Drake’s Elder Statesmen Look Fit for Cinderella’s Slipper

The Bulldogs won the Missouri Valley championship Sunday with the sort of roster that’d be almost impossible to assemble at any other time in the sport.

Every college coach would tell you they’d like to “get old and stay old.” But perhaps no team in the country embodies that more than Drake. The Bulldogs, with five of their six top minute-earners in at least their fifth collegiate season, punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament Sunday with a 77–51 blowout win over top-seeded Bradley in the Missouri Valley championship, putting a cap on several remarkable careers for one of the sport’s oldest teams.

Redshirts combined with the extra year of eligibility afforded to players due to the COVID-19 pandemic gave the Bulldogs near-unprecedented levels of experience and continuity. The backcourt duo of point guard Roman Penn and shooting guard D.J. Wilkins graduated high school in 2016, spent ’17 at prep schools (Penn enrolled at Division I Siena midway through that year), and are now in their sixth seasons of college basketball, amassing more than 300 career games between them. Two other starters (Garrett Sturtz and Darnell Brodie) are in their fifth year of college, and all four of them have been together for the past three seasons. They experienced the high of hearing their name called on Selection Sunday in ’21, the heartbreak of falling short in ’22 and plenty in between. This was the last chance for this veteran core, and they decided they weren’t ready for the ride to be over just yet.

“This is what we dreamed about when we made the decision to come back [for a fifth season of eligibility],” Sturtz said.

Fifth-year guard D.J. Wilkins has started 159 games for Drake :: Jeff Curry/USA TODAY Sports

Penn, Wilkins and Brodie are all transfers. Penn—the school’s all-time assists leader—came after a year and a half at Siena, Wilkins after a year in juco at Florida SouthWestern and Brodie after two seasons as a little-used reserve at Seton Hall. Yet they also all buck the narrative of what college basketball in 2023 looks like, with the notion that players lack the team and school loyalty they used to have and are instead chasing money and the highest level. They’ve each spent three or more years at Drake, changed their games there and stayed there when they could have chased pro contracts or NIL deals to keep pursuing this final goal.

“No matter what the outcome would have been today, that wouldn’t have changed how I feel about these guys,” said coach Darian DeVries. “That whole process, that whole journey together, it’s so fun. And it’s not all this. It’s not all sitting up here after winning a championship. There’s a lot that goes into it. A lot of good days, a lot of bad days. But that’s what makes it so special. That’s what makes our relationship so real, way beyond basketball.”

They also had some championship game demons to exorcise. Each of the past two seasons, Drake had made it to this game and both times were knocked out by Loyola Chicago. The Bulldogs earned an at-large bid in 2021, but the ’22 and ’23 teams knew they had to win the league tournament to go dancing. One thing was different this time around: health. Two years ago Penn was sidelined for the tournament with a broken foot. And last year Wilkins tore his ACL right before the conference tournament and couldn’t suit up. The Bulldogs had all five starters this time and put together a convincing tournament, winning all three games by double figures.

“Coming down here for the first time in our five years being healthy was a good feeling,” DeVries said. “I felt like the last couple of years, we got a little worn down in the second half. This year, we were able to get a lead, go to our bench and continue to play the way we were playing and build on it.”

Nearly an hour before tipoff, assistant coach Marty Richter pulled aside Drake’s big men for one last pep talk. It was quick and direct: “Don’t cheat yourself.” The years’ worth of practices getting hammered by a pad, the time in the weight room and the excruciating losses in the previous two years deserved to be worth something, and the Bulldogs’ bigs took it to Bradley’s talented frontcourt Sunday. Bradley, which led the Missouri Valley in rebounding margin with an edge of more than four boards per game, got outworked on the glass all day by the Bulldogs. After Bradley beat Drake on the glass by 11 in a de-facto regular-season title game last weekend, Drake outrebounded the Braves by nine Sunday.

“I thought we got punked a little bit last week [vs. Bradley],” said sophomore guard Tucker DeVries, who was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after also winning the conference’s Player of the Year award. “This week, that was definitely not the case.”

Tucker DeVries is just the fourth sophomore in Missouri Valley history to win the conference’s player of the year award :: Jeff Curry/USA Today Sports

The star of that show was Brodie, who followed up his 10 points and 17 rebounds on Saturday against Southern Illinois with 12 points and nine boards Sunday. He also had a major hand in neutralizing Bradley’s leading scorer, Rienk Mast, who never got going offensively and was held to just six points.

“When Brodie’s hooked up and engaged, that’s such a big difference-maker for us,” Darian DeVries said Saturday.

Brodie’s dominance at the rim set the tone from the opening tip, helping stymie Bradley offensively. The Braves mustered just seven points in the game’s first 10 minutes and just 21 in the first half as Drake built a 20-point halftime edge. Combine Brodie’s control of the inside with impressive shot-making from Wilkins, Tucker DeVries and Sardaar Calhoun on the outside, and you get the overwhelming performance seen Sunday. In all, Drake scored the most points any team had against Bradley since mid-January.

It was the type of game that made clear just how dangerous Drake can be in the NCAA tournament. Their maturity means the bright lights won’t phase them. Their physicality means they won’t get beat up by a more athletic high-major opponent. The Bulldogs have the type of point guard in Penn any coach would happily have on his team, and Tucker DeVries is good enough to play at virtually any program in the country if not for his father coaching Drake. They beat Mississippi State on a neutral court the only time they played a high-major this season and will have whichever No. 4 or No. 5 seed they draw on Selection Sunday shaking in their boots.

Drake’s core had accomplished almost everything a team can dream of except win “Arch Madness,” as the Missouri Valley tournament is known. Now, the Bulldogs have checked that final box … and might just have an extended stay at the Big Dance now that they’ve earned their spot.