Coach Brian Gregory didn’t mind going on the road to play Charleston in South Carolina.
“With all that recognition and Dayton being in the spotlight to start the whole thing — that’s fine with me," he said.
A season later, the new coach Archie Miller had a different reaction when his team had to go on the road as the No. 2 seed to play Iowa in the first round.
“That’s obviously the downfall of the First Four, I guess,” Miller said. “It’s a good seed. Typically, the 1s and 2s are really set up. You’re at home. Us having to go on the road doesn’t make us feel real good. But the fact we’re a 2 seed, if we do happen to win, we’ll get another game at UD Arena.”
That didn’t happen in 2011 or 2012. Dayton lost in the first round both times.
In 2022 and 2025, Dayton did win first-round road games, but by that point, it couldn’t play second-round games at home either because of OHSAA boys basketball state championship games.
That was the story this year, too. The only way No. 2 seed Dayton could play at home in the NIT would be to reach the third round and hope No. 1 seed Wake Forest lost before the quarterfinals.
That scenario played out this week, giving Dayton (25-11) a 7 p.m. Wednesday game against Illinois State (22-12) at UD Arena. The four seniors who suffered a 68-62 loss to Virginia Commonwealth on March 6 in what was thought to be their final home game will get another chance to to end their UD Arena careers with a victory.
The rest of the team has shown a similar motivation throughout this tournament, winning games against Bradley and North Carolina Wilmington by a combined 33 points.
“They want to win,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said Saturday. “They’ve been competitors all year.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Here are five things to know about Dayton’s third NIT game:
1: Series history: Dayton leads the series 4-3.
The programs first met on Dec. 2, 1972. Dayton won 81-65 at UD Arena.
Dayton last played Illinois State on Dec. 7, 2013. The No. 25 Flyers lost 81-75 in Normal, Ill.
2: State of the program: Illinois State has posted back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since 2008-10. Last season, it finished 22-14. It ended the season with a College Basketball Invitational championship, beating Presbyterian, Incarnate Word and Cleveland State.
Coach Ryan Pedon is 70-64 in four seasons. He’s a Bexley native who played college basketball at Wooster from 1996-2000. He worked as a graduate assistant and assistant coach for the Miami RedHawks from 2000-10 on Charlie Coles’ staff. From 2017-22, he was an assistant coach on Chris Holtmann’s staff at Ohio State.
Illinois State last played in the NCAA tournament in 1998. That’s the longest drought for any current member of the Missouri Valley Conference.
“I tell guys this on every recruiting visit: We haven’t been to the tournament since 1998,” Pedon told The Columbus Dispatch before the season. “I’m starting the conversation with that. I need dudes that are going to run to that, not run from that.”
This is Illinois State’s 15th NIT appearance. It won two games in 1987 and 1995 but has never advanced to the semifinals.
3: Scouting report: Chase Walker, a 6-foot-9 junior forward from Columbus, leads Illinois State with 13.7 points and 5.3 rebounds per game.
• Johnny Kinziger, a 5-11 junior guard, leads the team with 3.3 assists per game and averages 11.4 points.
• Ty’Reek Coleman, a 6-2 freshman guard, averages 10.0 points per game.
• Boden Skunberg, a 6-5, fifth-year guard who played at North Dakota State the last four seasons, is the team’s best 3-point shooter (49 of 144, 40.7%).
4: Season summary: Illinois State finished 8-3 in non-conference play in the regular season with losses to Ohio, Southern California and Utah State.
Illinois State was picked to win the MVC this season in the preseason poll but finished third — four games behind Belmont — with a 12-8 mark. It started 4-0 but then lost three straight games.
Illinois State lost 74-52 to Northern Iowa, a team it beat twice in the regular season, in the MVC tournament quarterfinals.
In the first round of the NIT, Illinois State built a 20-point halftime lead against Kent State and coasted to a 79-58 victory.
On Sunday, Kinzinger’s 3-pointer with 1.7 seconds remaining gave Illinois State a 78-75 victory at Wake Forest.
“We’re going to have to turn the page very quickly to prepare ourselves for a really good Dayton team, who are playing great basketball right now,” Pedon told the Illinois State student newspaper, The Vidette, after the game.
5: Odds & Ends: KenPom.com gives Dayton a 74% chance of winning and predicts a 72-65 score.
Dayton ranks 64th on KenPom.com. Illinois State is No. 97.
• Dayton junior De’Shayne Montgomery reached the 1,000-point mark Saturday in an 80-61 victory at UNCW. He scored 429 points as a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s, and 110 last season at Georgia. He has 475 this season.
NEXT GAME
Who: Illinois State at Dayton
When: 7 p.m., Wednesday
What: Quarterfinals of NIT
TV: ESPN2
Radio: 95.7-FM, 1290-AM
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