No. 21 Dayton utilized the Atlantic 10’s top defense to a flawless six-game conference record before experiencing its initial defeat.
The Flyers (16-3, 6-1 Atlantic 10) are set to reclaim momentum on Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, against a George Washington team striving to rediscover its scoring prowess.
Dayton, who had a 13-game winning streak snapped in Saturday’s contest at Richmond, is conceding only 64.1 points per game, which ranks 23rd in Division I. However, the Flyers only managed to score 64 points in a five-point loss to the Spiders.
“First half, I thought, we couldn’t make shots, really. Came down to, I thought we got some good looks, I thought we got out of character at times offensively, rushed some things,” remarked Dayton coach Anthony Grant subsequently.
In particular, the Flyers’ primary scorer, DaRon Holmes II, concluded the game with just nine points, 10 below his average for the season. He only managed three points in the first half.
“Early, I know they were throwing multiple bodies at him,” Grant said of Richmond’s defense. “We just got to do better, and I think we’ll learn from this game.”
The trio of Nate Santos, Koby Brea, and Kobe Elvis each average between 10.0 and 11.3 points per game, with Brea recording a 48.2 percent success rate in 3-pointers, ranking second in the nation.
The Flyers also boast an unbeaten home record of 10-0.How Dayton responds to its first defeat in over two months “will be determined by our collective maturity level,” Grant conveyed.
“That’s a part of life, how you handle adversity that hits you at some point, and how you respond to that. It’s like two sides of that coin: How do you handle prosperity, how do you handle adversity,” Grant further added.
George Washington (14-6, 3-4) is grappling with a three-game slump, having been defeated by teams situated in the mid-level (UMass), the top (Richmond), and near the bottom (La Salle) of the Atlantic 10.
The Revolutionaries are averaging 80.8 points per game this season but only 70.3 points during this challenging period.
Starting center Babatunde Akingbola, in his first season with the team after four years at Auburn, announced after the 80-70 loss to La Salle that there would be a “players only meeting” before facing Dayton.
One of coach Chris Caputo‘s enduring concerns has been turnovers. His team averages 13.9 turnovers per game.
“We are working towards trying to take care of the ball better,” he said last week. “We’ve gotten better on the defensive glass, but the turnover battle is something that we fight every single day. We turn it over in transition a lot. It’s kind of odd, but we’ve got to continue to make better decisions.”
After registering double-digit turnover counts in their initial 18 games, the Revolutionaries had nine turnovers in each of their last two games. However, seven of the nine turnovers against La Salle occurred in the first half when the Explorers held a lead of up to nine points.
George Washington decreased the deficit to four by halftime and narrowed it to one early in the second half, but they only managed a 37.5 percent shooting accuracy in the latter half and never approached closer than six points in the final 11 1/2 minutes.
James Bishop IV leads four players in double figures with an average of 17.9 points per game for George Washington. Following Bishop is Darren Buchanan Jr. at 15.5, who delivered 24 points and 12 rebounds against La Salle.
