PITTSBURGH — The confetti awaits at PPG Paints Arena. I walked by giant bags of confetti colored red, white, black and yellow — covering all the colors of the Dayton Flyers and Virginia Commonwealth Rams — next to the court on Sunday morning. A confetti gun stood ready, too.

In 2015 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y, the confetti rained on VCU after a 71-65 victory against Dayton in the Atlantic 10 Conference championship game. In 2023, it was the same story as VCU celebrated a 68-56 victory against Dayton in the final in Brooklyn.

On Sunday, Dayton gets another chance to win a tournament it hasn’t won since 2003 and has never won outside UD Arena. It would exorcise many demons at once by going through VCU, the one A-10 program that has had more success than Dayton over the last seasons, to end that drought.

No. 4 seed Dayton plays No. 1 seed VCU at 1 p.m. CBS will broadcast the game. I know many Dayton fans, who weren’t here Friday to see Dayton beat St. Bonaventure 68-63 in the quarterfinals and missed the amazing finish Saturday in a 70-69 victory against Saint Louis, will drive to Pittsburgh Sunday for the final game.

I ran into Jim Larkin, a former Flyer and 1972 UD graduate, and his wife outside PPG Paints on Sunday morning on my walk to the media entrance. They drove over today.

Dayton great Brian Roberts is also at the tournament. He told me Friday he had not witnessed an A-10 tournament in person since his final season in 2008.

Another person driving over Sunday for the game is Dayton athletic director Neil Sullivan, who took a medical leave of absence on Feb. 2. I thought of Sullivan on Saturday when I photographed associate AD PJ Hubert hugging players and coaches as they left the court. I have many photos of Sullivan doing the same thing.

Then Sullivan called me on Sunday morning. He wanted fans to know he would be at the game and they would likely see him, though he plans to keep a low profile, but he didn’t want it to be a surprise.

This is what he told me:

 “As you can imagine, I’d prefer not to go into all the details publicly,” Sullivan said. “I’ll just say that I dealt with a series of health issues in December and January that turned out to be a little more serious than I expected toward mid-January. I tried to push through, but after a few symptoms and a few tests, it became clear I needed to take more than a few days.

“I returned to the office around the first week of March. I’m still on a pitch count — kind of restricted minutes, or whatever analogy someone wants to use — but I am around and glad to be here today and supporting the team.”

Sullivan lives and breathes Dayton basketball. No one cares about the results more than him. I hope he has a good Sunday and continues to make progress in his recovery.