Flyer Connection newsletter: Buzz is bad in Dayton after three straight losses

I responded, “The buzz is bad.”

The Dayton Flyers and the Flyer Faithful are reliving recent history, experiencing the second three-game losing streak in January in Atlantic 10 Conference play in the last two seasons.

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George Washington, Massachusetts and George Mason ruined Dayton’s A-10 championship hopes in 2025. La Salle, Saint Joseph’s and Rhode Island did the same in 2026.

In coach Anthony Grant’s first seven seasons, Dayton lost back-to-back A-10 games six times but always avoided the three-game skid. Dayton now has to beat No. 21 Saint Louis on Friday on the road to avoid its first four-game losing streak since January 2014.

That Dayton team that reached the Elite Eight 12 years ago lost four A-10 games in a row and four out of five games before winning nine of its last 10 games. Four of those losses were to top-100 teams.

The current Flyers can’t point to a tough schedule as a reason for their struggles. They haven’t reached the most challenging part of the A-10 season. Their five toughest games — two against Saint Louis, two against Virginia Commonwealth and one against George Mason — will take place in the next five games.

Dayton has enough opportunities in the weeks ahead to salvage some respectability, even if its NCAA tournament at-large potential might be dead. It’s just hard to imagine this team doing enough — sweeping Saint Louis, for example — with the way it is playing.

All the fault falls on Anthony Grant, of course. He runs the program. He picks the players. It’s his system the players run. He calls the plays. His assistants help him with all those decisions, but the wins and the losses go on his resume. It’s his program.

I doubt Grant has ever seen one of the negative comments — and there have been thousands over the years — about his coaching on social media, but he must know what the fans are thinking. He used the postgame press conference Tuesday after an 81-76 overtime loss to Rhode Island at UD Arena to put the blame on himself.

At least five times, Grant said some variation of, “It’s on me,” or “That’s on me.”

This isn’t the first time Grant has used the press conference to acknowledge failures.

In November 2021, after a loss to Lipscomb at UD Arena, Grant said, “I want to take the blame on this.”

Dayton lost one more game at home to Austin Peay in a three-game skid that season before turning its season around with three victories at the ESPN Events Invitational. Still, the three-game losing streak hurt it on Selection Sunday that season.

A season earlier, in January 2021, Grant took a similar approach after a 55-54 loss at Fordham.

“My job as a coach is to make sure they’re prepared,” Grant said then. “The fault right now is mine. I’ve got to figure out how I can fix it. Right now, this is extremely disappointing for my team to come out and play the way we did today. I’ve got to look at what I’m doing.”

Grant is in a similar situation this week. We’ll see what he can do starting Friday to reverse the negative buzz.

Saint Louis up next for Dayton

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

For parents with young children at home, three straight days of closed schools was a worse experience than Dayton’s three-game losing streak.

Bexley schools reopened Thursday. Everyone lives a mile, at most, from the three elementary schools, so we’re more fortunate than other districts. If there were 3 feet of snow, I would get my 7-year-old son Chase to school.

I was lucky to be home to watch and entertain Chase for three days. I woke up Saturday morning in Philadelphia with a plan to drive home after the game at Saint Joseph’s. I would have made it, but the last hour might have been sketchy.

However, I found a 6:30 p.m. flight to Columbus. I left Hagan Arena around 4:40 p.m. An Uber dropped me off at the airport a little after 5. I checked my bag and got to the gate in plenty of time.

When I landed in Columbus around 8 p.m., I rushed to my indoor soccer game 10 minutes away. I didn’t have time to pick up my car, so I took another Uber. It was worth it because I scored four goals — including a backward, back-heel one-touch shot that I would make once out of 100 times. The once-downtrodden Bexley Bananas won 6-0. There’s hope for struggling teams everywhere, I guess.

I don’t know how much hope Dayton fans should have that their team can win Friday night at Saint Louis, but I’ve seen stranger things than a Dayton team at the low point in its season beating one of the hottest teams in the country.

Saint Louis has won 14 straight games. It’s one victory away from reaching the halfway point of the A-10 schedule without a loss.

Saint Louis is a good example of how quickly a coach can turn around a program in the days of immediate eligibility for transfers. Second-year coach Josh Schertz made all the right moves in the offseason to turn the Billikens into a top-25 team.

Two years ago, Saint Louis fans were more miserable than Dayton fans are now. I was at the A-10 tournament in 2024 when Travis Ford lost his job. In fact, I was the only veteran reporter at the press conference when Saint Louis exited the A-10 tournament and had to ask Ford about the reports that he had been fired.

Now Saint Louis is on the top of the A-10 world, enjoying the type of season Dayton had in 2020. The biggest difference between 2020 Dayton and 2026 Saint Louis is Dayton played a tougher non-conference schedule and took one of the nation’s top teams, Kansas, to overtime before losing. Saint Louis hasn’t been tested like that.

Saint Louis has been more dominant than that Dayton team in A-10 play, though, winning games by an average margin of 16.6 points per game. In 2020, Dayton had an average margin of victory of 14.0 points in A-10 games.

Saint Louis announced Wednesday the 8 p.m. game Friday is sold out. It’s billing the game as a Billiken Blizzard and encouraging fans to wear white.

Saint Louis averages 8,146 fans, second in the A-10 behind Dayton (13,407). A crowd of 7,481 watched Saint Louis beat George Washington Tuesday at Chaifetz Arena. In its last big weekend game against Richmond on Jan. 17, Saint Louis had a crowd of 9,266.

Six years ago, Saint Louis sold out Chaifetz Arena with 10,007 fans when No. 13 Dayton visited. The Flyers won that game 78-76 in overtime on a last-second 3-pointer by Jalen Crutcher.

Fast Break

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