Photos of other Hornets adorn the walls near the locker room: Vlade Divac; Larry Johnson; Muggsy Bogues, etc.
Maybe they should make room on those walls for a new name: Virginia guard Jacari White. He made all nine of his field-goal attempts and scored 25 points to lead Virginia to an 86-73 victory against Dayton on Saturday at the Spectrum Center.
White took seven 3-pointers and didn’t miss. Five came in the second half. Three came during a 23-3 run during the first nine minutes of the second half as Virginia broke open a close game.
“He was on the scouting report,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said. “We understood what he did. We just didn’t have the awareness and the readiness to take away what he did.”
The game mirrored what happened to Dayton eight days earlier in an 83-79 loss to No. 9 Brigham Young. The Flyers played both teams close until the opening minutes of the second half, gave up a big run, mounted a comeback but ultimately fell short of the kind of victory that would have looked good on Selection Sunday.
“We made it a game,” Dayton guard De’Shayne Montgomery said, “but we shouldn’t have been in that position.”
“We’ve got competitors that are always going to find a way to try to win,” Dayton guard Javon Bennett said, “but kudos to them. They hit some big shots. (White) hit a lot of shots.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Here are three takeaways from Dayton’s ninth game:
1: White delivered his best performance of the season: The 6-foot-3, fifth-year guard did not top 14 points in the first eight games. He had plenty of scoring outbursts at his previous school, North Dakota State, however. He hit the 30-point mark three times there.
White’s final 3-pointer was the dagger for Dayton. The Flyers trimmed a 21-point deficit to seven with a 14-0 run. They even had one shot to cut the Virginia lead to five points, but Bennett missed a jumper. Then White answered with a 3-pointer with 2 minutes, 58 seconds to play.
Whatever slim hope Dayton had at that point vanished.
“It was just one of those performances where every time he was open, you could hear the crowd going, ‘Yes!’,” said first-year Virginia coach Ryan Odom, who coached at Virginia Commonwealth the last two seasons. “It wasn’t that he had made the shot yet. You knew that he was going to probably knock it in.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
2: Dayton’s 3-point defense continues to be a weakness: Thanks mostly to White, Virginia shot a season-best 60% (12 of 20) from 3-point range. It’s the fifth opponent to shoot better than 40% against Dayton.
Dayton ranks 347th in the country out of 365 Division I teams in 3-point defense. Teams are shooting 40.1% against Dayton.
“They got them in a variety of ways,” Grant said. “They got them on the back end of our press. They got them off bad rotations, and then they were able to get them off second shots. When one guy goes 7 for 7 from the 3-point line, that doesn’t help.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
3: Dayton let another opportunity slip away: Dayton’s chances of beating Virginia took a minor hit when the Virginia football team earned a spot in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game. That game started eight hours after the basketball game, across town at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
Many Virginia fans who may not have traveled to the Queen City for a neutral-site game against Dayton came to the city for one of the biggest football games in Virginia history and decided to attend both games.
The crowd of 4,175 at the Spectrum Center was probably 70% Virginia fans.
Even without that advantage, Virginia might have beaten Dayton. It routed Texas 88-69 on Wednesday on the road.
Dayton (7-3 overall) fell to 2-3 in games against teams ranked in the top 100 of the Ken Pomeroy ratings. It has victories against No. 92 Marquette and No. 89 Georgetown but losses to No. 75 Cincinnati, No. 10 Brigham Young and now No. 20 Virginia.
This was Dayton’s last chance to claim a Quadrant 1 victory in non-conference play. After a week break for exams, it plays three more games at UD Arena in December against No. 336 North Florida, No. 96 Florida State and No. 98 Liberty. The Flyers then start the 18-game Atlantic 10 Conference schedule on Dec. 31.
“We’ve got a good team,” Grant said. “We’ve just got to continue to figure out how we can continue to get better and maybe stop of the issues that we’re having in the second second half. We have to make sure that we come out with the same focus and intensity. We need to shore up some things on both sides of the ball in terms of our decision making and in following the scouting reports and understanding what the other teams’ strengths are.”
NEXT GAME
Who: North Florida vs. Dayton
Where: UD Arena
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Streaming: WHIO-TV
Radio: 95.7-FM, 1290-AM
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