Shameless Self Promotion

I have a friend from work named Garrett. He's a good dude, though not nearly as clever, charming or handsome as I am. Garrett and I started a podcast where we talk about things that interest us (and probably only us). Check it out HERE.

See You Next Year

Well that was a fun season. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

As I type this Tim is checking into the availability of www.firebriangregory.com, Rick is telling anyone who will listen that he thinks UD can win on the road at Temple and win two games in the Atlantic 10 tournament, and I am suprisingly unfazed by this afternoon's developments.

Anyway, we basically shut this thing down when Tim left the country immediately following (but not because of) UD's back-to-back losses to St. Joseph's and Rhode Island. We were already teetering, but today's wretched performance against Duquesne pushed us (or at least me) over the edge. I'm throwing in the towel for this season. Check back in, say, early October and we might get her up and running again.

-Secaur

We Beat Xavier, Weeeeeee!

The Dayton Flyers dismantled Xavier 90-65 yesterday at UD Arena in what was Dayton's most dominant and complete performance since a 25-point rout of Pitt back in December 2007.

Two things about this game stuck out to me. First, Xavier's supporting cast did nothing. Down in Cincinnati three weeks prior, Dante Jackson shined with 19 points and Terrell Halloway came up big going 13-14 at the free throw line. Yesterday those role players failed to come through. Jordan Crawford got his, shooting 8-14 from the field and scoring a game-high 24. The rest of Xaiver's team shot just 13-42 including 5-17 from beyond the arc. Xavier's bench was outscored 37-6.

The second thing is something every UD fan has been harping on all season long: shoot less 3's! The Flyers attempted just 13 shots from way downtown yesterday afternoon, and guess what. Dayton made 7 of those attempts. Now I'm not naive enough to think the Flyers can shoot 50% or more from 3 just by taking fewer shots. However, I do know this: fewer 3-pointers taken in a given game does correlate to a higher percentage made for the red and blue. I'd also love to see a stat with UD's record in games in which it has shot 15 or fewer 3-point shots. The problem is it happens so rarely, so I'd bet it's like 3-0 or something.

Oh and just for fun, in two games against Xavier, Dayton has outrebounded the Muskies by a whopping 93-58. That's called making someone your bitch.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm not going to be able to enjoy this win for too long. The road ahead really doesn't get any easier for the Flyers as they still have to play what are, in my mind, the three best teams in the league not named Xavier (sorry Rhode Island). The final half of A10 play includes three games in which UD should handle its business: La Salle, UMass, and Saint Louis all at home. It contains two games I cannot see our beloved Flyers winning under almost any circumstances: at Temple and at Richmond. And it includes three toss-up games: Charlotte, at Saint Louis, and at Duquesne. The problem is that with the atrocious loss to St. Joe's, UD has put itself in a position where it must win all three of those toss-up games. (Seriously, have you seen what the Hawks are doing? They're 2-6 in A10 play with the only other win coming against Fordham.)

Now if you've been a college basketball fan for any length of time, there are two games that you should (and probably do) fear more than all the others -- especially if your team has a propensity for blowing games it should definitely win. The trap game and the let down game.

The trap game is simple. It can come either right before a very big game for your team, or it can come in between two games of the utmost importance. Georgetown fell prey to the classic trap game scenario just this past week when it beat a top ten Duke team last Saturday and knocked off #2 Villanova in impressive fashion yesterday. The Hoyas, however, lost to a middle of the road South Florida team mid-week in the obvious trap game.

The let down game is different in that it comes after a huge game, often a rivalry game where emotions run high and there is a lot at stake. Back on January 18 Kansas State knocked off then-#1 Texas only to suffer a let down in its next outing and lose at home to Oklahoma State. Butler knocked off Xavier in a big non-conference match up earlier this season (someone told me that had a controversial ending, but I don't remember hearing anything about it) only to lay an egg in its next game. Cincinnati's Bearcats actually lost to XU in what is also a pretty big rivalry and still suffered a major let down in their next contest. Coincidentally, both Butler and Cincinnati's let down games came against UAB.

