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