A 62-52 loss by Dayton to No. 1 seed and top-ranked Florida in the South Regional final on Saturday at FedExForum was what almost everyone expected. Then again, no one thought the No. 11 seed Flyers (26-11) could get this far.
The Dayton fans believed anything could happen in the Elite Eight, and if a few more things had gone the Dayton Flyers’ way, if they had played just a bit better in their 37th game of the season, the impossible might have happened.
“It’s always hard to lose the last game of the season,” Dayton coach Archie Miller said, “but in the back of my mind, I’m not sure that a team in the nation probably captured more people’s hearts than these guys did. They did it the right way.
“Unfortunately, we were bad in a couple of spots in the game. A lot of it had to do with Florida. But I thought we competed. At the end of the day, somebody’s got to go down.”
Florida won this game, ending a streak of three straight regional final losses, with a 15-1 run in the final 4½ minutes of the first half. Kendall Pollard tied it with a layup at the 4:41 mark. A free throw by Dorian Finney-Smith with 4:22 to go gave the Gators the lead for good.
A 3-pointer by Scottie Wilbekin, who led the Gators with 23 points, at the halftime buzzer gave Florida a 38-24 lead.
“That was a tough one,” Sanford said. “That was actually in my face. Wilbekin’s a good player.”
The Dayton Flyers had overcome bigger deficits this season, but not against a team of Florida’s quality. The Gators extended their school-record winning streak to 30 games.
Dayton had its chances in the second half. Oliver and Pierre hit 3-pointers in the first minute to quickly cut the deficit to 38-30. Twice more, the Flyers got as close as eight points.
The game got away from them for good when Florida, leading 58-50, grabbed four offensive rebounds in a row with under four minutes to play and ran more than a minute off the clock.
With the way Florida was shooting free throws all night (21-of-28), the Dayton Flyers had no chance in the final minutes. All they could do was relish the chants of “Let’s go Flyers” one more time. Those continued until the bitter end.
“I’m going to really miss playing with these guys,” Sanford said. “It doesn’t even feel real yet. It’ll probably hit me when I get home.”
“We tried to come out and get the win,” Oliver said. “It was just tough because it was such a special run with a great group of guys. I feel like I played as hard as I could.”
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