Jan. 31, 2007
Complete Notes in PDF Format
The University of Dayton Flyers return home to take on the first place George Washington Colonials at the University of Dayton Arena. GW, the defending Atlantic 10 regular season champion, is 6-1 in the conference and 15-4 overall. Dayton is 13-7, and 3-4 in the Atlantic 10, and is looking to bounce back after dropping a pair of road games last week. UD needs just one more win to match last season's 14 win campaign.
THE FLYERS This game is a matchup between the two Atlantic 10 teams who are undefeated at home this season. UD is 12-0 at the Arena, while GW is 9-0 at the Smith Center. The Flyers are led by one of the premier players in the Atlantic 10 Conference, Brian Roberts. Roberts leads UD in scoring (19.1), minutes (35.1), assists (3.0), three-pointers per game (2.6), FT% (.902, 92-102) and 3-pt. FG% (.448 52-116). He is among the top ten in the A-10 in six categories, including sitting first in FT%, and second in scoring and minutes.
Dayton has eight players averaging at least four points a game, including junior forward Jimmy Binnie, who has started the last three games. In those three games, Binnie is averaging 8.7 points and shooting .500 (6-12) from three-point range. In the last six games, senior Monty Scott has had his five double-digit scoring performances, averaging 12.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists, while shooting .519 (28-54) from the floor.
THE COLONIALS George Washington comes into the Dayton game having won 22 of its last 23 games in the Atlantic 10. After losing their A-10 opener this season at UMass, the Colonials have won their last five games. Junior guard Maureece Rice leads the team in scoring (17.0), and has scored in double figures in 18 straight games. Rice's running mate in the George Washington backcourt, Carl Elliott, averages 13.3 points a game. He is also second in the A-10 in assists (4.9) and tied for second in steals (2.1). Forward Rob Diggs is the third Colonial player in double digits (10.7). GW starts three seniors, and the two non-seniors who start are Rice and Diggs.
SERIES STUFF George Washington leads the series 13-8, and has won the last four games (only one of those was played at UD Arena). Last year, GW won at the Smith Center 81-67 on February 8. Every Dayton-George Washington game has been in Atlantic 10 competition.
UP NEXT After playing at Saint Joseph's on Sunday (12 noon on Fox Sports Ohio in the Dayton area), the Flyers' next home game is Wednesday, February 7 against Fordham at 7:00 p.m. EST. B-ROB B-GOOD One of the premier players in the Atlantic 10 Conference, Brian Roberts leads UD in scoring (19.1), minutes (35.1), assists (3.0), three-pointers per game (2.6), FT% (.902, 92-102) and 3-pt. FG% (.448 52-116). He is among the top ten in the A-10 in six categories, including sitting first in FT%, and second in scoring and minutes. He is among the leaders in the A-10 in seven categories, including sitting second in scoring. He is averaging 22.9 points a game in conference play (second behind Tommy Liddell's 23.0). Roberts has scored double digits in 18 of the 20 games this season. He got his first career double-double (17 points, 10 rebounds) in the Western Carolina win. He was named Pre-Season All-Atlantic 10 Second Team in a vote of the league's coaches and selected media. Last year, Roberts was the first Dayton basketball player to be named All-Atlantic 10 (second team) and Academic All-A-10 (first team) in the same season. UD's 2005-06 MVP led UD in scoring (16.0), minutes (33.4) and three-pointers (68) and was seventh in the league in scoring.
THE TOLEDO RIFLE Brian Roberts became the 39th member of UD's 1,000 Point Club on January 4 during the Charlotte win. He is currently 30th with 1,144 points. He is projected to reach Dayton's Top 20 in scoring by season's end, and has a more than solid chance to finish in the Flyer Top Five by the end of his career. Roberts is the only UD player in the school's top five in career 3-pt. FG% and FT%. His .423 (161-381) from behind the arc is third on the Flyer career lists. His .838 FT% (217-259) is third.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP Brian Roberts opened the year by doing something that hadn't been done at Dayton in 24 years -- score 20 points in the first three games of the season. In the season-opening win over Austin Peay, he scored a game-high 29 points, the most he had scored in a regulation game until four days later when he scored 30 against North Carolina A&T (his career high is 34 points, done twice). He scored 21 points (15 in the second half) at SMU. No Flyer had opened the year with three 20-point games since all-time leading scorer Roosevelt Chapman did it in 1982-83.
