Dec. 23, 2004

Box Score

DAYTON, OH - - The University of Dayton men's basketball team won its fifth-straight game, 77-66, over the Akron Zips behind a career-high 19 points from Norman Plummer. The 4,221 fans who made it to UD Arena despite a record-setting snowfall in the Dayton area saw the Flyers improve to 6-3. Akron fell to 5-3.

Senior guard Mark Jones chipped in 17 points on six-of-eight shooting. It was the second-straight 17-point outing for Jones, who has made 12 of 17 shots from the field (including four for six from three-point range) in those two games. Junior guard Warren Williams added ten points for the second straight game. Jones' 17 points and Williams' 10 points are both season highs.

Dru Joyce and Darryl Peterson led Akron with 11 points each. Romeo Travis came off the bench to score ten points.

Dayton won the battle of the boards 36-30. While Akron got 20 of its rebounds from two players (Jeremiah Wood had 11 and Travis added nine), all 11 Flyers who played had at least one board. Plummer, Williams and Monty Scott each had five boards to lead UD. For Williams, it matched his career high.

Plummer, a freshman forward, scored the first five points for UD, but Akron jumped out to an early 14-5 lead. The Flyers stormed back with a 10-0 run that included eight points from Jones to take a 15-14 lead. After the Zips regained an 18-15 advantage, UD used an 8-3 run, highlighted by a three from Brian Roberts to stretch the lead to 26-21 with 4:58 remaining in the first.

A lay-up by Nick Stafford put UD up 32-29 and a dunk from Scott stretched the lead to 34-29, but Joyce hit a runner at the buzzer for Akron to cut it to 34-31 at the break.

Plummer led all scorers into intermission with nine points.

In the second half, each team opened with a pair of free-throws before a lay-up by Williams gave UD a 39-35 lead. But a Joyce jumper and two free-throws by Akron tied the game at 39-39 with 17:01 to go.

A Stafford dunk and a three by Scott spotted UD a five-point lead, but the Zips answered with back-to-back buckets. Tied 46-46, the Flyers reeled off nine-straight points. Akron cut the deficit to six, but Plummer converted an `and-one' to give UD an 11-point lead at 60-49 with 6:33 to go.

Dayton led by as many as 15 at 67-52 with 3:34 to play. Akron trimmed the lead to nine at 70-61 with 2:35 to go, but couldn't get closer than nine points.

Paid attendance for the game was 12,329, but travel conditions lowered the turnstile count to 4,221. Travel was also an issue for the officiating crew, as the game began with two referees but finished with a full crew.

After the game, the Flyers went to center court and then waved "thanks" to the Flyer Faithful in appreciation for them coming to the game in such conditions.

After a quick Christmas break, the Flyers will visit Vanderbilt on Wednesday, December 29, for a 9:00 p.m. ET tip-off at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville. The game will air locally in Dayton on WHIO-TV and will be available on Fox Sports South. The Flyers open Atlantic 10 play after the New Year when Duquesne visits UD Arena on January 5.

Dayton Head Coach Brian Gregory

"Performance-wise with everyone leaving to go home for Christmas, I was concerned with our focus. The weather has also played a big part in throwing our schedule off with practice."

"Akron is a good team, they have a good mix of players and they got contributions from everyone."

On Warren Williams "When Warren came back in he played extremely well, he did a good job at running our plays and played great defense. He made plays for us down the stretch."

"Akron plays a running game. The only letdown in defense was the first three minutes of the game."

"Seventeen turnovers was the only big negative of the game, and the first 6-7 minutes the turnovers really hurt us."

On James Cripe, who dressed for the first time in five games. "James practiced yesterday, but I didn't want him to play after only one practice. He will be back on the floor when we come back on the 26th. We'll probably go twice on the 27th before we leave for the Vanderbilt game on the 28th."

Dayton Freshman Forward Norman Plummer "This was a good win. It's good to go home 6-3. It wouldn't have been as good of a Christmas if we would have lost. It was a team win. We all played hard and contributed. I scored some tonight, but that was because my teammates got me the ball where I could do something with it. All I had to do was finish."

Dayton Senior Guard Mark Jones "They are a good team, and they like to get after you. We knew they like to gamble on defense so we had to make sure we spaced them out to give us room to hit the open man." (On back-to-back 17-point games) "My shot is falling right now, but I'm not doing anything differently. I'm just letting the game come to me. And what my role is for this team doesn't matter whether I score seventeen, or five or six. I need to be a steady influence on the young guys, and a team leader. Not just when things are going good for me, but all the time."

Akron Head Coach Keith Dambrot "I don't want to make excuses for our guys. We played well in spurts; we just didn't shoot the ball very well. We played hard, but there was one spurt that cost us the game. That's part of the growing process, you have to overcome adversity."

"I thought Jeremiah Wood's fourth foul hurt us. He was playing well when he had to come out, but he did not play so well when he went back in."

"I think that is part of the maturity process as well. We need to learn to leave the last play alone and get on to the next one."

"We showed courage. We had some guys who had a rough first half that played very well in the second half. We did not catch any breaks. We missed a few big ones at the line and they made a few big ones and that hurt us."