With the game tied at 68-68, Jacob Conner stood with the ball in front of the Dayton bench, a step from coach Anthony Grant. He threw the in-bounds pass to senior guard Javon Bennett behind the 3-point line.
Bennett dribbled to his left, splitting two defenders, Deywilk Tavarez, who reached at the ball from Bennett’s right, and Joshua Ola-Joseph. Bennett switched the ball from his right to his left hand for one bounce and then cradled the ball with his right before taking two steps and launching himself toward the basket and lofting a high-arcing shot.
Loyola’s Miles Rubin, a 6-foot-10 forward who leads the Atlantic 10 Conference in blocked shots (2.5 per game), jumped at about the same time and tried to get a hand on Bennett’s shot. He didn’t. The ball hit the backboard and fell through the net with 1.9 seconds to play.
The shot led to a 70-68 victory for Dayton at Joseph J. Gentile Arena, where it lost games in each of the past two seasons.
“We had a play for me to get downhill,” Bennett said, “and we executed it perfectly. I was able to split the defense and get to the basket. I was hoping to get fouled, but I was able to get all the way there.”
Bennett’s first last-second game-winner in college came five years after he made a bank shot buzzer-beater from just inside halfcourt as a junior at Trinity Prep High School in Orlando. That basket gave his team a 68-66 postseason victory against P.K. Yonge.
Bennett’s high school teammates chased him down the court to celebrate this victory. On Saturday, De’Shayne Montgomery greeted him first with a hard hand slap and a chest bump.
After Loyola Chicago failed to get off a shot in the last 1.9 seconds, Bennett’s teammates surrounded him and hugged him as they walked off the court. In the locker room, they drenched Bennett with bottles of water.
Bennett led Dayton with 24 points on 7-of-18 shooting. He played all but two minutes and didn’t leave the court in the second half.
“I’m so proud of him,” Grant said. “Just the fight he showed.”
“We know how hard he works,” Conner said, “and so to see that come to fruition in front of everybody, it’s a pretty cool feeling.”
Dayton (11-4) won its second game in a row without two key big men, Amaël L’Etang (lower-body injury) and Malcolm Thomas (ankle), and kept pace with three other A-10 teams that improved to 2-0 in league play Saturday: Virginia Commonwealth; George Mason; and George Washington.
Here are three takeaways from Dayton’s 15th game:
Credit: David Jablonski
1: The Flyers needed a big comeback: Dayton trailed by as many as 15 points in the first half and by as many as 12 in the second half. Loyola had the lead for 24 straight minutes, from the middle of the first half until the four-minute mark in the second half.
With 6 minutes, 30 seconds to play, Dayton trailed 63-52. Then Bennett started the comeback with a 3-pointer at the 6:09 mark.
De’Shayne Montgomery, who tallied 20 points on 6-of-12 shooting, followed with six straight points.
Bennett tied the game at 63-63 on a layup with 3:38 to play, capping an 11-0 run.
“They just fought all the way through,” Grant said. “It’s always going to be 40 minutes. You’ve got to finish. You’ve got to play 40 minutes.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
2: The foul line was the place to be in the final two minutes: After Bennett tied the score at 63-63, Justin Moore, who led the Ramblers with 19 points, hit a jump shot with 3:05 to play to put the Ramblers back on top.
With 2:15 to play, Bennett was fouled outside the 3-point line while dribbling. He made two free throws to tie the game.
With 27 seconds to play, after Loyola’s Kymany Houinsou made 1 of 2 free throws, Bennett made two more free throws to give Dayton its first lead since the 11:11 mark in the first half.
After a defensive stop, Bennett returned to the line with 14 seconds to play. This time, he made 1 of 2, giving Dayton a 68-66 lead. That was the last of 21 made free throws for Dayton, which outscored Loyola by 18 at the line.
Then Loyola tied the game on two free throws by Houinsou with 8 seconds to play. He missed his second free throw but got a second chance after a lane violation against Dayton’s Keonte Jones.
Dayton dribbled the ball past halfcourt and called timeout with 5.5 seconds remaining, setting up the play for Bennett.
“He threw the ball up and made a play,” Loyola coach Drew Valentine said in a postgame radio interview. “Give him credit for making a play. We probably should have guarded the ball better, but outside of that, it was just a player making a play.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
3: Bryce Heard played well in his hometown: Heard, a graduate of Homewood-Flossmoor High School south of Chicago, was a bright spot for Dayton in the first half. He scored all his nine points off the bench before halftime. He made 2 of 4 field goals and 4 of 4 free throws.
Heard said he had 30-40 people in his cheering section. That helped Dayton fans take over Gentile Arena, though UD’s large alumni base in Chicago always makes its presence known in games at Loyola.
“It felt like a home game,” Heard said. “The Flyer fans showed up.”
NEXT GAME
Who: George Washington (11-4, 2-0) at Dayton (11-4, 2-0)
When: 8 p.m., Tuesday
TV: CBS Sports Network
Radio: 95.7-FM, 1290-AM
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