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.
