The sweatshirts were pretty funny. The halftime filler on the Flosports broadcast was an interview with both Bruggler sisters at the DAC as they jabbed at each other. Pretty funny as well...

2 games in and we have 2 bench points. That needs to be corrected

(11-13-2021 02:00 PM)dan10 Wrote:  2 games in and we have 2 bench points. That needs to be corrected

But those two points were big. Valentine got a huge basket at the buzzer at halftime last night to carry the lead from 15 to 17 at the break. I agree that we need to see more. In Amy's defense, they did open the season up against some tough competition and I can understand her wanted to put her best out on the court. They also had 3 players not suited up. I would expect more of the same against La Salle. But next Saturday they play at UMES, who is a weak opponent. I would think that she'll try to get more bench minutes in that game.

St Joes is not a good opponent, sorry. Marist, yes. St Joes, no. That is a team we should beat without too much issues. Same with La Salle.

(11-13-2021 07:36 PM)dan10 Wrote:  St Joes is not a good opponent, sorry. Marist, yes. St Joes, no. That is a team we should beat without too much issues. Same with La Salle.

I'm sure you've heard the cliché "you can throw the records out the window" when it comes to a city rivalry game. As somebody who grew up in Philly and rooting for the 6th team in the city, I take a lot of pride watching the Dragons knock off Big Five teams, even in women's basketball. Drexel won the last 4 meetings before last night over the Hawks and you know they wanted to do everything possible to make it 5. That wasn't the time to be trying out new lineups with unproven freshman to see what we have. And La Salle won last year, so they an up and coming team that can't be taken lightly either. Drexel has a very strong core of players who will at some point dominate early so they can start to rest players. Now maybe the reason why they struggled late on Friday was because the core players were tired. Let's get a few more games in and I'm sure we'll get to see more players get minutes.