THIRTY-GURTY MAN Brian Roberts is the first Dayton player to have two thirty-point games in a season since Chip Hare had three 30+ games in 1992-93.
BRIAN'S BURSTS Brian Roberts has demonstrated a knack for scoring his points in short amounts of time. He has already scored at least ten points in a half 18 times this season, which is what he did all of last season.
MR. ROBERTS=MR. EFFICIENCY Brian Roberts scored his 34 points in the La Salle game in just 28 minutes of playing time, and he did it by taking just 14 shots from the field. He was 9-for-14 from the floor (including 5-for-8 from three), and made a career-high 11 free throws (in 12 attempts). In A-10 play, he is averaging almost two points for every FG attempt (1.74).
MONTY, MONTY, MONTY UD's only senior, Monty Scott is second on the team in scoring (10.2), rebounding (4.4) and minutes (28.5). He also leads the Flyers in blocked shots (0.75), is second in 3-pt. FG% (.380, 35-92), third in FG% (.475, 76-160) and FT% (.727, 16-22). He was UD's second-leading scorer (11.2) and rebounder (4.3) in 2005-06, despite missing six games and being limited in practices and games for much more than that with a stress fracture in his left foot. UD's MVP and an all-conference selection two years ago, there is little coincidence that the Flyers fast 8-3 start in 2005-06 came with a healthy Scott starting, and UD's struggles came after the injury.
DOWN THE STRETCH HE COMES Like a miler who goes into his finishing kick when he sees the tape, senior forward Monty Scott is poised to finish his UD career with a flourish. In the last six games, Scott has had his five double-digit scoring performances, his top two rebounding efforts of the year and his top three assist games (including a career-high-tying five assists at Duquesne). In that stretch, Scott has averaged 12.5 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists, while shooting .519 (28-54) from the floor, .433 (13-30) from three-point range and .857 (6-7) from the line.
THE OLD MAN WAS THE KEY "I'm a senior and that's what I'm supposed to do...But my teammates found me when I was open." Those matter-of-fact comments after UD's win over Creighton by Flyer forward Monty Scott say a lot about his quiet leadership for this year's Dayton basketball team. Never someone comfortable with trying to lure the spotlight to himself, Scott had the good kind of "senior moment" when he scored 11 points in the second half after the tenacious Bluejays erased a 13-point halftime deficit and threatened to steal away from the Arena with a win. But what Scott's comments don't call attention to are his team-high six rebounds (matching teammate Andres Sandoval), game-high two blocked shots, and his late-second-half D on Creighton star Nate Funk.
CLIMBING THE CHARTS Brian Roberts became the 39th Flyer to reach the 1,000 point mark in his career in the Charlotte win. He now has 1,144 points (30th on the UD charts) and is 30 points behind Frank Case. Monty Scott joined Roberts and became the 40th member of the club at Xavier. He is now 39th in career scoring with 1,008 points, one point behind Junior Norris. Roberts is fifth in career three-pointers (163). Norm Grevey is fourth with 208. Monty Scott is ninth (149), four behind Coby Turner.
LITTLE BIG MAN At 6-foot-6, 244 pounds, sophomore Charles Little might be the most inaccurately named player in the country. He has scored 157 points and is shooting .577 (64-111) in the last 17 games. He is third on the team in scoring (8.9), and leads UD in FG% (.549, 73-133). Little's 18 dunks (16 in the last 12 games) are more than twice as many as anyone else on the team, and more than half of UD's 33 dunks this year. He had career highs in points (21) and rebounds (9) at Duquesne.
