Archdeacon: Flyers are goose-bumped from A-10 Tournament

“They always make fun of me in the locker room; they always say how tight I am,” Dukes head coach Keith Dambrot said with a little laugh.

“(Senior forward) Tre Williams said to me, ‘I’m loose as a goose!’

That’s when Dambrot said Necas, a freshman from Blansko, Czech Republic, approached him with a perplexed look:

“Jakub, who just got here this year and had not been in the United States, said ‘I don’t even know what a goose is.’

“‘What’s a goose?’”

In the closing minutes of the game — a contest that Duquesne led the entire first half — the Dukes surged back from a brief four-point deficit as the Flyers missed shot after shot after shot, several of them three pointers.

That’s when Necas learned another goose idiom:

The Dayton Flyers’ goose was cooked.

Looking very little like the team that entered the game 24-6, ranked No. 24 in the nation and the No. 3 seed in the A-10 Tournament, the Flyers played their worst game of the season and fell to sixth-seeded Duquesne, 65-57.

Dayton had beaten the Dukes twice in the regular season: by 10 in a January game in Pittsburgh and by 16 on Feb. 13 at UD Arena.

But on this night — using aggressive play from the opening tip and some excellent coaching strategy by Dambrot — the Dukes controlled the game.

It became the third time in the past six A-10 Tournaments that Dayton has lost its opening game. The Flyers have won the A-10 Tournament only once — way back in 2003 — and that was when it was played at UD Arena.

Once the Flyers leave their home court for the conference tournament they too often turn into Superman without his cape or Linus without his blanket.

As Flyers head coach Anthony Grant put it after this one: “We were out of character all night.”

It was an inopportune time for a meltdown. The stage was set for the Flyers. Earlier in the day the other top seeds — No. 1 Richmond, No. 2 Loyola, and No. 4 UMass — all had lost.

“Things today were just out of character for what we were about to do,” a dejected Grant said afterward. “It was a different feeling. We shouldn’t play differently, but it’s the postseason; a tournament atmosphere; we’re playing here in Brooklyn. There were a lot of different things tonight that didn’t resemble the things we’d been successful with all year.”

The Flyers, who led the A-10 in field goal (48.2) and three-point percentage (40.7), shot poorly.

They made just 32 percent of their shots from the floor and went 7-of-26 (26.9 percent) from beyond the arc.

Duquesne dominated the boards, outrebounding UD, 45-28.

The Dukes outscored Dayton in the paint 30-18 and their bench outscored UD’s thin group of replacements, 20-8.

The only Flyer to shine a bit was DaRon Holmes II — the Co-Player of the Year in the A-10 — who finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds. Most of his points came at the foul line, where he was 13 for 16, including 10 for 10 in the second half.

In the first half, he was 3 for 6 at the stripe and as the halftime shoot-around was, ending, he tried to go to the huddle when assistant coach Ricardo Greer pulled him back to the free throw line and had him make several straight before going to the sideline.

That paid off on a night when he struggled from the floor (5 for 13).

The only other Flyer in double figures was Nate Santos with 10 points.

Dukes on a roll

The fact that all four tops seeds lost — after getting double byes and playing their first  tournament games on the Barclays court against teams that already had played the previous day — brought up the question if the inactivity was a real disadvantage.

“I’ve been in that situation at Akron, where we had to sit a long time and then play and that’s hard,” said Dambrot, the former Zips coach, who was very kind to Dayton in his postgame remarks.

“It’s harder than people realize because you can’t simulate game activity. Other teams have been on the court and shot on the court. It’s different.

“And it was hard especially for (Dayton) because they have some guys who are banged up, so they don’t have a lot of guys to practice.”

Grant briefly touched on that, but didn’t use it as an excuse:

“At 8 something tonight was the first time our guys took the (Barclays) court and shot on those rims. I don’t know, maybe that’s part of the reason the top four seeds are no longer playing in the tournament. It would be nice if you could have some time to get the feel for the gym.”

He quickly pivoted and talked about the “great job” Dambrot did this season.

Duquesne started conference play 0-5.

“When you start the way they started, sometimes you can lose guys,” Grant said. “He kept them together, kept them believing, kept them fighting. That’s a credit to him, his staff, and the players.”

Dukes’ guard Dae Dae Grant — who played his first three seasons at Miami University, where he scored 1,171 of his 2,178 collegiate points — played in his 150th college game Thursday night. He talked about how their team — now 22-11 —  has never felt more “togetherness,” more “brotherhood” than now.

It shows.

Duquesne has won eight of its last nine games. Meanwhile, the Flyers have won just five of nine. All four losses have been away from the security blanket wrappings of UD Arena.

Offensive struggles

Duquesne won because of some decisions Dambrot made and his team executed.

Their defense held the Flyers to 57 points, more than 18 below UD’s average.

“We had to make some hard choices,” Dambrot said.  “We had a choice of do we want to double (Holmes) or do we want to play man for man? We choose to play more just straight up on him because we didn’t want to give up threes, which would have popped the game open. It was a tough, tough decision; a hard decision as a coach.”

It worked because Dayton’s long-range shooters were ineffective:

Koby Brea, who’s from nearby Washington Heights and had a large cheering section that waved a Dominican flag, held signs, and chanted his name — came into the game leading the nation in three-point accuracy (49.7 percent).

He went 2 for 6 from long range. Enoch Cheeks and Kobe Elvis were both 0-for-3.

Late in the game with Duquesne clinging to a 60-57 lead with under a minute left, Dambrot sent in a play for veteran guard Jimmy Clark III and with 49 seconds left ,the VCU transfer buried a three-pointer that was the final dagger.

“It was a play called by the coaching staff,” Clark said. “They trusted me to make a play, whether that was to get to the basket and pass, or make a shot myself. (UD) knew I was  going to attack the basket and (Cheeks) kind of played off me, so I just took what he gave me. I shot the three.”

Dayton, which still almost surely will make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team, will find out its fate Sunday evening when the tournament field is announced. It would be the Flyers first tournament appearance since 2017.

But the mood was far from euphoric Thursday night.

“There’s no guarantees for anything,” Grant said.  “We hope we get an opportunity to continue the season. We expect to based on the body of work we had all year. We played 31 games and were victorious 24 times. And we played a pretty tough schedule.

“But right now the feeling is disappointment: in losing and not having the opportunity for this team to win a championship in our conference, either in the regular season or the post season  So there’s disappointment right now.”

And that all added to some final education for Jakub Necas.

When 6-foot-9 David Dixon, the Dukes’ most consistent big man, fouled out with 3:28 left, Dambrot sent in the freshman Necas instead of grad student Dusan Mahorcic or sophomore Halil Barre, both bigger and more experienced.

“I felt he could get out on the floor and on the three ball a little bit better,” Dambrot said. “He’s really smart. He’s not as strong, but he understands the game.

“I thought he gave the best opportunity to us. It was straight instincts.”

And it paid off.

In those pressurized final minutes, Necas got two defensive rebounds and blocked Holmes on a lay-up attempt with 75 seconds left. The Flyers would not score again.

That’s when Necas, whether he realized it or not, had a hand in reconfiguring another goose phrase that defined this game:

On this night, the Dayton Flyers were the goose that laid (not a golden) egg.