This season, Dayton had to wait only 25 days to get a second chance against Saint Louis, which beat Dayton 102-71 on Jan. 30 at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis. The teams meet again at 7 p.m. Tuesday, this time at UD Arena, where the Billikens have lost 11 straight games since a 67-59 victory in 2014.
“It’ll be huge,” Dayton guard Javon Bennett said Saturday after a 78-66 victory against Davidson. “We’ve been able to get our mojo back, so it’ll be good for us.”
Dayton (18-9, 9-5) trails Saint Louis (25-2, 13-1) by four games with four to play. The Billikens ranked 18th in the Associated Press top-25 poll last week. Assuming Saint Louis stayed in the top 25 Monday, it will be the first ranked A-10 team to play the Flyers at UD Arena since No. 14 Butler in 2013.
Here are five things to know about the game:
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
1: Series history: Dayton leads the series 44-31. It won four in a row with two-game sweeps in each of the past two seasons before the first matchup this season.
“We didn’t play our best,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said Saturday. “They played awesome. They handled us pretty well.”
The 31-point loss at Saint Louis was also the worst loss of coach Grant’s nine seasons, topping a 77-49 defeat at Virginia Tech on Dec. 7, 2022.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
2: State of the season: While Dayton won three games last week, beating Davidson, George Mason and Duquesne, to rebound from five losses in six games, Saint Louis experienced a week of mixed results. It beat second-place Virginia Commonwealth (21-7, 12-3) 88-75 on Friday in St. Louis, bouncing back from an 81-76 loss at Rhode Island on Tuesday.
For Rhode Island (15-12, 6-8), its best victory of the season fell between two losses to teams in the bottom half of the standings: 70-66 at home to Fordham (16-12, 7-8); and 59-46 at La Salle (8-19, 4-10).
Saint Louis trailed VCU 55-46 with under 14 minutes to play and outscored VCU 42-20 the rest of the way. Kellen Thames led the Billikens with 16 points. Four other players scored in double figures.
“We’ve had a very good season to this point,” Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz said Friday in his postgame press conference. “We’re 25-2. If we’re able to finish it the right way and win a championship, it’s a great season, no matter what happens. You can’t have a special season unless you perform in the postseason. If we’re going to have a special season, the physicality piece has got to match the rest of it. And that’s on me to do as a coach to get it to where it needs to be.”
Schertz saw that against VCU. During a timeout in the second half, he told the team, “If we can rebound, we’ll win the game.”
From there, Schertz said, “We really cut the water off, and that triggered everything. We were getting stops. We just weren’t finishing possessions. Once we started finishing possessions, then the dam broke.”
Saint Louis completed a two-game sweep of VCU.
“When you’re playing against really good teams — we talk about this a lot — really good competition can take you to places you couldn’t get to on your own,” Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz said in his postgame press conference. “You need the competition to push you there, to take you there, to raise your level. Otherwise, you lose.”
3: Late-game fracas: The benches cleared in the final seconds of the Saint Louis vs. VCU game. Despite shoving and pushing and numerous ejections, the A-10 did not suspend any players.
“The Atlantic 10 has issued reprimands to both Saint Louis and VCU for violating sportsmanship policies in the A-10 Code of Conduct during the incident at the conclusion of the Friday night game,” the league announced Sunday. “Additionally, both programs will be fined according to conference policy. There will be no conference-issued suspensions as the officials adjudicated the incident within the prescribed rules of the game in exemplary fashion. This was an unfortunate end to a great college basketball game between two of the best teams in the nation. The A-10 considers the matter closed and looks forward to the remainder of the regular season and the Atlantic 10 Championship in Pittsburgh in March.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
4: Scouting report: Robbie Avila, a 6-foot-10 senior center, tops the A-10 player of the year rankings on KenPom.com. He leads Saint Louis with 12.7 points and 4.2 assists per game.
• Amari McCottry, a 6-6 sophomore guard, ranks second on Ken Pomeroy’s list. He averages 10.7 points 5.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists.
• Trey Green, a 6-0 redshirt sophomore guard, made 7 of 10 3-pointers and scored 23 points in the first game against Dayton. He leads the A-10 in 3-point shooting percentage (46.8, 80 of 171).
• Ishan Sharma, a 6-5 sophomore guard, ranks third in the A-10 in 3-point shooting percentage (44.5, 69 of 155).
• Dayton ranks first in the country in free-throw rate (47.1), according to KenPom. The number measures a team’s ability to get to the line. Dayton ranks 15th in the country in free-throw attempts per game (25.8).
Dayton also ranks fourth in the country in the percentage of its points (25.7) it scores at the line.
5: Odds & Ends: KenPom.com gives Dayton a 29% chance of winning and predicts a 80-74 score. Dayton is No. 86 in the Pomeroy ratings. Saint Louis is No. 24.
• Dayton ranks 84th in the NET. Saint Louis is No. 22.
This is a Quadrant 1 game for Dayton, which is 0-5 in Quad 1, 5-0 in Quad 2, 5-4 in Quad 3 and 8-0 in Quad 4.
This is a Quad 3 game for Saint Louis, which is 2-0 in Quad 1, 4-2 in Quad 2, 8-0 in Quad 3 and 10-0 in Quad 4.
NEXT GAME
Who: Saint Louis at Dayton
When: 7 p.m., Tuesday
TV: FanDuel Sports
Radio: 95.7-FM, 1290-AM
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