“When you deal with young people, you can I guess at times think things are really really good or you can think things are really really bad,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant told Larry Hansgen on WHIO’s postgame radio show. “This is one game. As a coach, I’ve got to be able to keep it balanced. I thought we did get out-competed today. I thought we didn’t execute the game plan in terms of what VCU is known to do. When we got shots, we weren’t able to finish plays, whether it was around the basket or open 3s.”
Strange results happen every season. There just seem to be more in this pandemic-stained season.
• Wright State, enjoying a strong season in the Horizon League, beat Oakland by 39 points on Jan. 1 and lost by 10 a day later on the same court.
• Indiana, still trying to build a Big Ten contender in former Dayton coach Archie Miller’s fourth season, beat No. 4 Iowa 81-69 on the road Thursday and three days later lost 74-70 at home to Rutgers, which had lost five straight games.
• Kansas, ranked third through December with eight victories and a loss only to No. 1 Gonzaga, opened the new year with a 25-point loss at home to Texas. The Jayhawks are 2-4 in January.
None of this will make the Dayton Flyers (8-3, 4-3) or Flyer Faithful feel any better. Only a victory against No. 22 Saint Louis (7-1, 0-0) at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis would improve everyone’s mood.
This game itself, which will be televised by the CBS Sports Network, is another example of just how odd this season has been. The Billikens (7-1) haven’t played since Dec. 23 because of a COVID-19 outbreak. In many ways, they are starting the season over with Dayton as the first opponent.
“We run into a difficult situation with Saint Louis,” Grant said. “I know it’s been a long time since they’ve played.”
Grant knows his team’s chances will come down to how it responds after the seventh most-lopsided loss of the last 11 seasons. Dayton delivered its fourth-worst offensive showing from an efficiency standpoint, according to KenPom.com, since 2002. The Flyers trailed by as many as 30 points and never got closer than 20 in the final 18 minutes.
“We hung our heads after we faced some adversity,” Grant said. “That just magnified the issues we were having. It’s one game. Hopefully, we can learn from this. We’ve got a quick turnaround against arguably the best team in the league at their place. A lot of things we saw (Saturday) in terms of the physicality, in terms of the competitiveness, we’ll have to answer that bell in a quick turnaround here on Tuesday.”
Saint Louis looked like the A-10′s best team in November and December, beating LSU and N.C. State and losing only to Minnesota. It then had to postpone its first seven A-10 games because at least 11 players, plus coach Travis Ford, tested positive for COVID-19, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The Billikens returned to practice Friday and will play Tuesday for the first time in 34 days. Despite that long layoff, they have climbed in the Associated Press top-25 poll from unranked when they last played to No. 22 on Monday.
“I would not say we are starting from scratch, but we are reviewing everything from the beginning,” Ford told the Post-Dispatch. “I’m trying to figure out, how hard can I push them, and how much rest do they need? What do we need to spend more time on? I feel a bit rushed, because we want to get back on the court and play a game. I don’t want the players to worry about it as much as I’m totally consumed by it. But at the end of the day there is not an answer. We are trying to do the best we can.”
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