The Flyers played their best game of the season, of that there is no question. Now the challenge is to avoid the dreaded let down, but this game Wednesday against Charlotte is not your typical let down situation for two reasons:

1) The 49ers come to Dayton all alone in first place atop the A10 standings. They are playing as well as anybody in the league right now, and if the Flyers don't know Charlotte can ball, you can be sure somebody is going to beat it into their heads over the next three days. A let down game usually involves overlooking one's opponent, and it's pretty tough to overlook a first place team.

2) The game before the let down game tends to be a taxing one both physically and emotionally. It tends to "drain" a team or take a lot out of them. Cincinnati and Xavier went to double overtime to settle their match up back in December. Yesterday's blowout is not something I would describe as a mental grind, and -- other than Chris Wright -- no Flyer played more than 23 minutes of action. So there should be no excuse for physical fatigue come Wednesday.

As a Dayton fan, though, it's tough for me not to see the potential for a major let down against the 49ers. Plus, you have to factor in just how well The Leprechaun has Charlotte playing right now. Derrio Green is a guy I'd never even heard of three weeks ago, and suddenly he is just torching people. In three of his last four games, Green has put 26, 34, and 24 point efforts. I really can't think of a word to describe Shamari Spears other than beast. Spears dropped 31 on George Washington and piled up 15 points and 13 rebounds in a win yesteday. The Flyers will have their hands full with those two to be sure.

Can UD avoid the dreaded let down game and in doing so climb within one game of first in the Atlantic 10? My feel for this team has been off all season long. After Puerto Rico and the Towson near-debacle, I predicted doom and gloom. Then I predicted a five game winning streak during which the Flyers dropped back-to-back one-point losses. So, to be honest, I have no clue how Dayton responds after throttling Xavier. Just have to wait until Wednesday and see.

P.S. This has nothing to do with anything ... but if you want a good laugh, check out Archdeacon's column from the DDN web site after yesterday's game.

Even in an Off-Week, UDFN has Flyer Fever 24/7

It's barely a day-and-a-half old, but this is already feeling like one of the stranger weeks I've experienced in a while.

On one hand: it's a big fat week of Flyer Nothingness. Seven whole days with no new Flyer news, results, or input of any kind. Robbed of that usual stimuli, it should be a case of "out of sight, out of mind."

And yet, on the other hand: I'm all-too-conscious of what looms at the end of this week. A cataclysm at the D-Rena, to be broadcast worldwide on the ESPN Family. So forget the lack of stimuli... the Flyers are still very much on my mind, even if my mind doesn't quite know what thoughts to think about.

Surely, I can't be the only one?

Or maybe I am: I have no fricking clue what Tim is doing this past month but he ain't doing it here. And Secaur's dirty little secret is that he suffers from a severe emotional imbalance and cannot maintain a cogent thesis about the Flyers for more than 3 days at a time. In a world where he can go from predicting a 9 game winning streak heading into Temple all the way to volunteering to personally incapacitate Brian Gregory with his bare hands just to stop the man from coaching us straight into the CBI, you can see why he's not around checking with voluminous Flyer Thoughts. The blog was supposed to be a fun hobby, not something that causes one to be filled with murderous rage.

But I'm here. And despite the lack of fresh input, *I* can't stop thinking about the Flyers during this alleged off-week. I find they're mostly optimistic thoughts, at least, as compared to most of what I've seen passing as Flyer Discourse. Not naively optimistic (there's a bit of that out there, too, and I find it as laughable as the venomous and misguided pessimism), but I'm still excited for what is to come, rather than dreading it.

Or worse: considering it meaningless.

I think that's the mindset that I find the most troublesome at this point. People who get all whiny and indignant because Dayton has now already played its way into the NIT, and there's nothing to be done about it, and the season's over. Bottom line: anyone who says that DOES NOT KNOW WHAT WORDS MEAN. They should be forced to ride a short-bus to the Arena when parking in the Delco Lot, if you catch my drift.

