Dayton seeks 19th straight victory in season opener tonight at UD Arena

“I think we’re ready,” said guard Nate Santos, one of seven newcomers who were not on the roster when Dayton’s season ended with a 68-56 loss to Virginia Commonwealth. “The exhibitions, the Europe trip, all the preseason, I think it’s prepared us well. Everybody’s excited.”

Dayton’s fate will be determined to a large extent by how it plays in the first 14 days of the season. It plays at Northwestern on Friday and then plays LSU in the first round of the Charleston Classic six days later. Two more games in South Carolina on Nov. 17 and Nov. 19 follow.

“That’s one thing we really emphasized before we saw the schedule,” said guard Javon Bennett, another newcomer. “We want to start off the year good. We want to get on that first ballot for March Madness. So just starting off the non-conference schedule with a couple of wins is going to be important. Especially with Northwestern, that’s a big time game. Charleston, we want to try to win that as well.”

While getting off to a good start has been an issue the last two seasons — 1-3 in 2021 and 3-4 in 2022 — winning the opener has become a tradition for the program. Brian Roberts was a freshman the last time the Flyers lost a season opener. He scored the first 10 of his 1,962 career points in a 73-66 loss to Eastern Kentucky on Nov. 21, 2004.

“I think every game is going to be a battle,” said second-year UD coach Brian Gregory after the game.

Entering that game, Dayton had won six straight openers. Since that game, it has won 18 straight openers against 17 different opponents. Austin Peay is the only team Dayton has played twice in openers in the stretch. All the games have taken place at UD Arena.

All the opening opponents have come from conferences lower ranked than the Atlantic 10 Conference, though Dayton’s first opponent in the 2009-10 season, Creighton, which was in the Missouri Valley Conference then, is now in the Big East.

Dayton’s first opponent this season, SIUE, fits the profile of many of Dayton’s season-opening opponents. This is a game Dayton expects to win.

At the same time, Dayton can look at recent history — three straight losses to UMass Lowell, Lipscomb and Austin Peay two years ago — to know it can’t take a victory in what is commonly called a “buy game” to for granted.

“We prepare the same no matter who we’re playing,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said Wednesday. “We know that once you start the regular season, anything can happen. I think we have a group that understands that. I know certainly for myself and our staff, we understand that. We’re going to make sure we try to control the things we can control.”

Dayton has twice needed last-second shots to win its opener in the last 18 seasons. It beat Purdue Fort Wayne 81-80 on a 3-pointer by Jordan Sibert with one second remaining in the 2013-14 opener. In Grant’s first game as head coach, in the 2017-18 opener, Dayton beat Ball State 78-77 on a basket by Josh Cunningham with 0.1 seconds to play.

SIUE has more upset potential than most of Dayton’s first opponents. It finished 19-14 last season. That was its best season since moving from Division II to Division I in the 2008-09 season.

Last December, SIUE rallied from an 18-point deficit to win 69-67 at Saint Louis. That was the biggest non-conference victory in school history.

Back from that team is guard Ray’Sean Taylor, who tore his ACL in the Ohio Valley Conference tournament in March but is healthy at the start of this season. He played 14 minutes and scored five points in the team’s lone exhibition game. He averaged 15.5 points last season. Guard Damarco Minor, the team’s second-leading scorer with 14.3 points per game, also returns.

SIEU has never finished above .500 in the OVC but was picked to finish second this season. It was 9-9 last season.

“We fully believed we could win the league last year,” fifth-year coach Brian Barone told The Almanac before the season. “We absolutely believe that again. Those are the expectations we put on ourselves. We have the guard play and pieces that can put us in contention.”

MONDAY’S GAME

SIUE at Dayton, 7 p.m., Spectrum News 1, 1290, 95.7