Amzil’s Dayton Flyers teammate, DaRon Holmes II, laughed at that as he sat beside him after a 74-62 victory against Southern Methodist. The Finland native Amzil must know about the reputation of Sin City to come up with that deadpan response.
Of course, the Flyers have been calling every road trip a business trip for a long time. The opportunities to jump off cliffs in Maui or walk the famous strip in Vegas are few and far between. They rarely get to see more than the conference room at their hotel.
“Certainly we want them to have a chance to enjoy this experience, but it is a business trip,” coach Anthony Grant said in 2018 at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
“It’s just another business trip,” Dayton guard Kyle Davis said in 2016 before a game against Northwestern in his hometown, Chicago.
“Obviously, we’re going down there for a business trip,” Dayton forward Luke Fabrizius said before the Old Spice Classic in Orlando in 2011.
No. 21 Dayton (2-0), which climbed three spots in the first Associated Press poll of the regular season, started its next business trip Monday when it flew west. It plays UNLV (2-0) at 11 p.m. Tuesday on Tarkanian Court at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. That’s an 8 p.m. start time in the Pacific Time Zone.
It’s Dayton’s first road game and latest start of the season, based on Ohio time. The Flyers won’t have much time to acclimate to the time change, though Grant isn’t too worried about that.
“In today’s day and age, you’ve got our guys that are international players,” he said. “We’ve got guys that are used to playing AAU basketball at all times a day. I don’t think it’ll be something that’ll be a major concern. We’ve got to understand that it is different, but hopefully we’ll be able to get out there early enough and get a good night’s sleep and get some rest and get prepared.”
Dayton hasn’t traveled this far west for a game since it played Saint Mary’s in Phoenix, Ariz., in December 2019. It also played in the Maui Invitational that season.
For Holmes, who’s from Goodyear, Ariz., it’ll be the closest he’s played to home in his college career.
“This is going to be a great experience,” he said. “I’m glad to go back out to the west. I haven’t been (to Las Vegas) in a minute since I was in Arizona. I feel like our team is going to love it.”
UNLV was picked to finish sixth out of 11 teams in the Mountain West Conference preseason poll. It finished 18-14 last season, the first for coach Kevin Kruger. It hasn’t won 20 games since the 2017-18 season and hasn’t played in the NCAA tournament since 2013 when it made its sixth appearance in seven seasons.
Kruger’s first team lost leading scorer Bryce Hamilton (21.8 points per game), Donovan Williams (12.7) and Royce Hamm (8.6) and has eight new scholarship players this season. One of the returners, Keshon Gilbert, scored 23 points Friday in an 88-63 victory against Incarnate Word.
The team’s next four leading scorers through two games are all transfers new to the program this season: Jackie Johnson III (Duquesne); EJ Harkless (Oklahoma); Luis Rodriguez (Mississippi); and Elijah Parquet (Colorado).
UNLV forced 53 turnovers in its first two games and ranks fifth in the country in turnovers forced per game (26.5).
Kruger said Saturday he wants to see his team improve in offensive rebounding and 3-point defense.
“I think we do a really good job of helping for each other, and even tonight I thought we did a really good job maybe even on the first pass out,” he said. “But it’s kind of that second effort, that continued effort, with multiple rotations where maybe we got a little tired. We had guys going a little longer than we would have liked or we will in the future. But probably those two areas I think just have got to be addressed. We’ve got to understand, especially on Tuesday, we’re going to get a nice wake-up call if we don’t fix those two things pretty quick.”
TUESDAY’S GAME
Dayton at UNLV, 11 p.m., CBS Sports Network, 1290, 95.7
Credit: David Jablonski
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