Top-seeded Flyers open A-10 tourney vs. VCU
First-year coach Green looks to earn berth in NCAA Tournament.
DAYTON — Shauna Green’s Dayton Flyers started a trend. Twice in an eight-day stretch, UD basketball teams cut down the nets at the south basket in UD Arena.
The UD women beat Saint Louis 68-62 in overtime Feb. 22 and shared the Atlantic 10 championship with George Washington. The men’s team beat Virginia Commonwealth 79-72 Wednesday to clinch the outright title.
Dayton men’s coach Archie Miller didn’t win a conference title until his fifth season. His Flyers shared the title a year ago. Green did it in her first season and pulled it off despite getting the job only weeks before the start of practice.
“This is a great group,” Green
said. “They’re just a special group. Certain years you have that feeling. I don’t know what will happen the rest of the year, but I love these guys and their commitment. They’re special, and they deserve what they got, but that’s over, and now we’re on to our next task.”
After a slow start, the Flyers (19-9, 13-3) hit their stride in January when an 11-game winning streak began. Now they head to the Atlantic 10 tournament as the No. 1 seed with the goal of earning a NCAA Tournament berth. The Flyers play No. 8 seed VCU (1514, 8-8) at 11 a.m. today in the quarterfinals at Richmond (Va.) Coliseum.
“Our potential was always there,” Green said. “Our talent was there. I knew it was possible. Credit to these guys. They stuck with it. They stayed the course day by day. I think that’s the biggest thing. We stayed together. We kept working hard every single day, and they believed. We knew we had the pieces. We just had to get the pieces together. The confidence they gained the last couple months was really key.”
Dayton seeks its second A-10 tournament title. It beat St. Bonaventure 56-53 in 2012 to win the championship and lost 63-51 to Fordham in the 2014 championship game and 75-62 to George Washington in the 2015 championship game.
If the Flyers win today, they will play No. 4 seed Saint Louis or No. 5 Fordham in the semifinals at 11 a.m. Saturday. Those teams play at 2 p.m. today.
No. 2 George Washington plays No. 7 Duquesne at 4:30 p.m. and No. 3 St. Joseph’s plays No. 6 La Salle in the other quarterfinal games today. The championship game will be at noon Sunday. The quarterfinal games will be televised by ASN. CBS Sports Network will televise the semifinal rounds. The final game is on ESPN.
Dayton beat VCU 68-48 Feb. 4 in Richmond. The Rams beat No. 9 seed Richmond 72-64 in the first round Sunday. Green told her team in preparation for this game and this tournament, nothing changes from the regular season.
“It’s one possession at a time,” Green said. “It’s a finda-way mentality. It’s survive and advance. We have to be on point from the start Friday against a very good VCU team. We have to hang our hat on defending and rebounding and hopefully hit some shots.”
Green hopes the nine-day layoff doesn’t hurt her team’s momentum.
“Everyone looks at it like a good thing,” Green said. “I don’t know if it is or not. We had two days off after we played. We needed that from an injury standpoint and to get some of our guys rest, especially Jenna (Burdette). Then we practiced this weekend two days, and it’s hard. We’re always in a prep mode for a game. We really worked on fundamentals the last two days, got up a lot of shots and really went back to the basic stuff and concentrated on us.”