Loss at home in A-10 opener means UD has work to do on road

UD lost a chance to beat one of the top teams in the conference at home and now must win at Saint Louis on Feb. 25 to even the season series. On the bright side, there are 15 more A-10 games ahead — plenty of time to make for up for the defeat.

The Flyers (12-4 overall) don’t have to wait long to put the loss behind them. They play at Fordham at 9 p.m. Wednesday and at Richmond at 3 p.m. Saturday.

“You lose at home, you’ve got to find a way to go on the road and get one,” Dayton coach Archie Miller said Saturday. “There’s going to be a lot of games played. We’ve got a lot of opportunities here to keep doing it. Like I told our team, we have a good team. We do. We have a good team.

“Today just wasn’t our best day,” he continued. “Give Saint Louis a lot of credit. Let’s not lose the fact that we’ve got a long season here. We can get right back on the court Wednesday night and play a good Fordham team on the road.”

Early last week, Dayton senior Devin Oliver said the Flyers were ready to prove to people they shouldn’t have been picked seventh in the A-10 preseason poll. They did that with their performance on the non-conference portion of the schedule. The loss Saturday shows the Flyers (12-4 overall) have some improvements to make if they’re going to compete for the regular-season title.

Oliver shot 0-of-12 from the field Saturday, and after the game on Twitter, he summed up his feelings with one sentence.

“That’s a tough one,” Oliver wrote.

Dayton’s 30.6 percent shooting performance wasn’t just the worst of the season, it was the worst of the Archie Miller era. The last time they shot worse than that was Jan. 9, 2011, when they shot 28.6 percent from the field in a 55-50 loss at Massachusetts.

With the loss to Saint Louis, Dayton is now 2-2 against teams ranked in the top 50 in the RPI. The Flyers were 38th in the first official RPI released by the NCAA on Friday. According to BasketballState.com, they fell to 43rd in the RPI with the loss to Saint Louis.

Saint Louis, by comparison, scored its first victory over a top 50 RPI team by beating Dayton after losses to Wisconsin and Wichita State.