Cheeks soared through the paint, passing under the rim. At the same time, he brought the ball below his waist with both hands and then back up with his right hand, banking in a reverse layup.
People of a certain age would have described the move by Cheeks as “Jordanesque.” Others would have seen Kobe Bryant in the acrobatic play. Ja Morant might be the choice of younger fans.
Cheeks’ teammates on the Dayton roster saw a guy who’s looking more and more like Dayton’s best player nine games into the season.
“That’s what he does,” guard Posh Alexander said.
Cheeks scored 23 points on 7-of-10 shooting in a 77-69 victory against Western Michigan at UD Arena. Coupled with a 20-point performance six days earlier in a 85-67 victory against Connecticut, Cheeks has scored 20 or more points in back-to-back games for the first time in two seasons at Dayton. He leads the team in scoring (16.3 points per game) and rebounding (7.8).
“He’s a really good basketball player,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said. “He was a very valuable and integral piece for us last year. He works on his craft. He’s very mature about it. He’s a guy that is really effective on both sides of the ball. I think a lot of times so much is made when guys score the ball and people get so excited, but to me, it’s always about impacting winning. He’s the perimeter version of a Toumani Camara. That’s what he is. He’s elite.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Dayton needed Cheeks on Tuesday. Four days after returning from Maui, it struggled against a team picked to finish near the bottom of the Mid-American Conference standings.
Western Michigan (3-5) shot 60% (15 of 25) from the field in the first half and built a 35-32 halftime lead. This was an unfamiliar position for Dayton, which led three top-25 teams at halftime a week earlier in the Maui Invitational.
The situation did not improve early in the second half. Western Michigan made its first four shots, taking a 44-34 lead with 17 minutes, 21 seconds to play. Dayton’s 21-game home winning streak and 14-game winning streak against MAC teams looked to be in jeopardy.
At halftime, Alexander said the team talked about the need to play together.
“We just told ourselves that we have to play defense,” Alexander said. “Lock in on that side and let our defense create our offense, and that’s what we did.”
Dayton took control with a 13-2 run in a four-minute stretch. Nate Santos scored seven points of his 15 points in the spurt.
Alexander and Malachi Smith each made two free throws to cap the run and give Dayton a 47-46 lead.
Western Michigan took the lead right back on its next possession. Dayton answered with a 6-0 run and led the rest of the way. The Flyers won because they shot well from 3-point range (9 of 21, 42.9%) and the free-throw line (18 of 22, 81.8%).
“Coach called this a trap game,” Dayton guard Javon Bennett said. “Coming off a high, winning that last game in Maui, you see who you’re playing next. Coach said every game is important. It showed in the first half. But we came together in the second half and started trusting each other and playing off each other.”
Alexander said the whole team was “dead and down” in the first half. Bennett described the team’s attitude as lackadaisical. A loss would have put a big dent in Dayton’s NCAA tournament resume. It has not lost to a team ranked below 200 in the Ken Pomeroy ratings since a three-game skid at home against UMass Lowell, Lipscomb and Austin Peay early in the 2021-22 season.
Western Michigan played a similar game in its other big non-conference test. It trailed Butler 39-37 at halftime on Nov. 11. Butler pushed its lead to 16 points early in the second half only to have Western Michigan climb back into the game with a 10-point run. Butler finished much stronger than Dayton and won 85-65.
Every point matters in the NCAA Evaluation Tool and the Pomeroy ratings. Dayton dropped from No. 39 to No. 49 in the NET because of the narrow margin of victory and from No. 26 to No. 32 in the Pomeroy ratings.
“I think, from a mental standpoint, we weren’t there, just being honest,” Grant said. “You can look at a lot of excuses, but at the end of the day, that’s my job to make sure that our team is prepared and we understand what we have to do. In the second half, going in down three, we had a decision to make as a group. It takes character and resiliency to be able to weather that storm.”
The most important thing, of course, is winning the game. Dayton earned a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament last season in part because it was 9-0 in Quadrant 3 games and 7-0 in Quad 4. It beat all the teams it was supposed to beat.
The game against Western Michigan mirrored Dayton’s first game after the Charleston Classic a year ago. It trailed Youngstown State by 10 points in the first half and won 77-69, though Youngstown State was much higher ranked (No. 134 in the Pomeroy ratings) than Western Michigan (No. 275).
“It’s just college basketball,” Grant said. “We’re dealing with young people that have a lot on their plate right now. There’s just a lot of different things going on. We’ve got to be able to do a good enough job and have the maturity to understand that everybody practices, everybody prepares and everybody plays hard. This opportunity for Western Michigan was a big opportunity. They took the fight to us for the majority of the first half and part of the second ,and then we were able to kind of flip that and get control of the game there. I’m proud of our guys for being able to do that.”
SATURDAY’S GAME
Lehigh at Dayton, 2 p.m., WHIO-TV, 1290, 95.7
Credit: David Jablonski
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