“She doesn’t know much about basketball,” Brea said, “but whenever I would shoot, she would just say, ‘Fuego! Fuego!’ Somebody picked it up, and I kind of just went with it.”
Brea lived up to the nickname Saturday by making 4 of 6 3-pointers, including three in the second half. His final 3-pointer with 43 seconds to play gave Dayton a 78-76 lead against Davidson, and that turned out to be the biggest shot — of many — in an 82-76 victory at UD Arena in the final regular-season game of the year.
Dayton (22-9, 14-4) knocked off a team that clinched a share of the Atlantic 10 Conference regular-season championship three days earlier and earned the No. 2 seed in the A-10 tournament when Saint Louis beat Virginia Commonwealth 69-65 later Saturday afternoon. The Flyers will play No. 7 seed George Washington or No. 10 seed Massachusetts at 6 p.m. Friday in the quarterfinals at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
VCU’s loss also meant Davidson won the A-10 championship outright and earned the No. 1 seed. No. 3 VCU and No. 4 St. Bonaventure also earned double byes into the quarterfinals.
Dayton closed the regular-season with seven victories in its last eight games, and the last two against Richmond and Davidson were decided in the final minute. This finish followed a last-second 55-53 victory on a dunk by R.J. Blakney on Tuesday at Richmond.
Brea’s shot came 22 seconds after Davidson guard Foster Loyer, who led all scorers with 25 points, made 3 of 3 free throws to give his team a 76-75 lead. Brea caught a pass from Malachi Smith behind the 3-point line, looked inside to DaRon Holmes II but kept the ball. Then he dribbled left and right before stepping back and shooting over the arms of Davidson’s 6-foot-7 junior forward Hyunjung Lee.
Brea made the shot one week after missing what would have been a game-winning 3-point at the buzzer in a 62-60 loss at La Salle.
“Honestly these last couple of days, I’ve just been thinking about that last shot,” Brea said. “It’s heartbreaking. I just tell himself, ‘You’ve got to keep working, and when the opportunity presents itself again, do what I have to do.’”
Brea finished with 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting. He also made a game-tying 3-pointer with 13:16 to play in the game and a go-ahead 3-pointer with 10:07 remaining.
“We call him Fuego for a reason,” said DaRon Holmes II, who led the Flyers with 20 points. “That’s his middle name. He has fire. Once he gets hot, there’s really no stopping him. I knew that shot was going in after he did that step back.”
Dayton coach Anthony Grant said Davidson did a good job guarding Brea on the play, but Brea was able to create space for the shot.
“We felt like if we could get him a look that it had a good chance to go in,” Grant said. “That was a heck of a shot, a big-time shot. Then we had some stops at the end that made the difference.”
Lee missed a 3-pointer with 17 seconds remaining, and Mustapha Amzil grabbed the rebound for Dayton. Kobe Elvis and R.J. Blakney clinched the victory by combining to make 4 of 4 free throws in the final 14 seconds.
“I told Lee, ‘You were sensational defending that 3-point shot there at the end,’” Davidson coach Bob McKillop said on the Davidson postgame radio show. “‘You could not have done a better job. That kid made an incredible shot. Then you got a great look, and it just rimmed out.’ That’s how close this game was. We did as good a job as we could, and we just fell short in those two plays.”
In a tense game that featured 11 lead changes and 12 ties, neither team led by more than six points. Davidson made 11 of 23 3-pointers (47.8%), and Dayton made 10 of 19 (52.6%). The teams combined for only nine turnovers.
This was one of the best-played games of the season involving Dayton and ranks as its third-best victory if you judge by the NCAA Evaluation Tool rankings. Kansas is No. 9. Virginia Tech is No. 32. Davidson (25-5, 15-3) is No. 43.
“We’ve been a special team,” Holmes said. “It just shows how much potential we have and what we can do. I think we can do even better than that. Going forth in the A-10 tournament and in the years coming, we’re going to keep working hard and accomplish things.”
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