Feel free to question our ability to do what it takes to cement our spot in the NCAA Tourney, if you want to have an intelligent discussion on the matter. But do not sit there an opine that we've already sealed our fate. Because if you do, what you are saying is that you not only predicted the Flyers to finish 25-5 or better, but that you believed that 25-5 WAS THE FLOOR for being considered for an at-large bid.

A few people might have said the former at the start of the season. But nobody said the latter. Nobody of consequence, anyway.

So why, now, in the first week of February, are people rushing to the nearest internet to type angry missives about the patheticness of our Flyers and the irrelevance of the rest of our season, now that we have 6 losses? Simple: because most people are stupid, but we have to humor them because if the internet has accomplished nothing else besides free and easy distribution of porn, it's democratized intelligence. Dumdum McGED's vote is worth as much as mine. Whee.

Way I look at it, I predicted a 23-7 regular season (11-3 OOC, 12-4 A-10), with that being more than ample to be an NCAA lock. Presently, RPIForecast.com backs this up, as our SOS is mighty (top 20 for our OOC schedule, and it'll end up being top 40 overall at the end of the season), and a 23-7 regular season would land us with an RPI in the top 25. Impossible to leave out of the Dance, really.

Even at 22-8, we remain a top 30 RPI team at the end of the year, and just because of the difficulty of our remaining schedule (and the fact that to reach 22-8 would still mean going 8-2 in the Selection Committee's precious "Last 10 Games"), we'd still have 3-4 regular season Quality Wins up against just the single Bad Loss (St. Joe's). We only really dip onto the Bubble (probably on the wrong side of it) if we stumble to 21-9.

Ergo:

(1) We're only really one game off the pace that I would have predicted, en route to my anticipation of a 23-7 finish. I had @Eggs, @Temple, and @Richmond pencilled in as losses, with the Flyers dropping one other random game, because that's what the Flyers do. Now: we've lost TWO other random games. And we did it back-to-back, which is probably why the angry shouty internet diptards decided to lose all sense of logic and fly off the handle the past week.

(2) 23-7 would be all well and good, but 22-8 will get the job done. Anybody who's written off the rest of the year because we have 6 losses is stupid. We have two more losses to give before a thinking person writes off the rest of the season. Until we give them, I say this is like baseball, and WE CONTROL OUR OWN DESTINY. We basically have a "magic number" next to our name in the standings. In this case, that magic number is currently 7.

(3) I'm not even prepared to say that this-game or that-game is a "must win" for our resume. Obviously, it would sure as hell feel good to bitchslap Eggs on Saturday, not just for reasons of blind personal hatred, but also because it's a quality win over a borderline top-20 RPI team. Others claim we need the "signature road win" @Temple now, because of how bad our resume sucks. Horsefeathers to all of that, says I! HORSEFEATHERS! Also: HOGWASH~! If we win 7 more regular season games, but default at least 1 of them will have to be a Quality Win (quite possibly 2 of them). That pairs up nicely with two pre-existing Quality Wins (GATech and ODU), and doesn't even get into what we'll have a chance to do to play add-on in the A-10 tourney (1 or 2 more Quality Wins are possible, depending on how the chips fall).

(3a) So to simplify: no one game on the remainder of the schedule is "must win." The only "must win" thing in my mind is the number 7. That's it: 7.

(4) Bringing the A-10 tourney into consideration, I think our other "magic number" to keep in mind is 24. If that's our number of total, overall wins on Selection Sunday, it's the one that makes us bulletproof. If we somehow still meet my prediction and finish 12-4 in the A-10, that means we just win one game in Atlantic City, in order to avoid another borderline "bad loss." If we hit 11-5, it means no bye, and we should AT LEAST win our game at home before advancing to AC, where we can make the Selection Committee's job easy by just getting one more Quality Win before crapping out in the semis; make the semis, and we're indisputably a top-4 team in what'll probably be a 4-bid conference. 10-6 or worse and, well, we pretty much have to win the tourney, which in a best case scenario probably means hitting 24 wins. Though if it's fewer than that, it won't matter, cuz they have to take us!

