UD vs. Minnesota: Where did this come from?

After a disappointing loss at Miami, it has been good, good, and more good for the Dayton Flyers, who took home the Old Spice Classic championship with a relatively easy 86-70 win over Minnesota. This was a game I was expecting Dayton to lose, so what happened that they were in control? For starters, it was one of those games that UD seems to have every year where they play to their full potential and look phenomenal (think like their 28-point win over Charlotte two years ago or the 30-point victory over Pitt from four years back). But there was more to it than that. Let's look a bit deeper.

The Good
Kevin Dillard. Kevin Dillard. Kevin. Dillard. Dillard delivered the best game from a UD guard since Brian Roberts was running the show at UD, and from a pure point-guard perspective, it was probably better than what Roberts could muster (B-Rob always had to be looking to score more, so this isn't to take anything away from him). Dillard tallied 19 points, 10 assists, seven steals (SEVEN!) and three blocks, and was efficient doing it, going 6-12 from the field. What's more, is Dillard was in complete control of the game while he was on the court. It really was pretty amazing to watching him from the second portion of the first half on. He was just so calm and smooth, doing what he wanted, much in the same way Chris Paul or Steve Nash manage a game. From watching, you got the sense he was going to score or find someone for an open shot every possession. It was amazing.

Devin Oliver. Oliver's line from Sunday: 14 minutes, 0-1 from the field, zero points, seven rebounds, one assist, one steal, one turnover, four fouls. So why was he good? Because Oliver appears to understand and accept what his role on the team is currently: come in as a seventh or eighth man and hustle his ass off. Don't be a defensive liability, and grab some rebounds. And if you watched the game Sunday, you would have seen Oliver all over the place. He gave maximum effort at all times (probably why he managed the four fouls in just 14 minutes). He deferred to his teammates on offense, and it resulted in him playing good minutes in the second half. Perhaps there will come a time when UD needs Oliver to step up on offense, but for now, what he's doing is great.

The blue uniforms. I'm hoping I get to see these blue unis more over the rest of the season. I thought it was so cool to see UD playing in the school's color blue. There was nothing special about those unis as far as color scheme or design, but they looked great, and Dayton ran the table in them while in Florida. It is reminiscent of their run through the 2010 NIT wearing the black uniforms. Keep those coming back on the road, Archie.

The Bad
This is somewhat of a nit-picky bad since UD didn't really need him to be great in this game, but Paul Williams only scored eight points against Minnesota, going 2-9 from the field. So far, PW has been UD's best player (with Dillard probably taking that spot over after this tournament), but he has been inconsistent this year. Williams' scoring so far this year: 15, 20, 5, 18, 5, and 8. It should be noted that two of his single-digit performances came in games where UD didn't need him as badly, but still, it is important for the senior to be delivering in double figures just about every game. And if he doesn't score 10 or more, it needs to be because he took less shots, not because PW put up a line like 2-9.

So UD will come back to town an encouraging 5-1 to a very appreciative fan base. Things will not get any easier for Dayton, though. After a home game against Buffalo, UD has its two toughest (and therefore most important) non-conference games: at Murray State and at home against No. 12 Alabama. The nation took notice of UD after this weekend, but a 2-0 stint in those games would really turn some heads. With the fact that the A-10 is looking pretty strong in the early season, UD is going to need to keep on playing strong basketball to keep up. Still, there is plenty of reason to be excited about what Dayton has done so far. The players have bought into Miller's system, are playing hard and winning games. You can't ask for much more.

UD vs. Wake Forest

In its first game of the Old Spice Classic, UD matched up with Wake Forest, a team from the ACC that has been stuck in struggsville ever since Chris Paul left. And in a very winnable game that would also look decent on a resume for the Flyers (at a neutral site), UD picked up an 80-76 win and improved to 3-1 on the year. It was an important win for Dayton to get, and even had Paul shaking his head afterwards. Is it just me or is it kinda cool that CP3 was watching that game, and still actually cares about what's going on with his former school?

Reaction
This was a big one for UD. After a poor performance in their only game away from UD Arena on the season, I was a bit nervous about what the Flyers might do. What they did was not great, giving up 76 points, but in the end you've got to be happy with a nice win. If UD can consistently beat team's of Wake's caliber, they're going to have a pretty good record come the end of the year and will be top 5 in the A-10. UD outrebounded Wake 43-31, meaning Dayton has won the rebounding numbers in every game this year. That's a good stat to see. Controlling the glass is extremely important.

The Good
Matt Kavanaugh. Who saw this coming? Kav, after being on of the softest, slowest big men I can remember seeing (maybe he would beat Kenny George in a foot race?), has now had two great games this year for UD. He led the way for Dayton today, scoring 15 points and 13 rebounds. He went 3-3 from the foul line. He had three assists to go with three turnovers (not bad for a center). I didn't think Kavanaugh was ever going to be a guy that was delivering significant numbers, but he just may be proving me wrong this year (I hope so). Kav's line against Wake is more exciting than his numbers against Western Illinois, because Wake boasts a bigger set of big men, who would therefore (theoretically) offer up more resistance. But he still delivered.

