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SEASON 5

Recent Game Recaps

Epilogue, The Ninth: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Memories

So We Meet Again

Rte. 139 - End of the Line

Hanging On

A Championship in Pictures

This Time of Year

Dotson Leads Ducks to the Sweet Sixteen

Grizzlies Overwhelmed by Orangemen

Empire

Challenge 11: Final Four Memories

By George, UConn is Dead

Butler and Us

Donning the Black and Gold

Challenge 10: Tourney Memories

The Madness of the Horizon League

The Rare Ivy League Conference Tournament

MAC Madness

Anything Can Happen in the MAAC

Challenge 9: Shock The Neighborhood

A Youthful Surprise

From Worst to First

Peers and Seers

Game! Of! The! Night! 2/18/2009: Drexel at George Mason
February 18, 2009 5:03 pm ET by Kyle Whelliston


Drexel at George Mason (Colonial)
Patriot Center - Fairfax, VA
7:05 PM EST

Leagues at our level generally prefer their parity limited, and to put their best team forward. But the Colonial race, once a three-team race with a round-robin that decided momentary supremacy, is now a deathcore mosh pit. No fewer than seven teams are within two games of the lead with three games remaining until Richmond, and as the CAA's poet laureate noted yesterday, no school has won this conference with more than four losses since 1997. The two leaders (Northeastern and VCU, both of whom lost Saturday) are already there at 11-4.

After a 1-3 conference start, Drexel (14-10, 10-5) climbed back into this conversation with a seven-game January winning streak. The Dragons are an excellent example of what a little defense and rebounding can do, and no CAA team defends the paint better. A beef injection into the roster in recent years is beginning to pay off; after being swatted around like flies in its first few years of Colonial living, Bruiser Flint has collected a rotation of 6-7 and 6-8 dudes who, well you know, leave black and blue indentations on opponents. With bigs like Evan Neisler and Kenny Tribbett, Drexel is grabbing 35.8 boards per game and looks to be a top 30 rebounding team in the first time in, well, they certainly haven't been since I went to school there.

George Mason (17-8, 10-5) has successfully defended its home court all 12 times so far in 2008-09, and have been a less-than-flat 5-8 elsewhere. The Patriots did pull out a close win up in Philadelphia to get the CAA campaign going (a rare U'useless Stat-quality game in which no GMU player reached double figures), but they haven't won on the road outside DelMarVa since then. One thing you can count on is that Jim Larranaga will find some new and exciting way to get his team ready at the tourney, and the last symbolic link to 2006 -- John Vaughan, who spent the Final Four run in street clothes as a redshirt -- is building momentum for a big finish with four straight double-figure games.

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