(4a) If you're some kind of schadenfreude enthusiast who can't wait for UD's 6th A-10 loss (9th overall), so you can come back and rub it in my stupid face that NOW the season is over, just you wait! Cuz I'll change my tune so fast, it'll make your head spin! Until we're ELIMINTED FROM THE A-10 TOURNEY, the season's not over. Nobody in this conference is really THAT much superior to us so as to make a neutral court game unwinnable (sadly, we're capable of such swings that nobody other than Fordham is that much inferior to us, either), and as long as there's an Auto-Bid on the table, I ain't ready to start talking about next year's recruits or whether CW will stay or go, dammit! I'm sticking with the 2010 Flyers until some point in mid-March, and there ain't nothing you poopy-pantsed pessimists can do to stop me!

To wrap up....

Saturday's home showdown with Eggsavier may be why I'm still Flyer Obsessed during this off-week, but as my mind wanders, it does tend to wander to the Big Picture. And despite the Sting of Pain after those back-to-back losses last week, the Big Picture is still looking alright. At least: we still control our own destiny, and don't have to rely on others to fade down the stretch. Feel free to rationally debate our ability to do so, but if we lose 2 or fewer games between now and March 6, we ARE dancing. Simple as that.

24/7, baby, those are the magic numbers. It's got a nice, easy-to-remember ring to it. 24/7, and the Committee doesn't matter. We'll have made the Selection for them. If you look at the data objectively, 23/6 should even keep us amply in the discussion and on the bubble, too. But I'd rather be in the Dance than in the Discussion, just to be on the safe side.

24/7... who's with me?


Rick

Well, that was a kick in the...

Friends of Flyer Nation, today is a sad day. It's January 26th and already your UD Flyers have been all but eliminated from contention for an at-large berth. It's gonna take 3 wins in Atlantic City if the Flyers want to go dancing in back-to-back seasons. What's the only thing worse than blogging angry after a one-point loss to Rhode Island?

Saying I told you so.

Unfortunately, I saw this coming. Here's what I wrote all the way back on October 6, 2009. Number 3 is looking especially pertinent, no?

3. Bad Luck
You may see this and think that predicting bad luck sounds like the most ludicrous thing you've ever read. To that I say, read on friends. This blog is only a few weeks old; I can come up with stuff that's far more absurd.

Here's my point, though. The Flyers were something like 10-1 in games decided by five points or fewer last season. (I'm too lazy to look up the actual stat.) A lot of fans saw that as the mark of a gritty, hard-nosed team. One that knew how to get the job done by any means necessary and come out on top in a close one. Others saw that stat in a less positive light. They said the Flyers don't seem to be able to pull away and beat teams by large margins. That squad after all wasn't built to blow out its opponents.

I, on the other hand, saw the 10-1 record in close games as this: an incredible run of good luck. If you played out the 2008-'09 season again, there's no way UD would rack up a 10-1 record in those games. These things even out over time, especially when you have a team that far too often let inferior teams hang around deep into games. Play with fire enough times, and you're bound to get burnt, which leads me to...

2. A razor thin margin for error
This has been chronicled throughout the offseason basically since the non-conference schedule was released. It's a problem that is very easy to identify and far more difficult to solve.

Outside of Puerto Rico, the Flyers really have no chance to pick-up a marquee OOC victory. Match-ups with fellow mid-majors Creighton, George Mason and New Mexico have their benefits but aren't exactly head turners come Selection Sunday. If UD goes 1-2 in Puerto Rico or even if the team loses to Ga Tech and wins its next two, the chance for a resume padding non-conference W (a la Marquette last season and Pitt and Louisville two years ago) has slipped through its fingers.

And let's face it, the A10 itself is always a crapshoot. Other than Xavier, which team can you really rely on to be good? You could have a situation where Dayton's "signature" OOC wins are Creighton and George Mason, and that means the Flyers would have to be almost flawless in the A10 to secure an at-large bid.

