‘Overall a great win’ — Dayton plays best half of the season in victory at Saint Joseph’s

Dayton had a strong team, too, one that would make the NCAA tournament for the second straight season. It took a 19-3 overall record and a 9-0 Atlantic 10 Conference mark into the game. Yet the Flyers were no match for one of the great teams in A-10 history, playing in front of a capacity crowd of 3,200.

“This is a little gym,” Dayton forward Keith Waleskowski said after the game, “but this atmosphere is what college basketball is all about.”

Waleskowski would have said the same Tuesday.

A crowd of 2,923, including a rowdy student section that taunted the Flyers all night — telling Dayton point guard Javon Bennett to “go back to daycare,” for example — watched No. 18 Dayton (19-3, 9-1) take another step toward joining the list of great A-10 teams with a 94-79 victory against Saint Joseph’s. The Flyers climbed one spot to No. 16 in the NCAA Evaluation Tool with their third straight victory and moved into first place in the A-10 by a half game over Richmond (16-6, 8-1), which doesn’t play again until Saturday.

“It’s awesome,” Dayton guard Kobe Elvis said. “It was phenomenal being in an atmosphere like this. Saint Joe’s did a great job getting people to show up. They played an awesome game. So did our guys.”

The Flyers fell behind 23-12 in the first half and trailed 38-34 at halftime. Then they played their best half of the season in the second half, outscoring the Hawks 60-41.

“We knew today was going to be a very challenging environment to come into,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said. “ (Saint Joseph’s is) a very talented, well-coached team. They came out early with great energy and made shots. Our guys show great resiliency and were able to weather that storm early. After that, we were able to chip away and put ourselves in position. In the second half, I thought our guys did a great job of being aggressive. We were able to defensively kind of take away some of the stuff that was hurting us early. Obviously, late they had a run. Our guys responded to that as well. So overall a great win.”

After the teams traded 3-pointers to start the second half, Dayton trailed 41-37 with 19 minutes to play. That’s when the game turned. Dayton started a 15-0 run on a 3-pointer by Javon Bennett at the 18:24 mark. In the next eight minutes, the Hawks made one field goal. Meanwhile, Dayton kept extending its lead, pushing it to 61-44 at the 10:54 mark.

Saint Joseph’s coach Billy Lange called two 30-second timeouts during Dayton’s run to try to slow the momentum. The Flyers made the run without a single point from their best player DaRon Holmes II, who finished with 13 points on 4-of-9 shooting.

“After they lost to Richmond, what was clear to me is that they were like, ‘OK, enough with the picking and popping, we’re posting Holmes,’” Lange said. “He fouled out almost the entire St. Bonaventure team, and I don’t think he took a 3 against GW. I thought the job that we did in the first 24 minutes on him in the low post was as good as we could possibly have done. We kept it out of there. We sped him up when he got it. We were great.

“Now this is why they’re a top 25 team. Then they can go to a spread-out offense and try to drive it. They’ve got one of the top 3-point shooting teams in the country. Now when they do this, we have to do that. That has to happen. We just made mistakes on weak-side help, head turns, guys cutting, pick-and-roll coverage. We were supposed to dip under, and we went over. Those type of things happened. It’s two things. One, they’re really good. Two, the human condition of not scoring.”

Saint Joseph’s scored 10 points in the first 13 minutes of the second half. It lost its fourth straight game in the series. Dayton has now won three of its last four games at Hagan Arena, where it lost nine straight games before a victory in 2020.

Dayton scored its highest points total in a road game since a 98-64 victory at George Mason eight years ago on the same day: Feb. 6, 2016. The 60-point second half was Dayton’s highest second-half total since it scored 63 against Central Connecticut State on Dec. 27, 1993.

“They’re as good as anybody we’ve played,” Lange said. “I thought our guys gave great fight and not just in the first half but in the last 10 minutes of the game. When you start 4 for 18 in the second half, you have to have a maturity and a discipline really down at the other end to just kind of hang because you go through lulls like that. It happens, especially against them because they’re one of the best defensive teams in our conference. They might be built best by the metrics. And we didn’t do that. Part of it’s them. Part of it’s us. You’ve got to try to keep it a little bit closer when you’re going through a lull like that against a really good team.”

Dayton made 12 of 22 3-pointers (54.5%), including 8 of 12 in the second half. It has shot 50% or better eight times this season. It’s shooting 40% on the season. That ranks sixth in the country.

Nate Santos, Bennett and Enoch Cheeks all made two 3-pointers. Elvis and Koby Brea each made 3 of 5.

All five Dayton starters scored in double figures for the first time this season. Santos and Elvis each scored 21. Bennett had 18. Holmes had 13. Cheeks added 12. Brea scored nine points off the bench.

“That just shows the versatility that our team has on any given day,” Elvis said, “and that shows just how many weapons our team has. Guys that can really shoot the ball and put the ball on the floor and score on all three levels.”

FRIDAY’S GAME

Dayton at VCU, 7 p.m., ESPN2, 95.7, 1290