UD basketball 2012

2011 finished with disaster for the UD basketball team. Sure, it won against Ole Miss 62-50 and closed out a pretty successful (two hiccups away from being really successful, but o well) non-conference season on a high note, but they lost Josh Benson for the year with an ACL tear. It cannot be stressed enough how bad this injury will be for UD. Dayton was already an incredibly thin team with all the departures and decommitments from last year, but now they will be relying on Alex Gavrilovic and Matt Kavanaugh to shoulder the entirety of the burden inside--on offense and defense. I'm hoping the gravity of that sentence is hitting you hard right now, because I can't think of anything to give as a comparison for a little perspective. It's not good, to make the understatement of the (young) year. And what happens if one or both of those guys get in foul trouble? Well, Luke Fabrizius or Devin Oliver is probably going to have to play defense in the paint, and that's not going to be fun to watch, even if you hate UD basketball. Any human would just feel bad for a guy thrown into a horrible situation like that. But alas, them's the brakes in college basketball. Coaches move, players transfer, injuries happen. This UD has dealt with plenty of adversity through the offseason and this season, so they're a good group to deal with a little more.

Unfortunately, UD's first game of the conference season is coming against the team with the best record in the conference, and a team that I would expect to be playing in the NCAA Tournament come March. It's Rick Majerus and Saint Louis. Now, ignore the fact for now that Saint Louis has always given UD fits (winning three of the last four against Dayton, including a 69-51 romp at senior night in UD Arena last year, leaving a particularly sour taste in my mouth). The real problem here is that the loss of Benson will be forced into our faces come January the fourth. Saint Louis' best player is their center, Brian Conklin, who averages 15.4 points a game. He ought to have a field day in UD Arena. The Billikens also still have Kwamain Mitchell on the team (I actually didn't know this until I was looking at their website, I figured Mitchell had graduated at least two years ago, but I guess that could be due to the fact that he looks closer to 40 than 20), who has made a living killing UD in the past. Not much to look forward to Wednesday, as far as I'm concerned.

On a brighter note, Paul Williams scored more than five points in the game against Ole Miss. I had forgotten that PW was still on the roster over the past couple weeks, so that came as a real stunner. PW has perfected the art of disappearing from games, but UD won't be able to afford anything less than 10 points per game from him the rest of the way. Every perimeter player is going to have to really start playing at another for UD to do much more than .500 in the Atlantic 10.

Dayton went a pretty-good-but-shoulda-been-better 10-4 before starting conference play this year. Not enough to do anything positive for their resume. It sits right about where it was coming into the year. To change that, 12-4 or 13-3 is the minimum requirement for a shot at the big dance. The bad news is I don't think there's any way that's happening. The good news is we'll know if they've got a shot early. Four of Dayton's first five A-10 games are big ones (Saint Louis, at Temple, at Saint Bonaventure, home against Xavier). So hopefully they'll go 4-0 or 0-4 in those games so I can decide to keep following closely or just take it easy for the rest of the season. Either way, it should be an interesting stretch. Happy New Year, here's to hoping 2012 is a bit nicer to UD men's basketball than 2011 was.