‘This is our house’ — Dayton, Flyer Faithful celebrate rare victory in Cincinnati

Dayton has had a fair degree of success in the world at large over the years, but not so much in the Queen City. The Flyers have lost all 13 games they have played against Xavier in the Cintas Center. They’re 1-7 at Fifth Third Arena, the home court of the Cincinnati Bearcats. They began the weekend with three victories in 14 chances at the Heritage Bank Center.

Did any of the Flyers, all of whom were born in this century, know much about that history? Maybe the local walk-ons: Brady Uhl, for example, with his family’s long history at UD.

Dayton’s star player, DaRon Holmes II, only knew this was an important game for a number of reasons.

“We already know Dayton-Xavier is a big rivalry,” Holmes said, “so I know Cincinnati is probably the same way. Even though I’ve never played Cincinnati before, you could just feel it before the game, leading up to it, how much this game meant.”

Dayton coach Anthony Grant showed how much the game meant to him after an 82-68 victory. In a video shared by the official Dayton basketball social media accounts, Grant walks quietly into the locker room after the game and then turns and surprises the players by shouting, “Way to get that W!” The players leap from their seats in excitement and start jumping up and down with Grant.

“Hell of a job,” Grant tells them.

That’s a good way to sum up Dayton’s performance in one of the most important games in Grant’s seven seasons. Here’s what the victory means for Dayton.

• Dayton (8-2) won its fifth straight game since a 69-55 loss to Houston in the Charleston Classic championship game on Nov. 19.

• Dayton climbed from No. 44 to No. 30 in the NCAA Evaluation Tool with its second Quad 1 victory. If Cincinnati (8-2), which dropped from No. 24 to No. 38, remains in the top 50, the victory will remain in the Quad 1 category for the Flyers.

• Dayton put itself in position to post its best non-conference record since the 2019-20 season when it was 11-2. The Flyers have won 14 straight non-conference home games and play Oakland (6-5) on Wednesday and Longwood (11-1) on Dec. 30 in their final games before Atlantic 10 Conference play starts in January.

Holmes scored 28 points. Kobe Elvis added a career-high 27 points, making 14 of 14 free throws, the third-most accurate performance at the line in school history. Koby Brea provided the early offense by making his first three 3-point attempts and scored 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting from long range.

Dayton delivered one of the best free-throw shooting performances in school history (28 of 30) and stretched its lead to as many as 18 points in the second half.

The Flyer Faithful, which made up a majority of the crowd of 12,547, played a part in Dayton’s dominance, turning a neutral court into UD Arena south. Many UC fans had left the building by the time UD fans started chanting, “This is our house!”

“It means a lot,” Holmes said. “We knew they were going to show up. That’s what they do. That’s their identity. It was great to see them out there. Wherever we go — we could be in Antarctica — they’re going to travel, come and support us. That’s the beauty of Dayton basketball.”

This was the first game between Dayton and Cincinnati since 2010. There’s no guarantee of future matchups. Cincinnati will have fewer opportunities for non-conference games next season with the Big 12 moving from an 18-game schedule to a 20-game schedule.

Third-year Cincinnati coach Wes Miller said if the game doesn’t happen in the future, it won’t be because of this result.

“Sometimes coaches say, ‘Don’t play local games because if you lose everybody’s (upset),’” Miller said. “I think that’s a bunch of BS. These games get you ready for league play. The fact that people get all charged up for them, that’s good. That’s good for our growth. I hate that we lost two of them (Dayton and Xavier). That stinks and it feels terrible, but I’m not afraid of that. We’re not going to not want to play good teams locally because we’re worried about what the hell people think. That’s a good game for Cincinnati. So I’m not opposed to the game moving forward. But the reasons why we could or couldn’t sometimes are hard to figure out with all the changes in college basketball right now.”

WEDNESDAY’S GAME

Dayton vs. Oakland, 7 p.m., Spectrum News 1, 1290, 95.7