My dad Jeff accompanied me to UD Arena on Wednesday for the opening night of Atlantic 10 Conference season. He’s the biggest reason college basketball is my favorite sport. He’s a UC grad who turned me into Bearcat fan. We had season tickets throughout the glory years of the Bob Huggins era and traveled often — Honolulu, Chapel Hill, Memphis, Chicago, etc. — to see Cincinnati play when I was in high school. Little did I know I was preparing for my future in the A-10 by attending the Great Midwest Conference tournament four years in a row.
My dad is a proud 1971 Alter graduate — as is my mom Mary — and I introduced him to another Alter grad, Keith Waleskowski, at UD Arena and pointed out the Alter graduate on the current roster: walk-on guard Brady Uhl.
Speaking of Uhl, I saw Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot talking to him just before the game. I assume he was expressing his condolences about the death of Uhl’s grandpa, UD great Bill Uhl Sr., who passed last weekend at 89. A fan wrote me this week to wonder if maybe UD would give Brady a scholarship after two scholarship players left the program last week. That seems unlikely, but he’s certainly earned it with his contributions. Dayton had only eight healthy players, including scholarship athletes and walk-ons, the last two games, and one of them was Uhl.
Dayton sets the tone early against Duquesne
The Flyers opened A-10 play with a 53-52 loss at home to Virginia Commonwealth a year ago. They got off to a much better start this season, leading from start to finish in a 69-57 victory against Duquesne.
The most interesting things to come out of the postgame press conference didn’t have much to do with the game itself.
• DaRon Holmes II and R.J. Blakney told us about the home-cooked meal Anthony Grant’s wife Chris made for the whole team on Christmas Night at UD Arena. The mac and cheese and cupcakes were the biggest hits.
• Holmes compared Blakney to Clyde Drexler, whose NBA career ended in 1998, several years before either player was born. Holmes said he and Blakney like to watch YouTube videos of the old NBA stars.
Dayton goes on road for second A-10 game
It’s hard to explain Dayton’s dominance against Davidson in the last five seasons. Anthony Grant never lost to Bob McKillop, winning five times before McKillop stepped down after last season. The Flyers and Wildcats meet again at 2 p.m. Saturday at Belk Arena, where the Flyers haven’t lost in eight years.
Davidson (8-5) is not the same team that won the A-10 regular-season championship a year ago, but it is still one of the best programs in the conference. Matt McKillop, Bob’s son, now leads the program.
I leave Saturday morning for North Carolina and will spend a rare New Year’s Eve on the road. This will be Dayton’s first game on New Year’s Eve since it lost 81-51 at North Carolina in 2006. This will be only the fourth New Year’s Eve game for Dayton in the last 40 years. The Flyers get home fast after games, so I expect they’ll be back in Dayton with plenty of time to spare if they want to count down until 2023.
Fast Break
Each week, I’ll spotlight news from around the A-10 or other news that might interest Flyer fans.
🏀 Dayton started the season as the A-10 favorite and entered conference play as the favorite despite its 8-5 record because none of the other top contenders did any better. KenPom.com predicts Dayton to win the league with a 13-5 mark. That’s one game better than Saint Louis. As the favorite, Dayton is the only A-10 team being listed in some NCAA tournament predictions. It’s unlikely any A-10 team will earn an-large berth. Brian Bennett, of The Athletic, listed the Flyers as a No. 13 seed playing No. 4 seed Duke in the first round in a story published Friday.
🏀 Rhode Island’s Archie Miller will coach his first A-10 game since 2017, when he was the head coach at Dayton, on Saturday at Duquesne. Miller’s team may have lost its fifth-leading scorer, Josaphat Bilau, for the season because of a knee injury, the Providence Journal reported this week. Rhode Island is 4-8.
🏀 The A-10′s newest program, Loyola, makes its league debut Saturday against George Washington (6-7) in Chicago. The Ramblers finished 6-6 in non-conference play. That’s their worst mark since the 2013-14 season (5-7).
“In a new era of Loyola basketball, the Ramblers are back in touch with their former selves,” wrote Steve Greenberg, of the Chicago Sun-Times. “Which is to say, they’re almost certainly going to have to win a conference championship to get to the NCAA Tournament for the fourth time in six seasons.”
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