Georgetown coach praises Dayton after OT loss: ‘Their kids were prepared’

Cooley gave Grantland.com inside access to his program in the days leading up to the game. He was not shy in playing up the fact that Dayton would have an advantage in one area.

“We’re gonna have 500 or 600 fans,” he said. “They’re gonna have 19,000.”

“How far away is Dayton from Columbus?” Cooley asked an assistant coach.

“Forty-five minutes, an hour,” he was told.

“I like the draw,” he says. “I just don’t like the location.”

Cooley was not wrong. The Flyer Faithful filled the arena and helped propel their team to a 66-53 victory.

Almost 11 years later, Cooley, now in his third season at Georgetown, ran into Dayton fans again. The Flyers did not have as many fans Thursday night at the State Farm Field House in Kissimmee, Fla., as they did in Columbus in 2015, but they did outnumber Hoyas fans.

There were plenty of “Let’s go Flyers” chants as Dayton beat Georgetown 84-79 in overtime in the first round of the ESPN Events Invitational.

Dayton (6-1) handed Georgetown (5-1) its first loss. The Flyers will play No. 9 Brigham Young (5-1) in the championship game at 9:30 p.m. Friday, while Georgetown will play Miami at 7 p.m. in the consolation game.

“Dayton played really, really well, especially to start the game,” Cooley said in his postgame press conference. “I thought they threw the first three or four punches at us. Give them a lot of credit. I thought their kids were prepared. I thought they were tougher than we were to start the game. They kept us off balance.”

Georgetown made 1 of 7 field-goal attempts and committed two turnovers in the first five minutes as Dayton built a 13-1 lead.

The Flyers trailed 3-1 and then ran off 12 straight points. De’Shayne Montgomery scored the first five points in the run. Amaël L’Etang scored the next five. Malcolm Thomas completed the run with a long 2-point jump shot.

Cooley praised Dayton coach Anthony Grant for the way he changes defense and then had more good things to say about Grant. The two coaches, born three years apart in the 1960s (Grant is 59, and Cooley is 56) had never gone against each other as head coaches.

“You talk about somebody who has an incredible amount of class for our profession, a very established coach in Anthony Grant,“ Cooley said. ”I think he’s overshadowed in a lot of things that he’s accomplished in his coaching career. I was really happy to see him and very happy to compete against his team. He’s just an incredible human being. I’ve known him for a long time, going back to when he was with Billy (Donovan) at Florida.

"I thought his kids played well, and they did the things they had to do to win. For us, the disappointing thing was our defensive discipline. We’re fouling too much at the wrong time. In the game of basketball, it normally comes down to a play here or there, a possession here or there, and again you’ve got to do the right things in order to earn a win. I don’t think we earned anything today.

“I give our kids a lot of credit. Our men fought back down double digits late in the game. On defense, we ramped up our intensity. We were in foul trouble with a couple of different positions, but no excuse.”