‘We weren’t in awe at all’: Drexel earns wire-to-wire, ‘special’ win over Villanova in Big 5 Classic

Amari Williams swatted Justin Moore’s last-second shot away, and the other Justin Moore, the one wearing gold and blue, grabbed it and turned up court as the final seconds ticked away.

The clock went to zero, a horn sounded, and Drexel coach Zach Spiker stood still for a few seconds, hands on his hips, his eyes finding his family in the Wells Fargo Center crowd.

Drexel 57. Villanova 55.

Hello, Drexel. And welcome, officially, to the Big 5.

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There were still two games to be played after, but no story was likely to top Drexel’s first-ever Big 5 win, the program’s first over a ranked opponent since 2010 — though No. 18 Villanova is sure to drop out of the Associated Press Top 25 come Monday afternoon after losing twice this week. The Dragons, who had lost five straight times against ranked opponents since that 2010 win, led from wire to wire.

Spiker, Drexel’s head coach since 2016, called it a “special, special moment.”

“We weren’t in awe at all,” he said.

The Dragons, Spiker said, use words like “gratitude, respect, compete.”

Saturday, in the Big 5 Classic’s fifth-place game, there was a different motto: “Today was ‘Respect all, fear none,’” Spiker said.

No, this mid-major had no fear, especially in crunch time.

Villanova, winless in this new Big 5 after lording over the old one, had trimmed what was an eight-point Drexel lead down to one, 54-53, with 1 minute, 51 seconds left in the game on two Eric Dixon free throws. Down the other end, Williams, Drexel’s 6-foot-10 senior big man, took it right at Dixon and scored inside, bumping the lead back to three.

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Villanova, which shot just 5-for-27 (18.5%) from three-point range, cut the lead again to one on a Jordan Longino jumper. And then Williams made one of his two free-throw attempts with 31 seconds left. Villanova had an opening, a chance to steal a historic Drexel win from the Dragons’ grasps.

But, out of a timeout with 6.9 seconds left, Villanova’s Moore drove to the basket. Drexel’s graduate transfer, Lucas Monroe, a Big 5 veteran who used to play at Penn, held his ground. Moore rose up, and Williams blocked his fifth and final shot. Drexel’s Moore, an Archbishop Wood grad, dribbled the clock out and threw the ball in the air.

“I knew he was going to try to get one of our guys in the post,” Williams said. “It seemed like he tried to draw a foul.

“The whole team believed in each other.”

“I thought these two guys played with no fear,” Spiker said of Williams and Moore.

Williams led Drexel with 12 points on 5-for-8 shooting. He banked in his only three-point attempt six-plus minutes into the second half as the shot clock expired, growing a three-point Drexel lead to six. Moore scored seven points, which included a turnaround jumper to keep Drexel two possessions ahead with nine minutes to go. He also added six rebounds and four assists while taking just six shots (he normally takes 10 per game). Luke House had the hot hand early. He made three triples and scored 11 points on the day.

“They made some really tough shots early, some timely shots late,” Villanova head coach Kyle Neptune said.

His team didn’t. Villanova’s two previous losses in this new format came to Penn and St. Joseph’s. There was a common theme in them, an opponent overmatched on paper choosing to go zone for different reasons. Drexel followed the script Saturday, throwing a 3-2 zone at Villanova.

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“They want to post everybody, not just their bigs,” Spiker said when asked why he decided to go zone.

There was another factor, too. Spiker didn’t say so, but anyone with half of a basketball brain could watch the way Villanova struggled against the zones of St. Joe’s and Penn and dare them to shoot them out of it. It’s not a confident-shooting Wildcats team right now.

“I don’t think you’re going to stop them [from] taking threes,” Spiker said. “They’re going to make them, they’re going to win. They’re going to miss, then it’s going to be a different game. Today was a different game.”

The result, however, was a significant one.

“There’s a bigger picture and a different story for another time,” Spiker said. “I think alumni engagement will probably go up.”

There was something poetic about how it all happened, Drexel suffering two tough losses in the new Big 5 format to get to this moment. The Dragons fell by six to La Salle on the road in their season-opener while making just four of their 17 three-point attempts. Then, in their first-ever Big 5 home game, they lost to Temple when Williams missed a put-back layup at the buzzer.

It was a rude welcome to the club after being the other school in the city for so long.

It had to make Saturday so much sweeter.