CAA Tournament A Second Chance For Drexel

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The 2015-16 season has been a rough one for the Drexel Dragons.

They finished the regular season with a record of just 5-24, going 3-15 in Colonial Athletic Association play.

However, in college basketball there is a thing called a conference tournament, and it can be a great equalizer. Regardless of how bad the regular season was, every team has a shot at putting together a run and earning an automatic NCAA Tournament bid by winning that conference tourney.

Drexel will open play in the CAA Tournament in Baltimore on Friday night, taking on Elon. The Dragons are the #9 seed, Elon is the #8.

Drexel did end the season winning two of three, the loss coming in their regular season finale on Saturday when they fell to Northeastern by just two points at the DAC, 61-59.

"I would say we are playing better basketball," Drexel head coach Bruiser Flint tells KYW Newsradio. "Saturday (against Northeastern) I thought we went back to some of our old ways, we didn't play great in the teeth of the game. I think the guys are playing a lot better, we're playing with some confidence. We're shooting the ball a lot better, which has been a big bugaboo for us all season. So hopefully we go down there and we continue it."

Listen to the entire interview with Drexel's Bruiser Flint:

Drexel played Elon twice during the regular season and lost both match-ups by the nearly identical scores of 83-78 (in North Carolina on 1/2) and 81-76 (at the DAC on 2/18).

"We've got to play much better defensively then we've played against them all year," Flint says. "They are a great three-point shooting team and we let them play to their strength in both games. The second game, we had a pretty significant lead and they came back because they shot (75%) in the second half. So we've got to do a better job defensively against the team. We didn't do it the first two games. Both games came down to the wire."

If the Dragons beat Elon, they would play top seed Hofstra in the quarterfinals on Saturday at noon.

Friday's Drexel/Elon game gets underway at 6:00pm.