Name: University of Dayton
Location: Dayton, Ohio
I’m bad at Ohio geography: Well, a big reason why Dayton’s not in the Big East right now is because no one likes them because Xavier is about 50 miles to the south
in southwestern Ohio. Maybe that makes Dayton a little bit in western central Ohio?
Founded: Well, Dayton says they were founded in 1850, but that’s probably a little bit dishonest. Yes, there is a reason to trace their history back to the opening of St. Mary’s School For Boys in 1850, but that was not a college or what we think of as a college at the time. The school continued to develop the level of classes that they offered as time went on, and in 1882, the state of Ohio granted them the rights to hand out college degrees to people that finished the required classwork.
The name change to the University of Dayton came along in 1920, perhaps because of the level of assistance that then-St. Mary’s College provided to the city and thus the community bond that was created during and after the city was flooded in 1913.
Okay, so they just stole the city’s name, huh? Yep. The city is named for Jonathan Dayton, a 19 year old captain for the colonists’ army in the Revolutionary War and who is also a signee on the U.S. Constitution. It is believed that the man who would serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives and then go on to be a US Senator while representing New Jersey never actually visited southwestern Ohio, but he did join in ownership of a whole bunch of land in the area. I suppose that “St. Clair,” “Wilkinson,” and “Ludlow” are lesser names for a city if you look at Dayton’s partners in the ownership.
Dayton fought the Klan before Notre Dame did: For whatever idiot reason, the Ku Klux Klan did not like Catholics in the 1920s. Dayton is a Catholic university, and so, on December 19, 1923, the Klan set off bombs around campus and burned a cross as well. The UD students were joined by neighborhood residents in beating the Klan’s ass out of town, much like Notre Dame students did six months later in South Bend.
Enrollment: 10,598 as of Fall 2024, with 7,470 full time undergraduate students.
Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood: Did y’all know that Dayton has a Student Neighborhood? I like this idea. The university owns a bunch of property in the area of campus where the upperclassmen can rent just like they would rent from a typical landlord. You get the experience of living off campus, but it’s all tied through the university housing department. I’m sure it’s a ton of extra work for their residence life office, or however they classify these things, but it also eliminates a bunch of work in terms of the university leaning on local landlords to maintain their buildings.
Nickname: Flyers
Why “Flyers”? Stolen North Carolina valor, if we’re being honest about it.
Okay, that’s slightly mean.
Orville and Wilbur Wright had their mechanical shop in Dayton, Ohio, and in fact Orville was born in Dayton. That was where they gained a fascination with constructing a flying device, and in 1900, they left for Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to test their designs and eventually succeed in flying the world’s first heavier than air machine powered vehicle. The planning of the first airplane was largely done in Ohio, while the testing was done in North Carolina. Depending on how you want to define things (and both Ohio and North Carolina disagree on this), you can call Dayton the home of powered flight if you so wish.
Notable Alumni: Humorist Erma Bombeck; Michael B. Coleman, the first black mayor of Columbus, Ohio; Bruce Graham, architect of the Sears Tower; Don Novello, best known for his stage character Father Guido Sarducci; Amy Schneider, Jeopardy champion and holder of the second longest winning streak in show history; sports broadcaster Dan Patrick; and finally, former NFL head coach Jon Gruden.
Last Season: 23-11, 12-6 in the Atlantic 10, and a second round exit from the NIT.
Final 2024-25 KenPom.com Ranking: #77 out of 364 teams
Final 2024-25 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #79 out of 364 teams
Preseason Poll: After finishing tied for third last season, Dayton was picked to finish third in the Atlantic 10 this season. The Flyers were one of four teams to earn a first place vote, snagging three from the 27 person group made up of the league’s head coaches and select media members.
This Season: 3-1, with three buy-game home wins, two by single digits, and a 12 point loss at Cincinnati.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #74, down from their preseason rank of #54
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #86, down from their preseason rank of #79
Returning Stats Leaders
Points: Javon Bennett, 11.6 ppg
Rebounds: Amael L’Etang, 4.3 rpg
Assists: Jacob Conner, 0.3 apg
Current Stats Leaders
Points: Javon Bennett, 18.3 ppg
Rebounds: Amael L’Etang, 7.5 rpg
Assists: Jordan Derkack, 4.0 apg
Who’s Missing? Freshman guard Jaron McKie is out for the year due to shoulder surgery for an injury suffered in preseason workouts. Sophomore transfer Adam Njie is being withheld from athletic competition by Dayton due to what is being reported as a connection to an ongoing investigation regarding gambling-related activity.
Head Coach: Anthony Grant, in his ninth season as Dayton head coach and 18th as a Division 1 head coach with a two year run as an assistant to Billy Donovan at Oklahoma City in the NBA in the middle there. FUN FACT: Grant leaving VCU to take the Alabama job is what sent the Rams back to Billy Donovan’s bench at Florida to hire another Gators assistant: Shaka Smart. Grant has a record of 175-83 with Dayton and 368-194 overall as a Division 1 head coach.
Bigs? Oh yeah. Amael L’Etang moved into the starting lineup in January of last season, replacing Zed Key, and he took to it like a duck to water. The 7’1”, 235 pound Frenchman averaged 8.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in nearly 21 minutes a night after shifting to the starting lineup, and he’s at 15.0 points and 7.5 rebounds in over 26 minutes a game this year. You might remember him from last year’s game against Marquette, as he came off the bench and snagged eight rebounds in just 11 minutes.
