Flyers banding together in Roberts’ absence

By Doug Harris | Monday, January 5, 2009, 11:37 PM

When I pictured Dayton playing this season without Brian Roberts, I just assumed the team would take a step back and then make another run at the postseason once those younger players gained experience.

But a 13-1 non-conference record has put the Flyers in great position for a postseason berth, and I have to admit I didn’t see that coming.

UD coach Brian Gregory would never say it — what coach would openly doubt his own players? — but if someone injected him with truth serum, he probably would admit he’s been surprised by the results so far, too.

“We talked a lot in the past about who was going to replace Brian Roberts. And the coach-speak is you can’t replace a guy like that, it’s got to be a collective effort. You say that, but you’re never really sure if it’s going to work. So far, guys done a great job of that,” he said.

The Flyers are still rotating 12 players. I keep waiting for Gregory to pare that back some, but it hasn’t happened yet.

And really, who would you eliminate if you were calling the shots?

“Our guys have had to buy into the fact that our strength is in the pack of the team,” Gregory said. “With Josh Benson being out for the year with the injury, we have 12 players all contributing. If we didn’t have all 12 of those guys, we wouldn’t 13-1 right now. And that’s counter-cultural to what those guys hear every day — ‘look out for No. 1, look out for yourselves.’

“We’ve had guys in one game play six minutes and then the next game play 20 minutes, and those 20 minutes were the difference in the game. In this day and age, that is difficult to get guys to buy into. I never thought we’d have this many guys playing eight or more minutes a game or 10 or more minutes a game. You just never know how guys are going to respond or react to that.”

I’ve been around the team a lot, and I haven’t detected a hint of resentment from anyone yet over his playing time being limited.

The Flyers have some weaknesses — outside shooting being the most glaring among them — but many teams would fracture if the top players had to give up minutes to the 10th, 11th and 12th men. But at UD, the players seem to understand that in the post-Roberts era, winning is going to take a collective effort.

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Flyers face Miami, then begin A-10 play

By Doug Harris | Monday, January 5, 2009, 07:00 AM

UD Basketball: The Week Ahead

Games: vs. Miami (7-4), 7 p.m. Tuesday (Channel 7); at Massachusetts (5-8) 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 10 (Channel 7).

Scouting Miami: The RedHawks were dealt an unfortunate blow in losing Kenny Hayes to an arm injury. The Northmont product was leading the team in assists and was second in scoring before being sidelined indefinitely last week. But Miami still has sweet-shooting senior forward Michael Bramos, who is averaging 19.0 points and scored 36 against Dayton last year.

The Flyers trailed by 21 in the first half before rallying for a 63-62 win over the RedHawks last season — only their second win in 20 years at Millett Hall. The 15-point halftime deficit was the third-largest ever overcome by UD.

Scouting UMass: The Minutemen have been streaky under new coach Derek Kellogg. They dropped six straight games to fall to 1-6, won four in a row and then were blown out at Houston (80-54) and at home against Vanderbilt (78-48). Their highlight of the season so far was a one-point upset of defending national champion Kansas.

Junior guard Ricky Harris is second in the Atlantic 10 in scoring at about 19 points per game.

Scouting Dayton: The Flyers (13-1) are off to their fourth-best start in the modern era (since 1947). Only the teams from 1955-56 (19-1), 1949-50 (16-1) and 2007-08 (14-1) have done better.

Defense has been the Flyers’ strong suit. Five foes (UNC-Greensboro, Akron, Bethune-Cookman, Delaware State and Wofford) had more turnovers than baskets against UD, and two (Auburn and Marshall) had the same number of turnovers as field goals.

The Flyers begin Atlantic 10 play against UMass. The game will be held in Springfield, Mass., instead of the Minutemen’s campus arena in Amherst.

The Flyers will need to succeed on the road in the conference to keep its NCAA tournament aspirations alive. Last year, they went 21-10 in the regular-season and had an RPI of 32, but they missed the NCAA tourney because of an 8-8 league record. They became the first team ever to win at least 20 games and have an RPI as high as 32 and miss The Dance.

They went 3-5 on the road in the A-10 last season, winning at Saint Louis, Fordham and St. Bonaventure.

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Warren foils Toledo’s strategy

By Doug Harris | Sunday, January 4, 2009, 07:00 AM

Toledo tried the same ploy Marquette did while desperately trying to stage a rally against Dayton: Whack-a-Warren.

The Rockets fouled London Warren purposely in the late stages, but he made 3-of-4 free throws in the 77-63 win and has made 10 of his last 12 to improve his percentage to 63.6. (He hit 52.5 percent for his career going into the season).

UD coach Brian Gregory eventually pulled the junior point guard to get a better foul shooter on the floor, but that move didn’t over to well with Warren.

“He was mad when I took him out,” Gregory said. “He probably should have been.”

Warren, incidentally, is the only starting point guard in the A-10 with as many steals as turnovers, an impressive ratio. He has 24 of each.

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Dayton fans show up in droves

By Doug Harris | Friday, January 2, 2009, 11:09 PM

Marcus Johnson, London Warren and their Dayton teammates deserve kudos for the way they played on the road against Toledo, but the UD fans deserve to take some bows, too.

