Dunks are but a small part of what Cheeks, a fourth-year 6-foot-3 guard, has brought to No. 18 Dayton, though. He’s putting up smaller numbers than he did the last two seasons at Robert Morris but filling his role for a team chasing a NCAA tournament berth and an Atlantic 10 Conference championship.
“I’m embracing my role,” Cheeks said after the game at Hagan Arena. “Obviously, as a player, you reminisce at times about when you were the guy, but coach AG (Anthony Grant) and the other coaches help me embrace my role, along with my teammates. I know there are going to be nights when I score the ball. There are going to be nights where I have to be more of a defender. I already knew that coming in here.”
Cheeks averages 6.6 points and 5.1 rebounds in 29.5 minutes per game. He has produced two of his best offensive performances in the last two games, scoring 12 points against St. Bonaventure and 13 against Saint Joseph’s. Those are two of his four double-digit efforts this season.
Cheeks is one of four players who have started all 22 games, along with Elvis, DaRon Holmes II and Nate Santos. Malachi Smith started the first game, but suffered a season-ending knee injury in the first half, and Javon Bennett has started the last 21 games.
Last season, Cheeks averaged 15.4 points and 4.4 rebounds. Robert Morris finished 16-17 after posting records of 8-24 in Cheeks’ sophomore season and 4-15 when he was a freshman.
For the first time in his career, Cheeks is playing for a team in the thick of a conference championship race. Dayton (19-3, 9-1) stands atop the A-10 standings heading into a 7 p.m. Friday game against Virginia Commonwealth (15-8, 7-3) at the Siegel Center in Richmond.
“Every game is a battle,” Cheeks said. “Every game is a fight.”
Here are seven things to know about the VCU game:
1. Hot team: Dayton beat a team on a roll Tuesday. Saint Joseph’s had won five of its last six games and three straight home games. VCU has similar momentum. After losing at home to St. Bonaventure (14-8, 5-5) and George Washington (14-8, 3-6) in its first two A-10 games, it has won seven of its last eight games, including three straight home games against Saint Louis (9-14, 2-8), Loyola Chicago (16-7, 8-2) and Richmond (16-6, 8-1).
In the last month, VCU has lost only at St. Bonaventure. It blew a 20-point lead in that 67-62 loss. It bounced back from that loss by handing Richmond (16-6, 8-1) its first A-10 loss, 63-52 on Saturday and then won 75-60 at Fordham (10-13, 4-6) on Tuesday.
Odom said he wasn’t worried about his players looking ahead to the Dayton game.
“Fordham’s good,” Odom told the Richmond Times-Dispatch after the game. “They deserve everyone in the conference’s respect. You come off a hotly-contested game against Richmond. You have to travel up here to win the game. Their style of play is tough to get ready for. It was a quick turnaround for us. That made it extra difficult. They have a great players.”
2. Series history: VCU leads the series 17-9 and has won 10 of the last 14 games in the series. It has a 14-8 edge since joining the A-10 in the 2013-14 season. VCU is 4-0 against Dayton in the A-10 tournament. That includes a 68-56 victory in the championship game last season in Brooklyn.
In the last meeting, Dayton missed its last 15 shots and didn’t make a field goal in the last 10 minutes. VCU outscored Dayton 19-6 in the last 10 minutes and ended the game on an 8-0 run.
In the regular season the last two years, the teams have split games with the road team winning each time. Two years ago, VCU beat Dayton 53-52 at UD Arena on Jan. 5, and Dayton then routed VCU 82-52 in Richmond, Va., on Feb. 5. Last season, on Jan. 13, VCU beat Dayton 63-62 at UD Arena, and Dayton won 62-58 at the Siegel Center on Feb. 7.
Elvis said Tuesday he expects the atmosphere at the Siegel Center to be similar to what the Flyers experienced at Hagan Arena.
“It’s going to be very hostile,” Elvis said. “The veteran guys that have been there, we’re going to want to make sure we have guys ready to play and understand the atmosphere that we’re going into and what it’s going to take to win that game.”
