Ole Miss (8-4) hadn’t lost on the road in five games.
“It was a good win for our team,” Dayton coach Archie Miller said. “I continue to be really proud of our guys and their approach. We played a really good Ole Miss team, and they challenged us not only just inside but also challenged us on the perimeter, and some guys really stepped up and answered the bell.
“We’ll take it. We’ll learn from it, and we’ll move into conference play 10-2, and that’s something this team should be really proud of.”
Dayton dominated for a while. In fact, it took the lead for good at 9-8 on a Scoochie Smith layup with 15:10 left in the first half, sparking a 19-5 run to build a double-digit gap. Kyle Davis had back-to-back 3s to make it an 11-point cushion in the 11th minute, then capped the Flyers’ impressive run with a steal to set up a Jordan Sibert dunk that made it 26-13 with 8:48 left in the half.
Ole Miss, which trailed by 16 points with 5:42 left in the first half, cut the deficit back to single digits on a Terence Smith 3-pointer in the final minute before halftime, as the Flyers carried a 41-32 lead into the break.
The Rebels slowly tried to chip away at the deficit but couldn’t get it past eight points until the final two minutes. They were down by 10 with 1:21 left when Jarvis Summers’ made a 3-pointer to get it back to single digits the rest of the way. LaDarius White added a dunk and a 3-pointer within the final 27 seconds to make it a 77-74 game with 16 ticks left, but Dyshawn Pierre made a crucial free throw to seal the win.
“We were just playing as hard as we can,” said Pierre, who had 11 of his team-high 17 points in the second half and also finished with six rebounds. “We just have to make sure when we have a lead we do a better job about keeping that lead.”
Regarding his two free-throw attempts with 14 seconds left, the first of which he missed, Pierre said, “I’m happy I could clinch the game. I honestly just don’t try to think about the pressure at all. That can throw you off, so I just had to focus and make the free throw.”
Pierre was one of four Dayton players to score in double figures, despite Ole Miss constantly changing up its defense. Sibert led the way with 20 points and three steals, Kendall Pollard added 12 points and six rebounds, and Davis had 11 points and seven rebounds.
The Flyers’ strong first half came along with making six of nine attempts behind the arc. They were 2 for 11 in the second half, but both makes came late.
It also helped that Dayton was able to match the much taller Rebels on the boards for the first half, as both had 16 rebounds, and the Flyers’ scrappy play on defense accounted for 11 first-half turnovers. Free throws made a difference in the second half, as they got to the free-throw line for 31 attempts. Although just 20 of those attempts went in, it was 10 more points than Ole Miss got from the charity stripe.
“Our defense has allowed the crowd to get into it, and then the 3s started to drop a little bit as well,” Miller said. “It’s one thing to make 8 for 20 and go 40 percent, but it’s another thing to bang six of them in the first half and give yourself a chance to go into halftime with a lead.”
Dayton held Rebels’ leading scorer Stefan Moody to just six points, though Summers accounted for 20 points, White added 14 and M.J. Rhett 12.
“To me, this is one of our more impressive non-conference wins just because of some of the things we’ve had to overcome,” Miller said, as the Flyers have now played three games since the dismissal of two players. “A lot of these guys have stepped up in a big way.”
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