Despite the great effort against James Madison last Tuesday, the Northeastern Huskies went on to take a loss against the other preseason CAA favorites, Drexel University. With the continued effort to raise awareness of Black Lives Matter, this weekend’s games were dedicated to Alton Sterling and Kimani Gray. 

“The players are really starting to believe in the things we can do, we’ve been working at it and it’s finally starting to work,” said head coach Kelly Cole in her pre-game interview. “Drexel is a tough team but we know them well enough and we’re ready for the challenge.”

However, this wasn’t the NU team that faced JMU, as Drexel pierced the Huskies early with a triple leading to a lackluster performance by the Huskies in the opening three minutes. With a little more than five minutes left to play in the frame, NU found themselves down 7-0, and Cole made the decision to sacrifice an early timeout to put a stop to the Dragons’ scorching fire. 

“We didn’t come ready to play, from the start we weren’t locked in about taking care of the details and it was an attempt to get back to how we should have started the game,” Cole said. 

From there, junior guard Kendall Currence took the reins and put the Huskies on the scoreboard with back-to-back-to-back buckets. An assist from Currence to freshman forward Leyla Öztürk ended the first quarter, 16-8. 

“Kendall did exactly what we needed to do on the offensive end and it’s never a surprise to see her fill up the basket because that’s what she does,” Cole said. 

A 6-0 run in under a minute of play by the Dragons led to another obligatory timeout taken by Cole. Freshman guard Maddie Vizza went end to end, making the and-one followed by sophomore forward Mide Oriyomi with the much-needed triple, bringing the game within a six-point margin. The Huskies knocked down all of their last six field goal attempts going into the break, but still found themselves down 37-29. 

Early in the second half, Öztürk shut Drexel down with a massive block in their paint and was then found by senior guard Stella Clark in the red & black paint for an easy layup, cutting the lead back down to six. The third frame ended with the Huskies down by 10 points, 57-47.

Going into the final 10 minutes, the Dragons put down back-to-back triples, which gave them their largest lead of the contest with 16 points. A great inbound bounce pass from Clark to Oriyomi, followed by a layup by sophomore guard Mossi Staples brought some life back to the Huskies. 

Ultimately, the comeback effort fell short as the Huskies were no match for the fire that the Dragons blew against them today, going down 79-64. 

Currence led the scoring for the Huskies with 23 points, four rebounds and four assists; along with the help of Oriyomi, who has scored double digits in the last seven games, grabbing 10 points today and five rebounds. 

NU is now 3-7 overall and 2-5 in CAA play while Drexel is 8-4 overall and 5-2 in CAA play. The two teams will return to Cabot today at noon for the second game of the home series.