LIVING UP TO HIS INITIALS, NUMBER AND TEAMMATE Freshman Marcus Johnson's "basketball karma" has to be off the charts. He has ties to the last three generations of great NBA players. His number is the same as another famous Johnson, who was simply known as "Magic." His initials call to mind one of the greatest winners in the history of the league. And in high school, Marcus Johnson had the pressure of becoming the next star at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary's after LeBron James took his game to the NBA. And none of this matters unless you can play, and have the makeup to handle such alliteration. Luckily for the Flyer Faithful, it appears that Johnson has both requirements covered. He scored 23 points in his first game as a Flyer, the most by a Dayton player in his debut game. Johnson is one of five Flyers averaging over seven points a game (7.3), and one of six averaging at least three rebounds a game (3.7).
MORE MARCUS Marcus Johnson has scored in double figures five times this season, including 14 at North Carolina and his first double-double (11 points/10 rebounds) in the Yale win. In the win over Western Carolina, Johnson scored 13 points (5-6 FG) and grabbed six rebounds. He also had two assists, a steal and a blocked shot and drew the primary assignment of guarding Western Carolina's leading scorer, Antonio Russell. Russell came into the game averaging 17.9 points and shooting 57% from the field, but finished with five points, and a percentage-killing 1-for-14 from the floor. For the season, Johnson is shooting .441 (56-127) from the field, but inside the arc he is shooting fifty points higher (.495, 45-91).
BEING "KURT" TO THE OPPOSITION Freshman Kurt Huelsman tied the UD freshman record for blocked shots in a game (and the most in a first game as a Flyer) when he swatted four in the Austin Peay win. Huelsman tied Keith Waleskowski, who had four against George Washington on February 17, 2001 during his redshirt freshman season. Huelsman also grabbed nine rebounds to lead the Flyers in the game. He is second on the team in blocked shots (0.7) and fourth in rebounding (3.9). Huelsman was the primary defender in holding Pittsburgh's seven-footer, Aaron Gray, the preseason Big East Player of the Year, to a season-low five points. In two games against Gray and North Carolina All-American Tyler Hansbrough, Huelsman had 12 points, seven rebounds, two assists and two blocked shots.
KONFERENCE KURT Freshman post player Kurt Huelsman has picked up his play virtually across the board in A-10 action. In conference, he is averaging 5.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 0.6 assists and 21.0 minutes, while shooting .517 (15-29) FG and .643 (9-14) FT, compared to 4.0, 3.9, 0.5, 19.3, .439 and .616 in non-conference competition.
GLASS CLEANER Freshman Kurt Huelsman pulled down 26 rebounds in his first three games as a Flyer. That's more than the two most recent Flyers to get 1,000 rebounds in their careers. Ryan Perryman grabbed 24, and Keith Waleskowski had 21, respectively in their first three college games.
STORMIN' NORMAN Norman Plummer leads the team in rebounding (4.9), and is fourth on the team in scoring (8.4). He is also second in FT% (.782, 43-55) and FG% (.490, 50-102). He scored a game-high 19 points (6-8 FG, 7-8 FT) in the Holy Cross win and a team-high tying 13 (5-7 FG) in the Creighton win. He had 11 rebounds in the Miami win. Against Charlotte, he had 11 points, a game-high seven rebounds and was five-for-five from the line (including a game-clinching pair with 18 seconds left). He scored 14 points at Xavier. Last year, he was UD's leading rebounder (6.5), was third in scoring (10.0) and second in minutes (26.5).
WARREN REPORT Things happen when freshman guard London Warren is on the court. He made that clear in his very first game as a Flyer in the season-opening win over Austin Peay. He led the Flyers in assists (5) and steals (3) while committing only two turnovers of his own. He also scored six points. "The Jacksonville Jet" (as WHIO Radio's Larry Hansgen and Bucky Bockhorn have dubbed him) led UD with four assists at UNC. He is tied for second on the team in steals (0.9) and is third in assists (2.1) in just 12.3 minutes a game.
