Malik Dia only played 16 minutes in Belmont’s loss to Drake. Photo by Landen Secrest.

Once again picking through box scores attempting to explain three defeats:

The most important statistic from Belmont’s 84-69 loss to Drake was 20. That’s the number of consecutive victories Drake has on its home court. It’s tied with Houston for the longest active streak in the country. An upset could only have been classified as major if it had happened.

There were other reasons for the defeat. Fouls limited Malik Dia to 16 minutes, Cade Tyson to 25 and Jayce Willingham to 16.  Plus, the Bruins uncharacteristically didn’t shoot well. Dia was 3 of 10, Tyson 3 of 8 and the team was 26 of 63 (41 percent). They only made 7 of 24 threes.

The Bruins, not a great rebounding team, had 13 offensive rebounds but were only able to parlay that into four points (see: Bad shooting).

Drake shot 30 for 58, but Belmont did a nice job on the Bulldogs’ star Tucker DeVries, making him earn his 21 points on 5-of-16 shooting. So, the rest of the Bulldogs were 25 for 42, 59 percent.

Vanderbilt had five more field goal attempts, one more three-pointer and only five turnovers and yet the Commodores lost to Georgia 76-64 in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score. Georgia held a 23-point lead with 11:20 left in the game.

Two negative stats: Shooting and rebounding. As is usually the case, Vandy shot poorly, making only 21 of 58 attempts. Georgia dominated the backboards by a count of 39-26.

Middle Tennessee chucked up a lot of threes (29) in its 76-68 loss to Jacksonville State. It’s not a strength and not a good way for the Blue Raiders to play even though they made 12, a decent percentage. Heck, even big man Jared Coleman-Jones launched six (he had only attempted 23 all season before Wednesday night).

Meanwhile, Jax State was getting to the foul line, shooting 30 free throws and making 25.

Together, not a winning formula.

Raiders’ guard Jestin Porter regressed to the mean, following up his 41-point game against UTEP with a five-point night.

Joe Sullivan can be reached at josephsullivan1974@gmail.com. Follow him on X @GlobeSullivan.