UD pulled this feat off last year, I know. But even with 26 wins heading into Selection Sunday, the Flyers were on thin ice. Playing the "what if" game is pretty pointless after the fact, but one can't help but wonder: What if Fordham doesn't let Rob Lowery go coast-to-coast for a game winning lay-up? What if Karl Hobbs knows you're only allowed to play five guys at a time? That's why reasons #2 and #3 are so inter-related. A little dose of bad luck against a conference foe or two combined with such tiny room for error could spell the recipe for disaster ... or at least for an NIT bid.

1. The hunted, not the hunter
In recent memory the Dayton Flyers have never been the hunted. They've always been the hunter - hunting down some big-time BCS schools in the last few years and taking aim at Xavier which consistently sat atop the A10 standings.

Now the shoe's on the other foot. Your own Dayton Flyers are pretty much the concensus pick to win the league this season. They're in almost everyone's preseason top 25 rankings. Xavier has lost players to graduation, one left early to go to the NBA, and its coach abandoned ship for greener pastures.

Suddenly, UD is the team on top looking down at the rest of the league. It's a great spot to be in when you think about it. However, the Flyers had better be ready for a dogfight (not the Mike Vick kind) in every single conference game next year. Be ready to take your opponent's best shot game in and game out. Can the '09-'10 Flyers live up to being the hunted and not the hunter? I, for one, say this will slowly take its toll on this UD team and ultimlately cause it to miss the 2010 NCAA tournament.

Week in Review 1.23.10

Every Friday I'll break down the week that was in Flyers basketball, as well as whatever is else is on my mind at the time. It'll be my chance to overreact to the UD's most recent game as well as renege on everything I said in the podcast earlier in the given week. Or, at the very least, it will give you something distracting to read when you should be working on a Friday.

1-1 on the week
It feels like the game at Xavier has been covered ad naseum, so much so that the game seems like it must have taken place much more than just six days ago. I will reiterate one thing I said in the game recap though: Dayton took the game to Xavier. The Flyers didn't sit back and wait for X to take it to them. They didn't look like a bunch of deer in the headlights nor did they look scared or intimidated (or any other adjective) of Xavier simply because it's Xavier. For this reason, I think UD wins in the rematch and it might not even be as close as everyone expects.

It's difficult to predict how a team will react coming off a big rivalry game, especially a tough road loss. It's easy to fire up the troops for a game at X on ESPN2; it's not so easy to do the same thing for a week night game against a middle of the road George Washington team. UD responded well and cruised to a win without the services of Luke Fabrizius and Paul Williams. Sure, GW is a pedestrian team with a who coach who seemingly cannot grasp the concept of playing only five men at a time, but the Flyers needed a bounce back win and got it Wednesday night. Dayton also remained perfect on the year at UD Arena and stretched its home winning streak to 30 games. (Chris Wright is 37-0 in his career at home.)

The road ahead
If UD ever makes it to the Elite Eight in my lifetime, I really hope the program, the administration, and the coach at the time do not take one out of St. Joseph's playbook. The Hawks, led by current NBA-ers Jameer Nelson and Delonte West, did just that back in 2004 and, best I can tell, the basketball program has done nothing to build upon or parlay that success. In fact, if you aren't a college basketball fan who pays attention to these things, you'd probably never know this happened. I'm a huge Phil Martelli fan, but I'm very surprised SJU has failed to cash in on past successes with better recruits or more national exposure or ... something.

The Hawks are in a rebuilding phase and sit at just 6-11 overall (1-3 in conference play). This is a game Dayton must win and, in my opinion, should win handily. Will it be pretty? It never is. Will it be a blowout? It almost never is. I look for the boys in red to win by ten.

But if games again George Washington and St. Joe's provide a respite of sorts for UD, it will be a brief one. The Flyers return home for a Tuesday, January 26, bout with Rhode Island. The Rams are an impressive 15-2 (3-1) and sport a quality victory against Oklahoma State as well as a decent road win over Boston College. URI's lone conference loss game is in a 4-point affair with Temple. The good news for UD fans may be that Rhody will be coming off a big game at Xavier just three days prior to taking on the Flyers. The Atlantic 10 schedule makers seem to have done the Rams no favors this season, as URI plays the league's toughest out (Temple) twice and arguably its next two best teams both on the road.