3. Players to watch: VCU would have been the A-10 preseason favorite after winning the regular-season and conference tournament championships last season. Then it lost coach Mike Rhoades to Penn State. Four of its top five scorers entered the transfer portal. Point guard Ace Baldwin, the 2023 A-10 Player of the Year, followed Rhoades to Penn State.
The 2023-24 roster, built by new coach Ryan Odom, includes four double-digit scorers, three of whom are transfers in their first seasons at VCU:
• Max Shulga, a 6-4, fourth-year guard, averages 15.1 points after averaging 11.9 last season at Utah State.
• Joseph Bamisile, a 6-4 guard, averages 12.8 points. He’s playing at his fourth school in four years, following stops at Virginia Tech, George Washington and Oklahoma. He did not play in VCU’s first 10 games but became eligible when the NCAA made played who had transferred multiple times eligible in December.
• Zeb Jackson, a 6-5 fourth-year guard from Toledo who played his first two seasons at Michigan, has more than doubled his scoring average in his second season at VCU from 5.2 to 11.8.
• Sean Bairstow, a 6-8 fifth-year guard, averages 11.8 points. He missed the first 11 games with a broken foot. He missed two more games last week with a rib injury before returning to action against Fordham. Like Shulga, he followed Odom from Utah State, which finished 26-9 last season and made the NCAA tournament.
4. Strengths and weaknesses: VCU’s opponents shoot 28.9% from 3-point range. That’s the sixth-best number for a defense in the country.
In A-10 play, VCU is shooting 40.5% from 3-point range. It’s the only team in the league shooting better than 40%.
Inside the arc, VCU has struggled to finish shots. It’s shooting 45.4% from 2-point range, the second-worst mark in the A-10. Dayton leads the league with 53.8% shooting from 2-point range in A-10 games.
5. Stats and rankings: KenPom.com gives Dayton a 59% chance of winning this game. Dayton ranks 16th in the NCAA Evaluation Tool. VCU is the sixth highest-ranked A-10 team at No. 79.
This is a Quad 2 game for Dayton because it’s a road game against a team that ranks between 76 and 135. Dayton is 3-3 in Quad 1, 5-0 in Quad 2, 5-0 in Quad 3 and 6-0 in Quad 4.
This is a Quad 1 game for VCU. It is 0-3 in Quad 1 with losses to Iowa State, Boise State and St. Bonaventure.
6. Resume builder: Dayton has the fifth-best resume in the country, according to ESPN. It has an average seed of 4.19 on BracketMatrix.com. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi predicted Dayton will receive a No. 4 seed and play No. 13 Akron in Spokane, Wash., in his latest NCAA tournament prediction. Jerry Palm, of CBS, predicted Dayton will receive a No. 5 seed and play in Brooklyn.
Dayton is not yet a lock for the tournament with eight regular-season games remaining but could take another big step toward securing an at-large berth with a victory Friday.
Dayton flew to Richmond after its game in Philadelphia instead of traveling back to Dayton in between games.
“New team, new coaching staff,” coach Anthony Grant said of VCU. “We’ll learn as much as we can over the next couple of days, and we’ll be ready to go.”
7. Strong performance: Elvis scored Dayton’s first five points and its last three points against Saint Joseph’s He finished with 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting and led the team with 10 assists. He scored a total of four points in home victories against George Washington and St. Bonaventure last week and had not scored 20 since tallying 24 and 27 points in back-to-back games against Troy and Cincinnati in December.
“I thought he did a great job,” Grant said. “He was aggressive. He was able to get to the rim. Some of those shots early were contested. In the second half, he was able to get there and finish some, and he was also able to get there and find his teammates. He did a great job defensively understanding the assignment and making it difficult for their guys.”
FRIDAY’S GAME
Dayton at VCU, 7 p.m., ESPN2, 1290, 95.7
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