Some thoughts on Drexel...

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Saturday night’s 21-point loss against Drexel exposed a few recurring issues that the Quakers will have to address during nonconference play if they hope to turn things around before heading into the Ivy slate against Yale, January 28.

In the presser, coach Jerome Allen opted to discuss his team’s inability to execute on the basics: rebounding, defending and allowing Drexel penetration. However, I’m a little concerned that the team’s problems run deeper than execution.

Saturday’s performance against Drexel was eerily familiar to last year’s opener — a 70-55 loss to Penn State. To jog your memory: The Quakers came out strong, trading baskets with the Nittany Lions for much of the first half and entered the locker room down just seven, 36-29. In the opening minutes Tyler Bernadini dominated, scoring the team’s first 10 points but was benched for the second half of the first frame with three fouls and used only sparingly the rest of the game — he played just 17 minutes total — completely taking him out of rhythm as he scored just two points the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, guard play offensively was lackluster as Zack Rosen went just 2-for-8 from the field and was 2-for-6 from three point range. Darren smith was 1-for-11 from the field and 0-for-7 from distance. Overall, the Quakers were 5-for-23 from three-point range and 14-for-22 from the charity stripe. Defensively, Penn had trouble locating Penn State Guard Talor battle, who was 11-for-20 from the field en route to scoring a game high 27 points and grabbed 10 defensive rebounds.

After the game, coach Glen Miller talked about improving on the little things:

“If you’re playing a team like Penn State, if you’re the University of Pennsylvania, all those small things, the things that you can control, you have to be successful in those areas,” he said. “Although we did some good things, for us to take it down to the wire, we had to do better in those areas.”

“Where we had success [in the first half] was getting the ball either off the cut into the low post or just off a post up,” Miller said. “We have some guys who can hit the three but our success offensively was getting the ball inside.”

Flash forward to Saturday night: The Quakers kept the game close in the first half, entering the locker room down just five, and let Drexel run away with the game in the second frame. Overall, the Quakers shot 5-for-17 from three-point range and were 11-for-20 on free throws. Two Drexel guards logged over 20 points — with Chris Fouch scoring 26 and Derrick Thomas scoring 23. The two combined for eight rebounds. Zack Rosen was 4-for-11 from the field and 2-for-5 from distance. He and Miles Cartwright combined for just two boards. While Tyler Bernardini didn’t do much against Drexel (he scored nine points on 3-for-7 shooting in 27 minutes), Andreas Schreiber did. The fifth-year senior logged seven points in 11 minutes of play in the first half, dominating inside and nailing several midrange jumpers. Allen benched him for most of the second half — for the reason that the team was outplayed on the boards and he thought that other lineups could have given the team more success defensively.

One major difference between last year's opener and Saturday's contest was that the Quakers were outrebounded 42-19, allowing the Dragons to grab 15 offensive boards — 10 in the first half.

Some comments after the game from Allen:

"They executed their stuff, they got penetration, they grabbed offensive rebounds, guys made shots. When you play against a good team you have a small margin to make mistakes and we made mistakes on box outs, on defensive slides and that’s what happens. It was a combination of our inability to get the shots that we wanted whether it being because of good defense or a lack of execution."

"We’re not that far away. We just have to remain consistent and hold on to our principles and hopefully we can use this as a learning tool such that that when you get lackadaisical or don’t tend to get focused on the stuff that we are trying to build our foundations on. We’re close, we’re close. Its all part of the process."

On his decision to take out Schreiber:

"It was my decision, nothing to his fault but I just thought that other lineups gave us a better chance that we need.  We’re going to win basketball games because we defend and I that’s where I hope we will be building on our own ability. When I looked up at halftime we gave up 10 offensive rebounds, so not to put the onus on Andreas Schreiber I think we have to do a better job as a team of rebounding the ball and defending and stop the penetration and contest the shots and were just not there yet but were going to be."

As we know last year, after the game against Penn State last season, things spiraled out of control. The Quakers went on to lost their next nine, going 6-22 overall. In this year's opener against Davidson, Penn proved it has the ability to beat some stronger opponents. But it was a different story against Manhattan. What do you guys think?