How close is it?
I think this Dayton team is close. I feel good about where the Flyers stand right now and about the progress the team has made thus far in 2009-'10. UD is capable of playing stellar defense and has put on a rebounding clinic in its last two games. Really, the only thing you can say the Flyers do at a below average level is put the ball in the basket (if only that were not the object of the game).

As long as the Flyers continue to ratchet up the D and crash the glass as they have been, I think these guys are a forced to be reckoned with, at least in the A10. Plus, I honestly believe UD will have a game or two where shots start falling, a game or two in which the Flyers knock down half of their wide open jumpers and 80% of their free throws. If these games come against the right opponents (Xavier, URI, or at Richmond), UD could reel off a bunch of W's and even finish as high as 13-3 in the league. Even if it doesn't go down like that, I think UD can score just enough points and lean heavily on that D to win every home game and go 12-4 in A10 play (which would all but lock up an at-large bid.)

The Rotation
With Luke and P-Will on the bench last night, UD's rotation was smaller and Brian Gregory was forced to be much less liberal with his substituion patterns. And guess what? UD won in blowout fashion. Of course, one would have to attribue that more to GW being not good at basketball and less to substitution issues, but it does raise a question. Is it time for Brian Gregory to tighten up his rotation?

For the first half of the year, I was on board with the whole "play 11 guys and wear down the opposition over 40 minutes" strategy ... mainly because it worked so well last season. But that, as they say, was then and this is now. I think it's time for Paul Williams, sick or not, to see a lot more bench time. If you can't outplay Mickey Perry on a regular basis, you just don't deserve a regular spot in the rotation. I'd tell P-Will that he's still a big part of the plan here at UD and that I fully expect him to start at the 2 next season, but that there are two seniors (Mickey and MJ) in front of him right now and he might be seeing a cutback in his PT down the home stretch.

The other move I'd suggest is going to a 3-man platoon at the center position. Basically, Huelsman and Searcy (Kurtcy) have been averaging 36 mpg at the 5 with UD "going small" (or playing Kavanaugh and the walk-ons) for the other four minutes. Huelsman starts and sees 20 minutes a night; that part is a given. What I'd do is cut back on Searcy's minutes and have him split time with Benson. Benson's too skinny to be a traditional 5 but there are so few legitimate post presences in the A10 that the Flyers can get away with it for ten minutes an outing.

This means Searcy and Benson are getting ten apiece at the 5-spot; Wright and Luke are splitting 30/10 at the 4; CJ is in the game as often as possible without him collapsing on the court; MJ and Perry are dividing up minutes at the 2; and London Warren is getting the bulk of the minutes (let's say 26 to Lowery's 14) at the point. This still leaves you with a ten man rotation, but it really acts as nine since Searcy and Benson are both serving as one back-up center (Ben-cy? Searson?).

Speaking of...
Rob Lowery has not been good for the Dayton Flyers this season. There's really no other way for me to say it. Rob needs to step his game up and soon. If you take out his 23-point performance against Boston, Lowery has shot just 22-78 from the field and 13-50 from 3 in his other 11 games. Obviously, it's not fair to Rob to eliminate only his best game of the season, but those numbers certainly are telling. Roughly 7 shots per game is way too many for a guy playing a shade under 20 mpg. Those percentages, by the way, are a less-than-stellar 28 and 26. Shoot less and those numbers have nowhere to go but up.

Guard Play
I had a chance to watch a good chunk of Temple and Xavier the other night, and one thing is abundantly clear. Juan Fernandez and Ryan Brooks are by leaps and bounds the best backcourt duo in the conference. Fernandez has come a long way since that scared little pup of a freshman we saw at UD Arena late last season, and Brooks leads the Owls in scoring and is second in rebounding from the shooting guard position. Add in Luis Guzman off the bench and Temple might have best backcourt the Atlantic 10 has seen since the aforementioned Nelson and West.