BIG START BINNIE A strong contributor off the bench for most of the season, junior forward Jimmy Binnie has started the last three games and has scored UD's first three-pointer in all three games. In those three games, Binnie is averaging 8.7 points and shooting .500 (6-12) from three-point range. In the Richmond game he outscored the Spiders in the first half (9-8). He scored the first six points of the game and finished with a season-high 12 points. Against Louisville, he had eight points (two more than he had in the previous four games combined). In the Creighton win, he had eight points, three assists and two rebounds in 13 minutes. After shooting .241 (7-29) from three-point in non-conference, Binnie is hitting .421 (8-19) in A-10 play. His 1.53 assist-to-turnover ratio is the best on the team.
HERE COMES THE SAND MAN Junior point guard Andres Sandoval was expected to be out 4-6 weeks with a broken bone in his foot, but apparently he didn't get the memo. He was back on the court exactly 19 days after his surgery to place a titanium screw in the foot. He played nine minutes in a shakedown cruise against South Carolina State, and has averaged 21.9 minutes in the 11 games since then. In addition to his ball-handling chores, he had six rebounds versus Creighton, He had seven points and three steals vs. Miami. At Rhode Island, he scored nine points, had five rebounds and four assists off the bench and had nine points, three assists and three steals in the La Salle win. He has started the last two games. At Duquesne, he scored seven points (4-4 FT) and tied his college career high with seven assists. On the year, he leads the team in steals (1.1), is second in assists (2.8).
TEAM EFFORT Dayton's road to a 13-7 record is a "sum of the parts" kind of blueprint. The Flyers have just two players (Brian Roberts at 19.1, Monty Scott at 10.2) averaging in double digits, but six others average at least 4.0 points a game. They are Charles Little (8.9), Norman Plummer (8.4), Marcus Johnson (7.3), Andres Sandoval (4.6), Kurt Huelsman (4.5) and Jimmy Binnie (4.0). In conference play, eight Flyers average at least four points a game -- Roberts 22.9, Scott 11.0, Little 9.3, Plummer 7.5, Huelsman 5.6, Binnie 5.6, Sandoval 5.4 and Johnson 4.1.
EYE 75 ON THE SCOREBOARD The Flyers are 18-3 under head coach Brian Gregory when they score at least 75 points.
DOING IT WITH DEFENSE Earlier this season, the Flyers held six straight opponents to 55 points or less, the first time that had happened at UD in 56 years.
OUT OF THE BLOCKS UD's 10-1 start matched its best start to a season since the Flyers won their first 14 games in 1955-56. UD's 10-3 non-conference record marked just the third time in school history the Flyers have reached 10 wins before January 1.
GRAD RATES GREAT IN DAYTON Dayton was listed as one of the nation's leaders in the 2006 NCAA Division I Graduation Rates Report. The Flyers' GSR is 96, up two points from last year and 18th out of 320 schools Division I school rated. UD's 91 percent graduation rate for its men's basketball program is best in the A-10. Men's basketball is one of 15 (out of 17) Flyer athletic teams with GSR's of 90 or better. Last year's report also noted that every one of the 229 scholarship student-athletes who entered UD from 1988-89 to 1997-98 and completed their eligibility at UD graduated. The A-10 was fifth as a conference. Nearly two-thirds (303 of 473) of all Flyer student-athletes carry a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better.
TOURNEY TOWN The NCAA Division I Tournament will make its start at UD Arena this season for the sixth year in a row. The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee has announced that the University of Dayton Arena will host the NCAA Opening Round Game in 2007. UD has hosted the game since its inception in its current form in 2002. When the 2007 NCAA Tournament is over, UD Arena will have been an NCAA site in 21 of the last 38 years and will have hosted 73 NCAA Tournament games. That will make UD Arena the third-most prolific NCAA Tournament venue behind Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City (83) and the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City (81). The Arena is also one of four 2007 NCAA D-I Women's Regional sites.
