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Saturday, March 14, 2009
Gregory knows Flyers let opportunity slip away
For Dayton coach Brian Gregory, this one stung.
He knows how tough it is to earn a bye in the Atlantic 10 tournament and then win a game to reach the semifinals.
You’re one victory away from playing for the league crown on national TV, and instead of seizing the moment, you end up turning in one of your worst performances of the year.
The Flyers suffered a 77-66 loss to Duquesne in the semifinals Friday night, dropping their record to 26-7. Is that good enough to make the NCAA tournament? The experts say it is. We’ll find out Sunday whether their prognosticating powers are working.
That was little consolation to Gregory immediately after the game, though.
“At the end of the regular season, you have a great opportunity, and we just didn’t take advantage of it,” he said. “That’s hard because I know how hard those opportunities are to get. … But hopefully we can move on and learn from it. When you get into these situations, you have to respond better.”
The Dukes — who changed their strategy after losing to the Flyers twice in the regular-season, going to a deliberate pace — scored on seven of eight possessions in one first-half stretch to take a 28-19 lead, the last coming on an emphatic dunk from first-team all-league guard Aaron Jackson. They made 13 of their first 23 shots, including five 3’s.
The Flyers cut the deficit to four, but Jackson gave Damian Saunders a nifty assist on the last play of the first half as the Dukes took a 35-29 lead at the break.
“To be honest, I felt pretty good at halftime. … we were only down six,” Gregory said. “Again, we weren’t playing the way we should be playing. We weren’t pressuring the ball offensively. We took some ill-advised shots. And so now you need to do some things defensively better.
“We got off to a good start. But we had some fastbreak opportunities where we took some quick, bad shots, and now you’re down 10 or 11 again.
“You look at the pace of play, they still scored 77 points. Our defense just wasn’t good enough.”
The Flyers cut the lead to three early in the second half before the avalanche hit.
“We got the lead back down, but we took some quick shots,” forward Charles Little said. “When you take quick shots against a team as good as they are, they’re going to make you pay in transition.
“(Melquan) Bolding got out there and hit some 3’s, and Aaron (Jackson) got to the rim and took advantage of our quick shots and turnovers.”
When UD and Duquense met last Saturday, the Flyers shot 23 free throws, making 11. In the A-10 tourney game, UD shot just 11, hitting seven.
What that told Gregory was his team didn’t play with its usual aggressiveness in taking the ball to the rim.
“Give Duquesne credit,” he said. “They played extremely well today and have for the last half of the season. We played pretty well last week to beat them. And I knew tonight was going to be a tough battle. We didn’t respond very well.”