Ghosts in the post?
Did anybody else catch this quote from Chris Wright in the Dayton Daily News? He was talking about playing at UD Arena:

"There's just all the energy and all the great players who played on that floor before. Everybody in spirit is out there with us — the ones who are still living and even the ones who have passed. It's fun being out there."

Yeah, that's not creepy at all, Chris. Nice to know the Flyers' homecourt is haunted. No wonder it's so tough to win there.

Around the Nation
Is it me or are there no great teams in college basketball this year? A month ago, I probably would have told you that Kansas is a cut above the rest of D-I and a clear favorite to win the national championship. In that time, the Jayhawks squeaked past Cornell by 5 and Baylor by 6, both at home, and got beat by an undermanned Tennessee team. I'd still have to say Kansas is the most complete basketball team in the country, but I can no longer say with certainty that they're this season's favorites.

Texas was looking strong until Monday's game against (friends of the blog) K-State. Frank Martin's men made the Longhorns look very beatable and downright average at times. And that leaves Kentucky as college basketball's only unbeaten team. A month ago, I would have told you I could see UK making the Final Four but that there's no way a team which starts three freshman and a sophomore could win the national title. Now, I'm not so sure about that.

In my opinion, the Big East is once again the best conference in the country. It's a weird league, though, in that it has 5 or 6 teams that could make a run to the Elite Eight if the chips fall, but it doesn't have a real national title contender. Villanova and Syracuse are close but not real threats in my eyes.

A sleeper team to go all the way -- well, as much of a sleeper as the #6/#7 team in the country can be -- is Michigan State. The Spartans stumbled a bit early but have won 11 of their last 12 and are a quiet 6-0 in Big Ten play. Plus, Tom Izzo flat out gets it done in March. With no elite team in college hoops, could MSU take advantage this year?

That's it for this week. My back and shoulders are getting a little tired from carrying this thing, but I'm gonna keep on truckin'. Live tweets from @UDFlyers during the St. Joe's game Saturday, which is on ESPNU.

Dayton-Xavier Recap

First of all, let me say that I'm never very happy after a loss and that I don't really do moral victories. That said, I think there are a lot of encouraging things about today's game. I'm so used to watching the Flyers come out sluggish, especially on the road. It almost always seems like UD is content to let its opponent be the aggressor. Dayton's opposition acts while the Flyers spend the opening minutes of a game reacting. This morning at the Cintas Center that was not the case. UD dictated play to Xavier instead of vice versa. The Flyers came to play, and the Muskies came out flat (but not for very long). If UD could knock down free throws, it would have been a 6-0 lead for the good guys right off the bat.

The bottom line, however, is another loss to Xavier in Cincinnati. You all know the drill: Dayton has not won at XU since 1981 before I (and probably most of you) was even born. Let's recap it:

