“They decided not to double-team me for some reason,” Eschmeyer said after the game. “I like that. I’m not complaining at all.”
Eschmeyer is the program’s fourth all-time leading scorer with 1,805 points. He will likely soon be passed by Northwestern’s current star, 6-2 guard Boo Buie, who has 1,568 points in five seasons.
Buie scored 27 points, the most by a Wildcat in a season opener since 2010, on Monday in a 72-61 victory against Binghamton. Buie, a graduate student, averaged 19.8 points last season and was named to the All-Big Ten first team. He’s on the watch list for the Naismith Trophy, given to college basketball’s best player, this season.
Slowing Buie will be one of the keys for Dayton, which won its opener 63-47 on Monday against Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Northwestern’s other top player is 6-6 junior guard Brooks Barnhizer, who had 18 points and 13 rebounds in the opener.
This will be the fifth meeting between Dayton and Northwestern and the first since Dec. 17, 2016, when Dayton lost to Northwestern 67-64 at the United Center in Chicago. The first matchup, won 73-66 by the Flyers, took place in 1972 at UD Arena. The series is tied 2-2.
Welsh-Ryan Arena seats 7,130, and the Wildcats had a crowd of 4,170 Monday. They averaged 4,890 last season.
“It’s the next game on the schedule,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said after the game Monday. “Obviously, we’ll find out as much as we can about Northwestern. These early-season games to me are more about your habits — the identity that you try to play to. I don’t know much about their team as of right now. I certainly have a lot of respect for coach (Chris) Collins in what he does. We’ll have to play well. I’m going to go out on a limb and say we’ll need to play better, especially on the offensive end, and we’ll need to defend at a high level. We’ll need to rebound the ball really well. There will be some things that challenge us this early in the season, but that’s what it’s all about. That’s why we schedule these games.”
Dayton will play this game and every game the rest of the season without junior point guard Malachi Smith. He will miss the rest of the 2023-24 season after suffering a torn lateral meniscus in his right knee in the season opener Monday, UD announced Thursday.
Smith underwent surgery Wednesday. The typical rehabilitation process, according to UD, last five months.
“We are saddened and heartbroken for Malachi,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said in a press release. “He worked extremely hard to recover from off-season (ankle) surgeries to have the opportunity to compete with his teammates this season. Although he, and we, are disappointed, we remain positive and prayerful that he will recover fully and return healthy next season for himself, his teammates and the Flyer Faithful.”
Smith banged knees with a defender on a drive to the hoop in the first half. He stayed on the court for one play but motioned to the bench that he needed to leave the game during a clock stoppage. He left the game after playing seven minutes and did not return. He spent the rest of the game in the locker room.
It’s the latest setback in an injury-plagued career for Smith, a junior guard who’s the brother of former Flyer Scoochie Smith. Having played only one game, he would be eligible for a medical redshirt and would have two seasons of eligibility remaining.
The injury leaves Dayton with 11 scholarship players for the season. One candidate to take Smith’s place in the starting lineup is sophomore guard Javon Bennett, a transfer from Merrimack. He had five points and six assists Monday.
This is the first game in a two-game series against Northwestern, which will play at UD Arena in the 2024-25 season. That will be the first time a Big Ten team has played at UD Arena in 27 years. Northwestern was also the last Big Ten team to play the Flyers on their home court. Dayton won that matchup 77-69 on Dec. 27, 1997.
Northwestern finished 22-12 last season and played in the NCAA tournament for the second time in school history. It enters this game ranked 50th in the Ken Pomeroy ratings. Dayton is No. 68.
The first NCAA Evaluation Tool rankings don’t come out until December. Northwestern ranked 37th last season. As long as it ranks in the top 75, this will be a Quad 1 game for Dayton. In short, it’s Dayton’s first opportunity to build a NCAA tournament resume and should be one of its best opportunities.
“We’re looking forward to it a lot,” Dayton forward DaRon Holmes II said Monday. “We’re locked in. We’re doing it one game at a time. We’re going to go over the (scouting report) and see what we need to do to get the win.”
Like Dayton, Northwestern did not deliver the most dominant opening performance. Binghamton, a program coming off 14 straight losing seasons, led by as many as 11 points in the first half and had a 39-36 lead at halftime.
Northwestern took the lead with 12 minutes remaining and pushed its advantage to double digits in the final minutes. The Wildcats made 5 of 18 3-pointers (27.8%).
“The good thing about tonight was we were able to grind through a sluggish start and a tough start to beat a team that had a lot of confidence going into halftime,” Collins told reporters.
FRIDAY’S GAME
Dayton at Northwestern, 8:30 p.m., BTN, 1290, 95.7
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