Paul Williams. P-dub has been UD's best player through its first four games and continued his high level of play. After a forgettable first half, PW stepped up big in the second and started knocking down shots. He finished the game 5-15, but was 0-7 in the first half. So when the Flyers needed him, he was there to deliver. Paul also had three assists to just one turnover, and had two steals to add to his line as well. Without Williams, UD is certainly 2-2 on the year, and the loss to Miami would have looked much worse. If a couple other players (read below) can get up a bit closer to PW's level right now, UD will really start clicking on offense.

Josh Parker only playing 13 minutes. This is an extremely encouraging sign from Archie Miller in the early stages of the season. Simply put, Parker had been the worst Dayton player on the court through three games, so Miller cut his time back. He still managed to go 0-5 from the field in those 13 minutes, so don't expect him to get much more PT anytime soon. And UD will be better off for it.

Foul Shooting. UD went 15-17 from the charity stripe in this game. Wait a second, that can't possibly be correct. Let me check that again (consulting box score...). Huh. Supposedly UD went 15-17 from the foul line in this game. And 2012 is just around the corner? Uh oh.

The Bad
Chris Johnson. I am getting dangerously close to giving up on CJ as a threat to score inside the three-point line. CJ went 3-10 from the field and 2-8 from beyond the arc. How can that guy only be attempting two two-point shots in an entire game? He wasn't in foul trouble, so he got his normal minutes. He went 4-4 from the foul line in this game to get him to 12 points. Why is he only attempting four foul shots in a game?!?! He is a borderline 90 percent free throw shooter in his career, CJ needs to be doing everything he can to get to the line. He can get so many free points there! And I hate to break it to you CJ, but you're going to have to start slashing, cause there just aren't as many shooting fouls on the perimeter.

Not much else bad is coming from this game. The defense of course needs significant improvement, but we've all heard enough about that already. Next up is the semis of the Old Spice Classic, against Fairfield of the MAAC, a pretty weak-looking conference so far this year. Fairfield beat Arizona State in the first round, which is the type of result we can't glean anything from. ASU looked horrible.

A UD In-betweener

A rough weekend work schedule kept me from being able to see Dayton play in their game against UNC-Wilmington. It also kept me from getting much writing in, so I'm not going to focus as much on that game, but more what it could mean going forward for the Flyers.

Reaction
When I got home from work on Saturday after the UD game and spoke to my mom about it (she had attended the game) all she could do was shake her head. Evidently UNCW was about as bad as can be. A look at the box score doesn't make them look much better than she indicated. They scored just 49 points, shot 35 percent from the field, attempted just nine free throws all game, and had 19 turnovers to 11 assists. All this coming against a UD defense that could be generously called a work in progress. So lets get that out of the way first: UD's two wins have been against teams that they absolutely had to beat. And they did. Badly. The encouraging aspect of this game was that Chris Johnson finally showed up, scoring 19 points. Of course, 15 of those 19 points came from beyond the arc, which is not where CJ should be spending most of his time. What was discouraging about this game is that it seems if UD had been able to play as well against Miami as they did against both UNCW and Western Illinois, they would be 3-0 right now. A team has got to be able to bring it's "A" game every time. Especially these Flyers, who are not going to be able to survive in the Atlantic 10 if they turn in lackluster performances on the road.

Looking Ahead
As Dayton moves forward, we ought to get a look at what we'll see the rest of the year. They have a neutral-site game against Wake Forest (very winnable, Wake Forest should be bad again), home against Buffalo (better be a W) and an away game at Murray State (a perennially tough mid-major school that should be a tough test) and then their premiere non-conference game of the year, at home against no. 15 Alabama.

Dayton could easily go 1-3 in that stretch; two games away from UD Arena, and one against a strong opponent they are not expected to beat. The games against Wake Forest and Murray State will be a key primer for the rest of UD's season. Will the Flyers be able to take care of business outside of Dayton? The past couple years the answer has been no, and it has meant mediocre results and disappointment for Dayton. If UD can manage to come away from this four-game stretch with a record of 5-2, then perhaps UD fans will have something to be excited about. If they play poorly like they did against Miami, then things will be set early for Dayton this year: no NCAA, no NIT, no CBI, maybe no A-10 Tournament.

Buckle up, it's going to be a big couple weeks.

Can we extend the college basketball season?

I've given up on the NBA. There is still plenty of opportunity for an NBA season to happen, and it probably will happen once most of the players have been without paychecks for a month or two or three. But I can't even stand to think about that. Even a 40 game NBA season wouldn't be started for a long time to come.

So is there any way we could get the college basketball season started up earlier? Or maybe move the conference tournaments three weeks and add eight or nine more games to every team's schedule? That way I'd have a little bit more ball to watch.

I'm sick of reading headlines about NBA Labor discussions, the college conference shuffle and my fantasy football players continuing to be injured. Don't Andre Johnson and Darren McFadden understand that we're smack in the middle of the bye portion of football season, and I don't have anybody else to put in the game? I digress, though. This wasn't supposed to be about football.

