“It was awesome,” Brea said Tuesday in an interview before practice at UD Arena. “I got to spend time with the family — my little brother, my parents, all them — and just kind of got away from basketball.”
Now basketball is back, and there will be few real breaks until the spring. Dayton (8-5) opens Atlantic 10 Conference play at 7 p.m. Wednesday against Duquesne (10-3) at UD Arena. It’s the first of 18 A-10 games in a 66-day stretch, which will be followed by the A-10 tournament in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The A-10 regular-season championship narrowly eluded Dayton last season. It finished 14-4, one game behind Davidson (15-3). Winning that title is one of the primary goals every season, and Dayton was the preseason favorite this season.
“I feel like it’s always a goal for us to just dominate the A-10 and have a good record in the A-10,” Brea said, “and that’s something that we’ve definitely got to do this year. We learned a lot from last year, and it’s only going to help us.”
“It is a goal we weren’t able to accomplish last year,” forward Toumani Camara said, “and I think we’ve still got a chip on the shoulder. We all want to be able to show people what we’re capable of and the growth that we’ve made, and even though we had a tough start to the season, I would say I think we’re going to be able to bounce back.”
Dayton faces one of the most improved A-10 teams in its first game. Duquesne, which was picked to finish last in the A-10, has the second-best record in the A-10 behind another improved team, Fordham (11-1).
The Dukes have already won four more games than they did all of last season when they finished 6-24, which was their worst season since 1998-99 (5-23). They won 10 non-conference games for the fourth time in school history and first time since 2019-20 when they were 10-2.
“It’s really impressive watching them play,” Grant said. “It’s almost a new team from what they had last year.”
Like Dayton, Duquesne has built its record by beating lower-ranked opponents. It is 6-0 in Quad 4 games, according to the NCAA Evaluation Tool, and 4-1 in Quad 3 games. Dayton is 8-0 against Quad 4 and 0-1 against Quad 3. Neither team has a Quad 1 or 2 victory.
Dayton and Duquesne have also made the most of their home games. The Flyers are 7-0 at UD Arena. Duquesne is 9-2 at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse and played its last nine games at home.
Duquesne lost two of its three leading scorers to the transfer portal after last season: Primo Spears (Georgetown); and Jackie Johnson III (UNLV). It also reshaped its roster with the transfer portal. Its two leading scorers are Dae Dae Grant, who played the last three seasons with the Miami RedHawks, and Jimmy Clark, who played two seasons at Virginia Commonwealth and last season at Northwest Florida, a junior college.
Dayton takes a three-game winning streak into its A-10 opener. It recorded its most lopsided victory in 10 years in its last game, beating Alcorn State 88-46 on Dec. 20, despite continuing to play with a short bench. Grant didn’t have an update Tuesday on injured guards Kobe Elvis and Malachi Smith, who have each missed the last six games.
The Flyers hope to get both players back at some point during A-10 play.
“I feel like we’re playing like the best basketball we’ve played this whole year,” Brea said, “and we’re trending in the right direction. It’s only going to keep getting better and better as we keep getting guys back healthy. We haven’t had our whole team this entire year. We can’t wait for that. It’s definitely going to happen. When that time comes, it’s going to be bad for the rest of the league.”
Dayton leads the A-10 in points allowed per game (58.9) but ranks 14th out of 15 teams in scoring (66.8). Those numbers can partly be explained by Dayton’s pace. It ranks 265th in the country in offensive pace (18.2 seconds per possession). However, the Flyers also rank last in the A-10 in 3-point shooting percentage (28.8) and 13th in turnover margin (minus 13.1).
“Offensively, we’ve not been as consistent as we need to be, taking care of the ball and shooting the ball,” Grant said. “It’s just understanding who we are and what allows us to have success on the offensive end. I think we’ve been pretty good defensively.”
WEDNESDAY’S GAME
Duquense at Dayton, 7 p.m., Spectrum News 1, ESPN+, 1290, 95.7
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