UD vs. Buffalo: Ouch

Can you see how PW's not happy? Well that's because UD just lost by 29 at home.

In my last post I touched on how sometimes a team can look really good and despite how excited you might be about how well they played, that will not be case for most of the season. Well, if Wednesday's game against Buffalo (AT HOME) was any indication, then we may have seen the best UD is capable of in the Old Spice Classic Finals against Minnesota. Even if that game wasn't UD's best effort, let's hope this one was the absolute worst.

This game was, in every sense of the word, ugly. Similar to Duke at Ohio State the night before, UD was dismantled and embarrassed in every facet of the game, from start to finish. The only differences between UD and Duke were (a)Duke did close the gap once in the first half, UD didn't, and (b)Dayton got stomped AT HOME.

The Good
Yeah...uh...

The Bad
The defense. UD gave up 85 points to Buffalo. The Flyers gave up 46 points in the second half on 60 percent shooting. They were outrebounded by 21. They gave up 15 offensive boards. They were out-hustled to loose balls. They were lazy all game long, and never got out to defend Zach Filzen, who was on fire, but benefited from having open look after open look.

The offense. Dayton scored 11 points in the first 15 minutes of the game. Kevin Dillard was 4-10 from the field, and he was a bright spot. Matt Kavanaugh went 3-8, Josh Parker 2-8, Josh Benson 1-5, Chris Johnson 4-15 and Paul Williams 0-3 (3 shots! All game! From your starting two-guard!).

Chris Johnson. It probably doesn't seem like there could be any more bad from this game if the offense and defense were bad. That makes up just about the entirety of a basketball game. But CJ is getting special treatment tonight, because I don't know what the hell is wrong with him. He led Dayton in scoring with 12 points tonight, that doesn't sound terrible. Until you realize that he was 4-15 from the field in scoring those twelve points. Which must mean...you guessed it! All of CJ's 12 points came from behind the three-point line. He was 4-10, which is actually an okay percentage (for now let's not worry about the fact that 10 threes is waaayyy too many for him to be shooting in one game, especially if he's not on fire). "But wait," you're probably thinking, "if he was 4-10 from three and 4-15 for the game, that must mean..." Right again! CJ managed to go 0-5 from inside the arc, including a couple missed layups. He's not even getting it done on the glass these days (three rebs against Buffalo), which used to be the go-to part of his game if he was struggling offensively. I can't tell if CJ is just in a funk to start the season, he doesn't like Archie Miller's system and is playing poorly because of it, or has decided that being an English teacher is more interesting to him. Whatever the problem is, CJ's game needs some major work right now. And after watching that performance, so does the entire Dayton team.