FLYER FAITHFUL For years, UD has claimed it has had the best fans in the nation. In 2001, The Sporting News conducted an unscientific poll of college basketball coaches, media and SIDs. In the January 8, 2001 issue of the magazine, UD's fans were tabbed as college basketball's best. And they prove it to everyone the Flyers play. UD Arena has 76 sellouts in its 34-year history. UD's last 115 regular season home games have had attendance of at least 11,000 fans. In the last 13 years, 99% of UD's home games have drawn at least 10,000 (333 of 356), including the last 151 regular season games. UD averaged 12,422 last season, 2,500 higher than any other A-10 team and 23rd in the country.
FLYERS LAND TOP A-10 CLASS UD landed what Scout.com considers the top recruiting class in the Atlantic 10 on November 8 with the signings of 6-8 forward Chris Wright of Trotwood-Madison (Trotwood, OH) High School, 6-9 forward/center Devin Searcy of Romulus (MI) High School, and 6-1 guard Stephen Thomas of Indianapolis Cathedral High School. As a group, the newest Flyers chose UD after getting scholarship offers from schools that included members of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Atlantic 10. Considered one of the top candidates for Ohio's Mr. Basketball, Wright will be the second member of his family to play at UD. His uncle on his mother's side, J.D. Grigsby, played at UD from 1971 to 1973. A consensus top 50 player, Scout.com has named him the top player in the A-10 for this recruiting class. Searcy is another recruit who will put the "Fly" in "Flyers." Not only is he an athletic 6-9, he has a 37-inch vertical leap and a seven-foot fingertip-to-fingertip reach. He is the fifth Romulus player in the last four years to earn a Division I scholarship. A heady player with a classic Hoosier-guard outside shot, the Indianapolis Star named Thomas one of its two annual Players of the Year. Thomas was the Indianapolis Player of the Year, and national player of the year Greg Oden was named Marion County Player of the Year. The Bob Gibbons All-Star Report has three Top 150 players heading to the A-10 from the fall signing period, and two (Wright and Thomas) are future Flyers.
AND DOES NOT INCLUDE THE LATEST ADDITION Phillip "Mickey" Perry transferred to the Flyers from the University of Wisconsin on January 8. Perry, a 6-2 guard who graduated from Proviso East High School in 2005, will become eligible to play at UD after the fall 2007 semester. He will have two-and-a-half seasons of basketball eligibility remaining. After averaging 20.0 points, 7.1 assists and 5.0 rebounds a game as a senior at Proviso East, Perry redshirted the 2005-06 season at Wisconsin. In seven games this season for the Badgers, he averaged 3.0 minutes, and 1.0 points a game.
GAME #20 -- XAVIER 83, DAYTON 67 Visiting Dayton could not overcome a 20-point deficit from the free throw line and a career-high 24 points from Blackburn-McCafferty MVP Justin Doellman in an 83-67 loss at Xavier on Saturday. The statistics were all even on the afternoon except for free throw shooting where homestanding Xavier made 28-of-33 (.848) free throws on the day while Dayton went to the line just 10 times, converting eight. UD made 26 field goals to XU's 25, matched the Musketeers with 12 turnovers and connected on 7-of-17 shots from three-point range while collecting 30 points off the Flyer bench. Junior Brian Roberts led the Dayton offense with 15 points and four assists while classmate Norman Plummer came off the bench for 14 points on 7-for-14 shooting and a team-high six rebounds. Senior Monty Scott finished with 11 points, five rebounds and four assists of his own for the Flyers.
DID YOU KNOW ? UD won more games than any other school in both the 1950s and `60s. UD won 435 games between 1950 and 1969 and ranks among the top teams of the 1950s and 1960s in Division I history. The Flyers' .763 (228-71) winning percentage in the 1950s ranks fifth in the decade. Their .729 (207-77) winning percentage ranks eighth in the 1960s.
