Flyer Connection newsletter: Roll continues for Dayton with two more impressive performances

“Two or three?”

“Three or four?”

It goes on like this until the doctor settles on the perfect prescription. I had my annual exam Thursday at Breslow Eye Care in Bexley. That’s why this is fresh in my mind.

My eyes are fine — well, as fine as they can be with contacts that allow me to drive a car, drain a jump shot and write this newsletter — but perhaps the vision check came at a good time because, like many people, my eyes deceived me earlier this week at UD Arena.

***

How could a team that lost 102-71 to Saint Louis on Jan. 30 turn that result around with a 77-62 victory on Tuesday?

The Dayton Flyers did just that, proving once again that one of coach Anthony Grant’s favorite quotes — “Every game has a life of its own” — is as true today as the first day he used it, whenever that was.

If an eye doctor showed you a video of Dayton from three weeks ago and a video of the Flyers playing No. 23 Saint Louis for the second time, you would have an easier time spotting the differences than I did with those rows of letters in my exam.

The passing is crisper. The shots are falling — from inside and outside the arc and at the free-throw line. The mistakes are fewer, especially when it comes to turnovers. Amaël L’Etang and Jordan Derkack are healthier and better conditioned after missing four and five games, respectively, earlier in A-10 play.

Dayton not only won four games in a row but won them all by double digits without having trailed in the second half. This is the first time since the 2022-23 season Dayton has won four straight A-10 games by 10 or more points.

Except for the first game in the streak, a 70-59 victory against Davidson, when the Flyers needed a 7-0 run with just under four minutes to play to clinch the victory, they have had no tense moments in the last 10 minutes of the games.

Dayton was not as dominant in a 5-0 start in Atlantic 10 Conference play. It won four of those games by single digits and needed a last-second shot from Javon Bennett to beat Loyola Chicago 70-68 on Jan. 3.

Dayton beat Saint Louis thanks to a 40-15 run to start the game. No one could believe their eyes.

“I think they won in so many different ways,” former Flyer Keith Waleskowski said on the WHIO Radio postgame show. “I think we came out and we were more focused on us and what we do and less focused on the crowd, the atmosphere and the other team and what they were doing.

“It was more so, ‘Just what is the scouting report? What are we doing on offense? What are we doing on defense?’ We stuck to it. Was it a perfect game? No. Absolutely not. But did we let our lapses turn from one or two possessions into three or four or five possessions? No. We cut it off. We corrected it. We turned it around, and we made plays. We didn’t let things get out of hand when they started to turn south. I thought it was just an incredible effort on both ends.”

The good and the bad

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

Following the victory against Saint Louis, Grant talked to the team in the locker room and told the players, “You represented the name on the front of that jersey today with pride and with conviction. All the things we talked about you went out and did today. So just understand that and be proud of that.”

That speech aired at the end of UD’s official “Cinematic Recap” of the game on YouTube.com. Dayton’s social media team does a great job chronicling victories. Losses? Not so much. That’s the media’s job. No program is going to publish a compilation of turnover highlights — nor should they — as I’ve done before.

Earlier this season, after Dayton’s 67-64 loss at La Salle, I wrote a story ranking the worst losses of Grant’s nine seasons, using the Ken Pomeroy ratings as a measuring stick. I put all 16 losses to sub-200 teams in order and wrote a paragraph or two on each game.

One fan saw that story and sent me an email after the first Saint Louis game accusing me of siding with the anti-Grant fans. It read, in part, “Your focus on the worst losses of Grant’s tenure and headline proclaiming ‘dead’ hopes are not so subtle examples of your own thoughts on the matter.”

First of all, there was never a headline about “dead hopes,” only a story that mentioned that Dayton’s A-10 regular-season championship hopes were dead, which was true then and now. It trailed Saint Louis by four games with nine games to play. The Flyers were not mathematically eliminated then and still aren’t, facing a three-game deficit with three to play, but they weren’t overcoming that gap and won’t overcome this one.

I’ve never expressed an opinion on Grant. That’s the job of a columnist, not a beat writer. My goal is to provide balanced coverage of the good and the bad and the highs and the lows.

With that aim, I wrote a new story this week ranking Grant’s best victories. He is 15-25 against teams in the top 50 of the Pomeroy ratings. I put the 15 victories, starting with the famous upset of Kansas in 2021, in order.

The victory against Saint Louis, which is No. 26 in the Pomeroy ratings, ranks fourth, though that could change depending on how Saint Louis does the rest of the season.

Grant walks straight to the locker room after losses without stopping to look back. After big victories, he stops at the edge of the court to hug and shake hands with all the players. That’s what he did Tuesday.

“We always try to celebrate and enjoy victories,” Grant said. “That’s where the fun and the joy is. I want these guys to enjoy that. This was our fourth game in (nine) days. We’ve got a prep day (Wednesday). It will be a light day. And we’ve got a one-day prep for a Friday road game. We want to enjoy today, and then we’ve got to get ready for a tough one on the road.”

A tough place to play

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

It’s 6 a.m. on Friday as I write this, sitting next to my 7-year-old son Chase, who’s playing Roblox on his iPad. I have a 10 a.m. flight from Columbus to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The weather report looks promising and I have time to kill before Dayton plays George Washington at 7 p.m. at the Charles E. Smith Center, so I’ll probably walk the 3½ miles from the airport to the Lincoln Memorial and then decide what I want to do with my day. Someone recommended the Folger Shakespeare Library, near the U.S. Capitol, and that’s one tourist spot I haven’t visited.

Dayton and George Washington have traveled similar paths this season. Each team had a four-game losing streak in conference play. Each is playing better now. Dayton has won four in a row. George Washington has won three of its last four games, with only a loss at VCU in that stretch.

Dayton battled injuries and is healthier now, though guard Bryce Heard missed the Saint Louis game with a lower-body injury. George Washington lost its best player, Rafael Castro, for six games but got him back Tuesday in a 104-77 victory at La Salle.

Like Tom Gola Arena at La Salle, the Smith Center more often than not has small crowds and little atmosphere when Dayton comes to play, but that doesn’t make it an easy place to win. It’s the opposite, in fact.

Dayton is 3-4 in the seven games I’ve covered at the Smith Center.

In 2015, the first time I saw the Flyers play there, Dayton’s Dyshawn Pierre blocked a shot by George Washington’s Kethan Savage in the final seconds of overtime only to have the ball fly straight into the hands of Joe McDonald. His shot with less than a second to play handed Dayton a 65-64 defeat.

In 2017, George Washington built a 21-5 lead by making its first nine shots and beat Dayton 87-81. That was Dayton’s fourth loss in a row at the Smith Center and eighth loss in nine games.

Dayton ended the losing streak at the Smith Center in 2019, rallying from a 22-point deficit for a 72-66 victory. its first at the arena since 2019. That started a three-game winning streak for the Flyers at GW that ended in 2023 with a 76-69 loss.

In the 2023 defeat, Dayton trailed 36-22 at halftime. Last year, in an 82-62 loss at the Smith Center, Dayton faced an even bigger halftime deficit, 43-27.

Needless to say, getting off to a better start Friday night would help Dayton’s chances.

“It should be a great environment,” George Washington coach Chris Caputo told reporters on Tuesday. “Playing a Friday night ESPN game at the Smith Center, where it’s meaningful within the league, is a good place (for us) four years into my tenure.”

Fast Break

Here’s other news that might interest Flyer fans: