Dayton ranks 85th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool. It’s the fifth highest-ranked A-10 team. Clemson is 163rd. High Point is 275th.
“It’s awesome to go to Florida,” Green said Thursday at the Cronin Center on campus, “and we’ve been there numerous times this last month or so, but we have two important games. We want to enjoy the nice weather and have fun but winning’s fun, and I know this team’s very locked in, especially coming off of a really tough road loss at Florida. These guys are hungry. This layoff has not been fun for them. They wanted to get right back out and play again. I know that they’re going to be locked in to the business at hand, and then hopefully we can enjoy a little bit of time as well.”
These will be Dayton’s first games since a 60-57 loss to the Florida Gators, who rank 94th in the NET, in Gainesville on Dec. 8.
“We needed some rest,” Green said. “We were banged up. Being on the road all month I think kind of took its toll. So we took a few days off and had today off, and then we’ll really just get back to the basics and tighten up some stuff offensively and defensively.”
Everyone will be available to play in Florida, Green said. There are no major injuries, just nagging issues that have prevented the team from playing its best.
In its three losses, outside shooting has hurt Dayton. It owns the best 3-point shooting percentage (59 of 137, 37.6) in the A-10 but made 2 of 11 (18.2 percent) in a 70-56 loss to Duke, 5 of 23 (23.8) in a 65-54 loss to Mississippi State and 4 of 12 (33.3) against Florida.
Green is looking for more consistency on the offensive side.
“I still don’t think we’ve put our best 40 minutes of basketball together,” she said. “We haven’t had our five starters all shooting it well on the same night.”
Following these two games, Dayton gets another one-week break for Christmas. It returns to action against Howard at 7 p.m. Dec. 29 at UD Arena.
“I think that this break is a critical time — and especially once their finals are over with,” Green said. “I know they’re very eager for that, just where it’s all basketball and there’s not a lot of distractions and they can really focus and have plenty of time to get extra shots up, to get individual work and get more film work in, even more so than in the normal semester. It’s an important time, and we’re going to try to utilize it so we can improve as much as we possibly get.”
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