A SOCCER HEADLINER
UConn soccer player Jessica Mazo a must-see talent.
HARTFORD – Drexel came from 16 points down to beat Quinnipiac on Sunday, a rather exciting night for an improving men’s basketball program at the Mohegan Sun Arena.
“Exciting is a word you’d use as a fan,” coach Zach Spiker said. “It’s probably a little bit different from the seat I was in, but I was proud. I thought we made some progress in a lot of areas.”
Spiker, in fact, was up all night, fueled by coffee, studying the Dragons’ next opponent: UConn. The Drexel bus pulled into Hartford on Monday morning to continue cramming for the game Tuesday at the XL Center at 7 p.m.
“It’s a very good, hard-playing, aggressive basketball team,” Spiker said of UConn. “I would expect that from the UConn program, and any team coached by Dan Hurley, so it’s kind of a double-whammy there.”
The last of the mid-majors on the Huskies’ nonconference schedule, Drexel (6-5) has, at the moment, what none of the others do — a winning record. Morehead State (3-7), Missouri-Kansas City (4-8), New Hampshire (2-8), Cornell (4-5), Manhattan (2-8), Lafayette (2-7) and UMass Lowell (6-7) are a combined 23-50, and UConn won all those games by at least 10 points, an average margin of 20.6.
Guys are going to have to live in the gym and shoot more – if they want to. That’s voluntary for them to do. —Dan Hurley
The Huskies could have less margin for error, less ability to absorb a bad stretch, against this opponent. Drexel is showing signs that Spiker’s rebuilding plan is beginning to shift gears in his third season. His career has been something like Hurley’s, noted for program-fixing. At Army, the program where Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski launched their careers in the 1960s, Spiker built year-by-year, producing the program’s first winning record in 28 years, and finished with a 19-win season in 2015-16.
After 9-23 and 13-20 seasons at Drexel, Spiker, 42, has another program headed upward.
“If you have high-character guys who want to work and grind, as a [coaching] staff, that’s the first thing,” Spiker said. “We don’t spend a lot of time talking about doing the right things. We just try to find the right guys that fit us because, inherently, everyone’s trying real hard to do the right thing. When you have a staff like that, they no doubt attract and recruit high character kids. We want our kind of guys. We don’t focus on one area of the country or one area of the world. Our kinds of guys are well-coached players who work hard, and that’s what we’re focusing on finding.”
The Dragons have focused on bringing in shooters and are shooting 48.9 percent as a team, including 40.6 percent on 3pointers. Trevor John, a grad transfer from Cal Poly, is shooting 43-for-88 on 3s. Freshman point guard Camren Wynter, averaging 10.9 points, has 63 assists to 26 turnovers.
Much of the offense, though, runs through 6foot-9 Alihan Demir, from Ankara, Turkey, who played junior college ball at Central Wyoming College. Demir leads the Dragons with 15.4 points per game, and also averages 2.9 assists. He came off the bench to score 26, including 15 in the second half, against Quinnipiac.
“[Demir] can score the basketball,” Spiker said, “but also has a good enough feel for the game that he gets and keeps everybody engaged. He’s always trying to make the right basketball play, sometimes even to a fault. He’s an international guy, he knows how to play the game, has a good feel for things. He doesn’t get caught up in, ‘Hey, I’m our leading scorer, I need to get a bucket.’ If other guys are open, he trusts his teammates. I really think our guys love playing with him.”
For UConn, coming off a lackluster win over Manhattan, the season shifts after this game, with defending champ Villanova at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, and then American Athletic Conference play. Hurley, after the Huskies were 4-for-23 on 3-pointers and had 17 turnovers against Manhattan, called for improved work ethic.
“You’ve got 20 hours a week you get to do strength and conditioning, video, practice, we get our 20 hours we’re allowed to allot to our preparation,” Hurley said. “But if that’s the only time you spend in the gym is those 20 hours with us … you’ve got to get in the gym, get extra shooting in, in the morning, at night when school is over, that’s a cultural thing that takes a little time to build. … Guys are going to have to live in the gym and shoot more – if they want to. That’s voluntary for them to do.”
The Huskies are looking for bounce-back games from Jalen Adams, who took only four shots against Manhattan, and the starting guards (including Christian Vital and Alterique Gilbert) who combined for eight assists and 12 TOs.
“If we think that our guard play overall is going to be good enough to do well in league and close out the rest of the nonconference schedule,” Hurley said, “we’re kidding ourselves.”