• As a Flyers fan you're probably saying, "If we make just one or two more shots, either from the field or at the line, we win this game." If you're a Xavier fan (and why would you be?) you're probably saying, "If we could get a freakin' rebound, we beat those guys by 15." Both sides are probably right.
• The rebounding, the hustle, and the energy were phenomenal. The boys in red played as hard as I've seen them play all year long. They beat Xavier's players to loose ball after loose ball and dominated on the glass. In case you've yet to see the numbers, the Flyers outrebounded XU 51-34 and had a ridiculous 25 offensive rebounds. This allowed UD to attempt an equally ridiculous 70 field goals.
• Chris Johnson's jumper wasn't falling today, which is shame because the dude played an incredible game. Not sure how it comes across on TV but after being there in person, I can tell you that CJ was absolutely everywhere on the court today. He had 10 points and 16 boards, 10 of which came on the offensive end. Ten offensive rebounds is unheard of; I'm surprised he didn't play more than 26 minutes.
• Speaking of minutes, Luke Fab continues to make the most of his. 2-4 from downtown for 6 points and 3 rebounds on the afternoon. Maybe more importantly, he didn't force any bad shots. He did pick up two first half fouls, but I didn't see him playing much more than 12 minutes anyway.
• Hopefully Marcus Johnson is officially out of his funk. He played great today on both ends of the floor. He continues to be a tenacious defender and was taking the ball strong to the bucket on O. MJ led the Flyers with 17 points and 3 steals. He also went 4-for-4 from the stripe which was a welcome surprise.
• I didn't think Chris Wright played all that well. Why CW was on the floor with 8:00 left in the first half to even have the opportunity to pick up his third foul is beyond me, but that's another story. It looked like Jason Love went to the Cole Aldrich/Kansas school of defending Chris Wright: play way off of him daring Wright to shoot jumpers, favor his right hand, let him dribble into your chest and then swat his shot. Love had six blocks while Wright was just 2-7 from the floor.
• For a guy who is supposed to be UD's "energy guy," its "spark plug," London Warren was virtually nonexistent today. LW only played 11 minutes while Rob Lowery continues to try to make up for lost time by chucking it early and often. The numbers show a solid game for Rob Low (13 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 0 TO's), and he did have a really nice floor game. But 3-17 FG (0-9 inside the arc) shooting just won't do.
• Honestly, all that analysis (okay, rambling) is moot because this game came down to two key possessions. On the first, Jordan Crawford hit a back breaking 3 from about 30 feet out with the shot clock winding down. On the second, the same Crawford hit a fadeaway J from 15 with about 12 seconds left to put Xavier ahead by five and virtually end the game. I'm not mad about either one because, in both instances, UD got exactly what it wanted. If the fadeaway 2-pointer doesn't drop, UD is a defensive rebound away from having the ball and needing a 3 to send it to overtime. Sometimes good players just make superior plays. Crawford did that, and the Flyers came up just two plays short.
• UD continued its trend of letting one of XU's less heralded role players have a career game. In the week in review post, I highlighted Will Caudle's game in '05. In 2010 it was Dante Jackson scoring a career high 19 points on five made 3-balls.
• Kurt Huelsman's breakaway slam and the foul and the hang on the rim was nasty. Wouldn't have believed if I wasn't in the building.
• Josh Benson was forced to play a dozen minutes due to foul trouble by Wright and Devin Searcy, and the freshman acquitted himself nicely. He had 8 points on 4-7 including a dunk in traffic over Kenny Frease. Didn't see that one coming.
• I was in the third row under the hoop (opposite of XU's students section). If you were watching ESPN2 and saw a guy who had painted his entire upper body blue except for a white "X" across the top of his bald head, then you probably saw me as well. I was one of the dudes standing behind him wearing a red Flyers t-shirt. At one point early in the second half, the Musketeers were on a little run and they showed that guy on TV. I immediately got two texts, one of which read, "Slap the X off that douche bag's head." Good advice that I just didn't take.
• I didn't think the officiating was bad. There were some tough calls on both teams, and I still think travelling should be called way more frequently than it is; however, there is just no excuse for all of the timekeeping issues. I can't argue that affected the outcome of the game, but it makes it really hard for the game to have any flow whatsoever. If you're Xavier and you had to endure that debacle against Butler, wouldn't you be extremely sensitive to this? The game was stopped at least four times for clock issues (including twice in the final 4:00 of the game).
• It's been an interesting season in that the Flyers have really won every game they're supposed to and lost all of the ones they weren't expected to win. In recent memory, we've been treated to a few UD upsets (Pitt, Louisville, Marquette) as well as a game or two where the Flyers lay an egg and lose to an inferior opponent. This year, it's been pretty much all chalk (with Ga. Tech as the lone possible exception because nobody, including Paul Hewitt, knows what to expect out of the Jackets).

Conclusion: I'm not thrilled but it's hard to be too upset about losing at a place where you haven't won since 1981. Especially since the Flyers manhandled X on the glass and did not back down at any point.

Prediction: Your Dayton Flyers reel off five straight wins culminating with a W in the rematch against XU at UD Arena. This moves the good guys to 18-4 and back into the top 25 come Monday, February 8th.