A-10 play begins for Dayton with road game at Davidson

That’s the goal for Dayton as 2024 begins with the first of 18 Atlantic 10 Conference games — win a lot of games. The Flyers (10-2) play Davidson (10-3) at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Belk Arena in Davidson, N.C.

“We’ve got a lot of great teams in this conference,” Dayton forward DaRon Holmes II said, “and they do a great job with their scouting reports. A lot of the new guys haven’t really seen this conference, and this is a very underrated conference. We’re all excited. We’re just going to do our thing. We have to understand that we’re going to have a target on our back every game, so we have understand that, ‘Hey, these teams are all coming for us.’”

The A-10 regular-season champion (Davidson in 2022 and Virginia Commonwealth in 2023) has finished 15-3 the last two seasons. That has been the magic number four times in the last seven years.

St. Bonaventure won the title with an 11-4 mark in 2021 when the pandemic played havoc with the schedule and no one played 18 games. Dayton won with an 18-0 record in 2020. VCU was 16-2 in 2019.

Rhode Island and Dayton finished atop the standings with 15-3 records in 2018 and 2017, respectively. In 2016, the first year the league played an 18-game schedule, Dayton, VCU and St. Bonaventure all tied for first at 14-4.

A 15-3 finish would give Dayton a 25-5 record entering the A-10 tournament. That was the same mark Davidson, the last A-10 team to receive a NCAA tournament at-large bid, had in 2022.

As A-10 play begins, Dayton remains the favorite. It was voted the favorite in the preseason poll for the second straight season and is the top-ranked A-10 team in the NCAA Evaluation Tool (No. 25 as of Monday). The next highest-ranked team is No. 53 Saint Joseph’s (10-3).

KenPom.com predicts a 13-5 finish for Dayton in the A-10. That would put it one game ahead of Saint Joseph’s.

Dayton’s first opponent, Davidson, won the A-10 regular-season championship two years ago, finishing 27-7 overall in the last of 34 seasons for coach Bob McKillop. Last season, the first as head coach for Bob’s son, Matt McKillop, Davidson finished 16-16 overall and 8-10 in the A-10.

This season, Davidson was picked to finish 12th in the A-10 preseason poll. KenPom.com now predicts it will finish ninth with a 9-9 mark. It lost three of its top four scorers from last season: Foster Loyer; Sam Mennenga; and Desmond Watson, who’s now starting for another A-10 team, Loyola. Davidson has one starter this season who wasn’t with the team last year: Villanova transfer Angelo Brizzi, a 6-3 guard averaging 6.9 points per game.

Dayton and Davidson each bring a seven-game winning streak into the game Wednesday. It’s the longest winning streak in non-conference play for Dayton since the 2009-10 season when it won eight straight.

Davidson beat Maryland 64-61 in the second game of the season. That’s its best victory. It has two victories against lower-division teams. It has three victories against Ohio teams, beating Wright State 82-73, Miami 79-61 and Ohio 62-58.

In the victory against the Bobcats on Saturday in Cleveland, Davidson rallied from a 10-point second-half deficit and a 62-58 deficit with 3:47 remaining. Reed Bailey and Grant Huffman each scored 15 points for Davidson.

Davidson played without leading scorer, 6-foot-10 redshirt senior center David Skogman (13.0 points per game), who was out for undisclosed reasons.

“We knew it was going to be a game of swings, a game of ups and downs,” McKillop said in his postgame radio interview, “and it was going to be all about toughness and all about fighting.”

Davidson shot 6 of 25 (24%) from 3-point range for the second straight game. It’s shooting 31.4%, which would be its lowest number this century if it doesn’t improve.

Last season, Dayton won 69-55 at Davidson and beat Davidson 68-61 at UD Arena. The Flyers have won seven straight games in the series since a 73-67 loss to Davidson in the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament in 2017. UD has also four straight games at Belk Arena since a 77-60 loss in 2015.

Holmes scored what was then a career-high 32 points in the first game against Davidson last season. He made 11 of 14 field goals, 1 of 1 3-pointers and 9 of 13 free throws.

Davidson limited Holmes to four points in the second game. Dayton still continued its dominance in the series. The Flyers are 3-0 against Davidson in Holmes’ first two seasons. He had 20 points in an 82--76 victory at UD Arena in the final regular-season game in 2022. Davidson had already clinched the A-10 title entering that game.

“Two years of playing Davidson, we know exactly how they play,” Holmes said. “It’s going to be a challenge. We’re just going to have to go in there and play hard. They’re a very good team. Theyre’ very well coached.”

WEDNESDAY’S GAME

Dayton at Davidson, 7 p.m., CBS Sports Network, 1290, 95.7