The Flyer Faithful had a noticeable presence at Savage Arena, accounting for perhaps one-fifth of the crowd of 6,921. And they made a ruckus. When they broke out into a pro-Flyer chant during a timeout, the Toledo sound man turned up the volume on some recorded music to try to drown them out.

“Dayton fans are great. And when we play well, they’re even better,” UD coach Brian Gregory said. “They really support our program. We’re 13-1, and we’re going to be able to draw a lot of people.

“I think they like the way this team plays. … We’re sort of a blue-collar team that gets after it.”

The Flyers found themselves engaged in an offensive battle against the Rockets, something that hasn’t happened much this year. UD shot 50.8 percent, UT 46.4.

“I’m pleased with our guys. We played hard. We didn’t always play great,” Gregory said. “We weren’t great defensively. They did stuff to spread us out and attacked us well.”

Toledo coach Gene Cross was peeved about his team’s defense, especially how his players left Marcus Johnson open for his 3-point spree (he had three in about a four-minute span).

“It all boiled down to a lack of communication,” he said. “They get the ball down the court very quickly. We sprinted back to the paint, which we’re supposed to do, but you also have to recognize who their primary threats are.

“If Marcus Johnson is one of their primary threats, you have to get out on him,. You can’t stand and watch him shoot it. You have to close out like your pants are on fire.”

The Flyers probably would have prevailed, though, even if the Rockets threw a net over Johnson.

Too much depth.

The Rockets had a 24-19 lead with 5:40 to go in the first half, but the Flyers ended the period on a 20-6 run, getting a pair of 3-pointers from Rob Lowery and another from Chris Johnson.

While the Flyers kept sending in waves of fresh players, Cross was limited in his back-up options.

“I thought fatigue set in with them during the first half,” Gregory said.

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Flyers beat Rockets to improve to 13-1

By Doug Harris | Friday, January 2, 2009, 06:21 PM

TOLEDO — Marcus Johnson scored 21 points, Rob Lowery 13 and London Warren 11 to lead Dayton a 77-63 win over Toledo here Friday night.

The Flyers (13-1) led by 15 early in the second half before the Rockets (2-11) staged a rally, cutting the deficit to five with 13:33 to go. But Johnson hit three 3-pointers after that to give UD its fifth-straight win.

.

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Lowery signing paying off for Flyers

By Doug Harris | Thursday, January 1, 2009, 03:24 PM

Three thoughts about the Dayton basketball team:

• If Rob Lowery does nothing else in his career, he’s earned his scholarship based on his 21-point game against Marquette and his 13-point, five-assist outing against George Mason.

It’s hard to believe he still was floating around when the Flyers had a scholarship pop free after Thiago Cordeiro transferred last last season. UD coach Brian Gregory is always scouring the high school and juco ranks even when he doesn’t have a full ride to give — you never know when a disgruntled player might leave — but to get someone of Lowery’s caliber was a real coup. He was recruited only by Fresno State and a handful of other mid-majors and has turned out to be better than probably anyone expected.

• Chris Wright needs to develop a go-to move. The athletic sophomore forward can always be counted on for a spectacular play or two each game, but he won’t become a consistent scorer until get gets better around the basket.

He’s barely played a full season of college basketball, though, after missing 19 games last year with an ankle injury. He’ll get there.

• Love that George Mason game? Well, the Patriots will be back in a couple of years. The schools have agreed to another two-year series with the Flyers going on the road first.

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Flyers have knack for coming through at crunch time

By Doug Harris | Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 11:24 PM

George Mason has widened its recruiting reach since making that Final Four run in 2006, and the talent upgrade showed last year with a berth to the NCAA tournament and is evident again this season.

That is a gifted team, maybe even comparable in personnel, in my mind, to Pittsburgh, which visited UD last season.

The Flyers may play defense like an army of angry bees, but the Patriots just sneered at that pressure most of the night.

“In the first half, they had us on our heels defensively,” UD coach Brian Gregory admitted. “They attacked us and, for the first time, our pressure wan’t as good.

“We played a team that three years ago was in the Final Four and last year was in the NCAA tournament. You ain’t taking the ball away from those guards. What you need to do is disrupt and change the flow of the game, and we were a little bit too into them, too aggressive, and they took advantage of it.

“But in the second half, our defense was much better again. I think we wore them down a little bit physically. … Us playing 12 guys definitely was a key to winning.”

UD pulled out a 66-62 victory — a must-win, in my mind. With the Atlantic 10 fading the last couple of weeks, the Flyers need a glittering non-conference record to make The Dance, and a home loss to George Mason would have been costly.

At so many points in the game, I thought UD was as dead as a possum with tire tracks across its torso. Call it heart, call it savvy, call it confidence — or maybe it’s all of those things with some old-fashioned good fortune thrown in — but the Flyers made one clutch player after another when they needed them once again.

UD finishes its non-league season with a road game at Toledo (always a dicey proposition, no matter how feeble the Rockets’ record is) and then a home game against a short-handed Miami.

A 14-1 record appears within reach, and there can’t be a Flyer fan anywhere who wouldn’t have taken that when the season began.

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