Syracuse vs. Drexel: Orange Looking To Slay Some Dragons

by Sean Keeley on Dec 22, 2010 9:30 AM EST

Before the season started, Wednesday's game against Drexel looked like a deceivingly tough one. After the Dragons beat then-No. 20 and undefeated Louisville 52-46 in the YUM! Center, there was nothing deceiving about it any longer. Drexel was coming to the Dome as a legitimate threat.

Here's what Card Chronicle had to say after the loss.

This wasn't one of those "random December home losses" - pretty clear what happened. Drexel played really good defense, slowed us down, used a ton of time from the shot clock and then out rebounded us by 20. If we shoot 25% from 3 when we only get 16 attempts and miss half our free throws again this season, we will lose by 50.

Here's the thing. The Dragons are 8-1, their best start since 1993-94, have won six-straight, beat a Top 25 team on the road and received votes this week in the AP poll.That's more than half the Big East can say, possibly more. The last time the Dragons were performing this well was the '06-'07 season. The same year they beat No. 25 Syracuse for their first win over a ranked team since 1996.

Their coach in that game was Bruiser Flint, whom you might remember as The Guy At UMass After John Calipari. He's still at Drexel, in his tenth season (157-125), and he's still trying to improve on that '06-'07 season in which the Dragons came close to making the NCAA Tournament.

"I don’t even look at ’06-07," Flint said this week. "When you do what we did in ’06-07 and still don’t get in the tournament, it’s all about winning your conference. I don’t even like to reference back to it because we did everything we needed to do and still didn’t get in. It’s all about the conference."

Drexel may have won the last meeting against the Orange but Syracuse still leads the all-time series. Barely.

Syracuse leads the all-time series with Drexel, 2-1. The first meeting between the two schools came in the second round of the 1996 NCAA Tournament. The Orange defeated the Dragons, 69-58, on its way to the national finals. The teams met again in 2004 in the Carrier Dome, a game which Syracuse won, 74-54.

As for the players Syracuse will need to have an answer for, there's a trio of trouble-makers worth noting.

Three players are averaging double figures in scoring for Drexel. Chris Fouch leads the way, posting 19.7 points per game. Samme Givens is averaging a double-double this season, recording 11.8 points and rebounds per contest, while Gerald Colds is contributing 10.8 points per game.

Fouch is also the team's major three-point threat (40%, 8 attempts per game) but he's been held to 10 points in both of Drexel's last two games.

The Dragon's lone loss of the season was to Rhode Island (74-68). In that one, Ram Delroy James lit it up from three-point range (8-9) for 33 points total. The Dragons shot 1-11 from three in that one.

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your beer of the day, courtesy of Middle Ages

by MrPlow99 on Dec 22, 2010 9:35 AM EST reply actions

A fantastic choice.

The Hoyas shuffled off with their twin cocktails of discontent - Dana O'neil 2/18/10

by Boscoball on Dec 22, 2010 10:03 AM EST up reply actions

Actually, a little surprised they aren't ranked

RPI: 25.

However, outside of the Louisville game, their only other “good” team was URI (on the road), and they lost. The rest of the schedule is full of triple digit RPIers (almost all of them with losing records).

Though…it is to be noted that, by RPI measurement, Drexel is the toughest team SU has to play so far….by a significant margin.

On your guard boys, Drexel looks to be for real.

Go Orange(men)!

by SUmonkey on Dec 22, 2010 9:42 AM EST reply actions

The RPI is a terrible metric to measure teams.

With that said, though, this is a pretty good Drexel squad. They hit the glass hard and get to the line. Syracuse should win, but this doesn’t look like a squashing on paper.

The blog: Hoya Suxa | The Twitter: Hoya Suxa

by Hoya Suxa on Dec 22, 2010 10:04 AM EST up reply actions

Awaiting a better one

…

Go Orange(men)!

by SUmonkey on Dec 22, 2010 1:42 PM EST up reply actions

Well, you could start with Pomeroy.

As, you know, he actually attempts to quantify production and performance rather than the RPI, which merely pushes forward moron math. In short, the RPI tells you if a team won games against other teams that won games and where the games were won (or any permutation in between). It gives nothing as to how a team plays (the RPI, in fact, doesn’t even consider margin of victory).

Or, you could just dump “college basketball ratings” into Google and see what comes up. I mean, we’re not inventing rockets and currency models over here.

The blog: Hoya Suxa | The Twitter: Hoya Suxa

by Hoya Suxa on Dec 22, 2010 3:41 PM EST up reply actions

I find the stats that look at how the team plays

for basketball don’t work nearly as well as in football. The ebb and flow of a game thrown in with the complete inconsistency of the refs make judging effective possessions a chore.

I liken it to the Hollinger ratings over at ESPN. The system sounds reasonable on paper, but the results never seem to line up well with realty.

There are a few sites that do it for football, which comes out much better, just doesn’t seem to work as well with b-ball. Very different sport.

Go Orange(men)!

by SUmonkey on Dec 24, 2010 1:35 AM EST up reply actions