Series of fortunate events helped Dayton in final seconds Friday

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That victory, by the way, ranked third, as of Monday evening, among all the college basketball games played so far this season in something called the Excitement Factor, a new stat on KenPom.com. It ranked ninth in tension. In the final minutes, Dayton’s win probability swung from 91.8 to 7.3 and then to 100 percent with 0.1 seconds to go.

Grant relived the final seconds on the radio.

1. Tayler Persons gave Ball State a 77-76 lead by making a wide-open layup.

“When (Tayler) Persons made the shot for them, you look up and there’s 3 seconds,” Grant said, “and we get the ball in-bounded. By the time we call timeout, I look up, and on the clock, there was, I think, 1.3. In my mind, I’m racing to get it from three-quarter court to the other side to give us a chance. When we break the huddle, I look up and they put 2.6 on (the clock). Now it’s like, ‘Oh, this is a different deal now.’ Now I’m trying to reposition guys without any more timeouts. You two guys go here. You two guys go there.”

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2. John Crosby’s in-bounds pass was deflected out of bounds. Officials spent time reviewing the play to make sure the ball belonged to Dayton.

“All of a sudden now, we get the ball at halfcourt, which is a completely different game,” Grant said. “We had gone over some special situations earlier that day at our shootaround in preparation for the game. That wasn’t one of the situations we covered, but at halfcourt, to be able to get the ball in a position where we would have a shot, we felt pretty comfortable. It worked out in our favor that they had a review. It gave us time. It gave us a chance to look at how they were aligning defenisvely, who they put in the game.”

3. Dayton had Xeyrius Williams in-bound the ball instead of Crosby.

“We were able to give our guys in front of our bench a little bit more instruction in terms of what to look for, where we needed to go,” Grant said. “Obviously, everthing had to go right for us to be able to make the pass with a 6-8 guy on the ball, to be able to come down and catch it and also to be able to finish it. We were very fortunate to win.”