Dayton Flyers women’s basketball team wins 13th straight

Jayla Scaife makes game-winning free throws

The Dayton Flyers women’s basketball team is still undefeated in 2020.

Jayla Scaife made two free throws with eight seconds remaining Wednesday night to lift Dayton to a 52-51 victory against Massachusetts at the Mullins Center in Amherst, Mass.

Dayton (18-7, 11-0 Atlantic 10) won its 13th straight game. It’s tied for the seventh longest winning streak in school history. UD has three other 13-game winning streaks, two 15 game-winning streaks, three 16-game winning streaks and one 18-game winning streak. The school-record winning streak started in February 1980 and ended the next season.

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This is Dayton’s longest winning streak since a 16-game streak from December 2017 through February 2018.

With five games to play, Dayton has a 2½-game lead over Virginia Commonwealth (13-10, 8-2), which lost 56-55 at home to George Washington on Sunday. Dayton plays VCU at noon Sunday at UD Arena. It will be the only regular-season game between the schools.

Dayton beat UMass (16-9, 6-6) despite losing a four-point lead in the final minute. A jump shot by Julia Chandler gave Dayton a 50-46 lead. Then a basket by Bre Hampton-Bey and then a 3-point play by Sam Breen, a former Dayton commit who started her career at Penn State before transferring to UMass, gave UMass a 51-50 lead with 37 seconds to play.

Then with 8 seconds left, Scaife was fouled on a shot attempt in the paint. On a night when she made 1 of 13 shots from the field, she made 4 of 4 free throws.

Kyla Whitehead led Dayton with 11 points. Julia Chandler scored 10.

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