“It’s been really hard for us as a young group,” Brea said then. “This isn’t how we expected our season to start. But it’s great way for us to learn. Even though we wish we were learning through wins, the only way is up for us now. We’ve just got to keep our heads down and keep working add the results we want will come soon.”
Those results came soon rather than later. Three victories in the ESPN Events Invitational in the week after the Austin Peay loss set Dayton on a new path, one that would feature a long climb back to the NCAA tournament bubble, a climb that continues to gain steam three months later. An 82-61 victory Wednesday against Massachusetts provided the latest example of how much Dayton has improved since that disastrous start.
Brea again took his seat in front of the microphone for the postgame press conference after Dayton’s 20th victory — a milestone that seemed unreachable after that Austin Peay game — and was asked, “Do you feel like the team is getting better and better?”
“Definitely,” he said. “One hundred percent. I feel like every game we play we just take more strides forward.”
That’s true in many ways. Dayton (20-8, 12-3) has won five games in a row, and in that stretch, it has jumped from No. 63 to No. 40 in the Ken Pomeroy ratings, one of the tools the NCAA tournament selection committee uses to select at-large teams and assign seeds. It moved from No. 51 to No. 47 in the NCAA Evaluation Tool after beating UMass. ESPN’s College Basketball Power Index ranks Dayton 37th. There are other analytical websites that have Dayton even higher. It is No. 28 on BartTorvik.com and No. 29 on Haslametrics.com.
The Flyers also continue to build momentum with the bracketologists, whose opinions don’t count on Selection Sunday but do provide insight into what the selection committee might do.
One of the most respected college basketball writers in the country, Mike DeCourcy, of the Sporting News, listed Dayton among the last four at-large teams on Tuesday. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had the Flyers right on the edge of the bubble — among his first four out of the picture — on Tuesday. ESPN’s John Gasaway listed the Flyers among the teams with “work to do” in building a tournament-worthy resume.
“UD appears to be hitting its stride heading toward a season finale at home against Davidson,” Gasaway wrote.
Eamonn Brennan, of The Athletic, wrote something similar, adding Dayton to his weekly Bubble Watch story this week.
“We wouldn’t have Dayton in our bracket,” he wrote, “or even super close to it, but they have been creeping up the curve pretty steadily these last few weeks, and their metrics are good enough to at least warrant a bit of discussion.”
A bevy of blowouts has bolstered Dayton’s bubble crusade. This team is outscoring Atlantic 10 Conference opponents by an average of 12.0 points per game, the best mark in the league by more than four points.
Dayton handed UMass (12-14, 5-9) its second most lopsided loss of the season, building a 46-23 halftime lead by shooting 69% from the field and coasting to its sixth A-10 victory of 20 points or more. The great 29-2 Dayton team of two years ago won the same number of A-10 games by 20 or more points.
Brea and Mustapha Amzil each scored 16 points. Each made four 3-pointers. Dayton made 10 of 16 shots from long range, improving to 12-0 when they shoot 40% or better, a mark they have hit in each of their last five games.
The Flyers were just as strong on the defensive side. UMass ranks eighth in the country in 3-point shooting percentage (38.8%) but shot 32.1% (9 of 28) against Dayton. Six of the 3s came after Dayton built a 30-point lead.
Noah Fernandes, the team’s leading scorer with 14.5 points per game, missed all four his 3-point attempts and did not score for the first time this season. Rich Kelly, the A-10′s leading 3-point shooter (59 of 120, 49.2%), made 1 of 3 3-pointers.
“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a couple of days,” Brea said, “just how much they want to shoot the ball from deep. I think we all saw that in the second half when they kind of had a streak going. But I feel like we established early in the game that we were going to run them off the line and make them play inside the 3-point line. I feel like we made it very difficult for them.”
The victory keeps Dayton in contention for the A-10 regular-season championship. With three games to play, it’s tied for second place with Virginia Commonwealth (19-7, 12-3), which won 72-66 at home Wednesday against George Mason. Davidson (23-4, 13-2) won 74-50 at Duquesne to maintain its spot atop the standings.
The Flyers are pursuing a NCAA tournament berth as they chase the A-10 championship, and they still have little margin for error. If they win their last three games against La Salle, Richmond and Davidson and avoid an early exit in the A-10 tournament, they will have hope on Selection Sunday. Just one more loss would seem to spoil all the momentum they have generated.
The strength of the team throughout the season has been its ability to focus on the next game and not the big picture. Asked about the NCAA talk, Brea said, “We’re just focused on winning. We’ve heard about it, but we’re not looking into it too much. We’re just trying to control what we can control. We know that as long as we take care of what we got to do the rest of the season we’ll be in a good spot.”
That sounds like something coach Anthony Grant would say, and it’s pretty much what he did say after he followed Brea in the press conference.
“At this time of year, you start to hear a lot of chatter,” Grant said. “At the end of the day, the thing we can control is how we prepare for the game in front of us. That’s basically it. We’ve got to make sure we keep our eye on the ball and understand that moving forward.”
SATURDAY’S GAME
Dayton at La Salle, 2 p.m., ESPN+, 1290, 95.7
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