Jacob Conner started alongside L’Etang for the first three games of the season, but went to the bench and played just 10 minutes last time out against Bethune Cookman. He’s listed at 6’10”, but just 225 pounds, and Anthony Grant replaced him in the starting five with 6’5” Jordan Derkack, so it’s not like that was a “actually, this other tall gentleman is a better fit” situation. Conner is averaging just 4.5 points and 2.0 rebounds per game this year, so perhaps he’s more Tall Man instead of Big Man. De’Shayne Montgomery (6’4”, 200 lb.) and Keonte Jones (6’6”, 203 lb.) are the only other guys on the roster after L’Etang averaging more than four rebounds per game, but they’re clearly outrebounding what you would immediately identify their position on the court.
Shooters? As a team, no. To this point of the year, Dayton is connecting on just 28% of their three-point attempts. That’s bad at face value, and it ranks #284 in the country, which is also bad. They also get over 41% of their shots from behind the arc, which is probably bad given their success rate. It’s not unreasonable to think that they lost to Cincinnati because of threes, as they went 2-for-26 in that game with identical 1-for-13’s in each half and they ended the game with 10 straight misses.
Also? They’re shooting 28% as a team after going 11-for-19 (58%) against Bethune Cookman back on Saturday. Javon Bennett went 4-for-7 in that one, and De’Shayne Montgomery went 4-for-5. That bumped Montgomery up to 37.5% on the year, making him Dayton’s most dangerous regular shooter, while Bennett is now at [adjusts abacus] 30.4% on a team high 5.8 attempts per game. Montgomery’s history as a shooter is sketchy, going for 41% as a freshman at Oregon on 2.1 attempts per game, but just 25% last year with Georgia on 1.6 tries per night. Bennett is probably better than his season so far, since he hit for 39% last season for the Flyers. At the very least, Anthony Grant is probably going to keep trusting him for a little while…. but we can’t ignore his 28% as a freshman at Merrimack or his 32% as a sophomore with Dayton. No matter what, Bennett’s name has to be towards the top of the scouting report, since he was the only Dayton shooter to do anything worth mentioning last season while hitting 3-for-4 against the Golden Eagles.
One last thing that has to be folded into all of this: Amael L’Etang is a career 34% shooter from outside the arc, and he’s just under 36% this season on 3.5 attempts per game. Dayton’s bad at shooting the three, but their over 7-foot big man is one of the guys who can actually hit from out there regularly, and so he has to 1) be respected and 2) be expected to be a part of that section of the offense.
What To Watch For: I’m going to let Marquette head coach Shaka Smart take the mic for this part.
“With or without [Chase Ross] on the floor, we have to defend way better,” Smart said. “Without him on the floor right now we need more presence.
“We need more toughness. We need more leadership. We need more talk. We need to play in a better stance on the defensive end. We need to move the ball more. There’s a lot we need more of.”
And
“The recipe for us winning is not Chase and Zaide shooting 19 times,” Smart said. “We give up 89 points. That’s not going to be the pathway for us to win. This is a tough way to learn that lesson, but we have to.”
And
“When you’re lost in the fight and you’re playing with a clear mind, those shots tend to go in,” Smart said. “When you’re not, you tend to miss.
“And the same is true for open threes. Right now, we have some real soul-searching to do from the standpoint of getting the order right. The spirit and energy that we bring to the team and to each other. The cultural way we go about things − act, interact and respond − on the defensive end, then the offensive end.
“And what happened today was offense got affected by guys not having the full commitment that they needed to have to those things that comes first. Obviously it’s my job to fix that and improve that.”
And
“Our program is predicated on guys stepping forward,” Smart said. “I got to do a better job of helping those guys do that.
“And helping them understand we don’t have a choice but to step forward. Everyone is in a new role, everyone has more demands on them. But, ultimately, it has to start with the spirit and energy we bring each other. Which is controllable.
“And then all the controllable elements on the defensive end. We’re going to watch that tape and we’re going to see a lot of possessions where we just aren’t in a good enough stance. Or we didn’t communicate at a high-enough level. Or we weren’t in the right position. Those things are fixable. Those things are controllable.”
And
“[Damarius Owens is] a talented, talented guy,” Smart said. “He had a surgery in the spring, so he was robbed of most of his off-season. He’s been back since July and it’s time for him to go after it.
“He actually had a phenomenal practice yesterday. The best practice he’s had in some time. And that’s why I gave him more opportunity today, but right now he seems like he’s half-step behind. We’ve got to get his aggressiveness ramped up, some how, some way.”
I could do a lot of “Oh, Dayton does this well,” and “Oh, Marquette has to look out for this,” and “Oh, this is the X-Factor that could decide this game.” Y’know, the normal stuff that you would expect to see in this section.
Shaka Smart said all of those quotes after Marquette’s loss to Maryland on Saturday. That’s the stuff he was willing to say in public, on camera, in front of people. You can go watch him, if you want. What matters is what he says to his team on those topics between Sunday and tipoff on Wednesday. I don’t think he said anything that’s a surprise to anyone who watched the Maryland game. Now we have to see how the Golden Eagles react and respond to it.
All Time Series: Marquette is 20-15 all time against Dayton. I know, it’s a lot, considering that last year’s 71-63 Dayton victory in Ohio was the first meeting since 2008. The two teams played regularly as independents in the 1980s, then had overlapping time in both the Midwestern Collegiate Conference and then the Great Midwest Conference. The series continued after they went their separate ways to Conference USA and the Atlantic 10 in 1995-96 with a yearly game up through the 2002-03 season. Even though MU holds the edge, Dayton has now won six of the last seven meetings. That includes a win over the Dwyane Wade Final Four team and a win over the Three Amigos senior year team that was ranked #15 at the time and was sitting at #8 in the country when Dominic James broke his foot, not to mention MU’s ranking of #6 in the country last year when the Flyers bounced back from a 13 point deficit to win.
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