Dayton Flyers vs Miami RedHawks Basketball Recap
Dayton 70, Miami 58
It was an awful, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week for Dayton's men's basketball team.
Maybe the end of the week - and a much-needed victory - will finally allow one of the Atlantic 10's most schizoid and inconsistent basketball bunches to finally put the pieces together in Ohio.
The Dayton Flyers went on a game-ending 19-6 run to overcome a 52-51 deficit and claim a 70-58 victory over the Miami RedHawks before a raucous capacity crowd of 13,435 at UD Arena. Senior forward Chris Wright scored 18 points and snared 11 boards to lead the Flyers. It was Wright’s second consecutive and 16th career double-double. Dayton improved to 6-2 on the season with the win while Miami fell to 3-5.
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How important was this win for Coach Brian Gregory's group? Dayton had endured a miserable week, a stench-ridden seven-day stretch, coming into this contest against Coach Charlie Coles's under-resourced RedHawks. Dayton got blown out by in-state rival Cincinnati in a 68-34 pie-in-the-face clunker of epic proportions. Losing to a foe you badly want to beat is one thing; failing to show up against that very same adversary is quite another. A Dayton team that squandered its talent last year during the regular season - missing out on the NCAA Tournament - did regroup to win the NIT championship over North Carolina, so as a new season dawned, the Flyers had reason to think they had learned some important lessons. The Cincinnati game showed they had to go back to square one. A few days after that bottom-out moment against the Bearcats, Dayton fell short once again versus East Tennessee State. A 73-68 loss to a "downmarket" opponent from a small conference (the Atlantic Sun) did not improve the situation at all for the grounded Flyers. This game against Miami was a must-have, and to the relief of everyone in UD Arena, the hometown team got what it so markedly needed.
The final margin wasn’t indicative of just how taut and closely-contested this scrap between intrastate rivals was. Julian Mavunga’s three-pointer staked Miami to a 33-29 halftime lead following a first half that saw five ties and four lead changes in the first half. The Redhawks were unable to hold that lead, as the Flyers went on a 20-9 spurt to take a 49-42 lead. However, Miami refused to go away, battling back to take a 52-51 lead on Chris McHenry’s three-pointer with 7:34 remaining setting the stage for Dayton’s game-ending run.
Freshman point guard Juwan Staten helped the Flyers keep the Redhawks at bay down the stretch, sinking all six of his freebies in the final 2:30 of the game. Staten went 8-of-10 from the charity stripe, scoring 12 points, and dishing out eight dimes.
Mavunga led the Redhawks with 18 points on 8-of-17 shooting. He also grabbed seven boards for a team that's 3-5 and falling behind in its own right.
Dayton, at last, finally arrested its own free-fall. Now the Flyers have to pick themselves up and stack together a lot of quality wins. Their margin for error is already slim to none. At least it didn't shrink after a Saturday success.
By: Matt Zemek
A10-fans.com Staff Writer
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