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Dayton has bounced in and out of Palm’s bracket and all around it, as well. As of Monday, he was predicting the Flyers will earn a No. 11 seed and play Memphis in the first round in San Antonio. However, when asked if Dayton needs to win one or two games this week at the Atlantic 10 tournament in Brooklyn, Palm said the Flyers need to win all of them. Anything less than four wins in four days might do, Palm said, but if they win four they don’t leave their fate in the hands of the committee.
“People think if they beat Saint Joseph’s, that’s enough, but then Xavier (or another team) makes a run and all of a sudden, it’s not enough,” Palm said. “If they don’t win all the games, they’re at the mercy of what other teams do. Beating Saint Joseph’s might be enough. The only definite is winning the tournament.”
Dayton does have an impressive resume, enough to make them a bubble team on Sunday no matter what happens this week.
“They’ve shown they can beat teams away from home,” Palm said. “The win at Saint Louis was big. They beat Gonzaga in Maui. They beat California, which is one of the teams they’re competing with. That’s a good thing. The win over UMass was big. They beat George Washington. They beat some of the contenders in the league. The problem is they’ve got three bad losses. If you take a fourth one, you really put them in jeopardy. They’ve won nine out of 10, not that that matters. They’re doing what they need to, trying to play their way in.”
Palm said the idea that the committee awards teams playing well at the end of the season is one of the biggest myths of the selection process. That stopped being a consideration four or five years ago, he said.
Palm said the committee also doesn’t consider what conference a team is from, so the idea that the committee wouldn’t take six teams from the A-10 is a false one.
“It’s not about the conference,” he said. “The conference never comes up.”
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