It was supposed to be an appeal to the NCAA: find a way to give me 3 more Big Mondays, Super Tuesdays, ACC Wednesdays and all the other wacky names ESPN should start giving to days of the week during college basketball season. Find a way to give me an extra three weeks of Duke games on television (because Duke is always on TV. It's probably the biggest perk of being a Duke fan). Most of all, just give me more basketball to watch, because As awesome as the NFL is, it's only two (sometimes three) days a week. And two (sometimes three) out of seven just isn't getting it done anymore.

NBA Conference Finals

Two games have passed in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals and, as is always the case with the NBA, there are some things from those games worth paying attention to and others that aren't. So what have we learned so far?

In the Eastern Conference Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat, the two games have been extremely different in the second halves. The first halves in each game were almost identical scorewise (tied at 48 in game one, 48-46 Miami in game two). The difference in game one was a dominant Bulls second half, in which they held Miami to just 34 points. The Bulls offensive output in the second half of game two? 29 points. Clearly defense has been the key in the first two games of the series. But I'm not convinced it's just defense that's making that difference.

In game one, Derrick Rose went 10-22 from the field and scored 28 points, Luol Deng added 21 on 7-15 shooting, and Taj Gibson came of the bench to be the spark plug, scoring nine points and grabbing seven boards, with some emphatic dunks to boot. On the other side, only Chris Bosh had a good game for Miami. His 30 points were big, but Lebron James and Dwyane Wade only combined for 33 points (15 and 18, respectively). I think it's safe to say Miami is going to struggle if those two put up anemic offensive numbers like that.

Flash forward to game two. In a Miami win, James and Wade went for a combined 53 points and 19 rebounds. Udonis Haslem came off the bench and provided 13 big points and 5 rebounds, along with some emphatic dunks. For the Bulls, things didn't go so well. Rose scored 23 points, but on 7-23 shooting. Deng had only 13 after scoring nine in the first quarter, and Gibson wasn't so big off the bench, with eight points and one board. Sound familiar?

Basically, the script was flipped between games. I don't think Chicago's defense changed much, James and Wade just made more shots in game two. Miami's defense did change a bit, with their two stars manning up on Rose more often, but it's not likely that will result in a 7-23 performance every night. He's just too good for something like that. Who knows if Haslem and Gibson will be big off the bench ever again in this series as well.

So what have we learned through two games of the Eastern Conference Finals? Damn, not as much as we thought. Chicago was extremely impressive in game one's second half, and then Lebron was extremely impressive in game two's fourth quarter. Hopefully we'll be treated to a game three in which both teams play well: Rose going for 25-plus, and three of Chicago's role players going for 15 or more, while James and Wade complete another 50-plus point performance, while both team's benches contribute, but Chicago's bench is a bit better. I think coming into the series that is what a prototype game would have looked like, and until we see one, it's going to be hard to say what'll happen from here on out.

Why you headed there, Wan?

The word has come down, and former University of Dayton guard Juwan Staten has announced where he's headed.

According to the Dayton Daily News, the sophomore-to-be who left UD saying he believed his talents weren't being properly utilized, tweeted that he will be transferring to Penn State University.

If you're like me, you read that and thought, "Huh?" This seems like one an odd decision, so let's run through it.

Staten said he was transferring because his talents weren't properly utilized, but then former Dayton head coach Brian Gregory took off for Georgia Tech. At that point, Staten still had the option of playing at UD. Admittedly, that would have been tough for Staten to do, since he had already said he wanted to leave. But still, Staten insisted Dayton wasn't the right place for him.

But Penn State is? Why is the level of success going to be any higher for Staten there? Yeah, Penn State made the NCAA Tournament this year, but barely, as a 10 seed. This was the team's first tournament appearance since 2001. UD has been to the tournament more often in the past decade (three times) than the Nittany Lions have. So does Staten think he'll have more success with Ed DeChellis than Archie Miller? As far as the programs' two histories are concerned, he's wrong.

Maybe it's about individual glory for Staten. His first year at UD was successful from an individual standpoint, but not phenomenal. He was a good distributor, but struggled shooting the ball from outside the paint. He showed he has the talent to be good, but does he really think he will blossom at Penn State?

Certainly, PSU has a precedent for good guards in the past. Just last year, they were led by Talor Battle, a guard with size similar to Staten's, who was an All-Big Ten Selection for two years at Penn State. But after his junior season, Battle made himself eligible for the NBA draft. He didn't garner much interest from NBA teams. The same will likely be true this year. Battle is ranked 61st by DraftExpress.com among NCAA seniors only, meaning the likes of Kyrie Irving, Derrick Williams, Brandon Knight and Terrence Jones will definitely be in front of him on NBA teams' draft boards.

Does Staten think he will be more successful than Battle has been at Penn State? Battle is Penn State's all-time leading scorer, and led the Big Ten in scoring his sophomore year. He led Penn State in scoring, rebounding and assists his junior year. He is one of the all-time greats at Penn State, and he is almost certainly going to be playing in Europe or the NBA Developmental League.

The likelihood is Staten will not have a better career than Battle did as Nittany Lion. So why is he going to Penn State? On his Twitter account, the Dayton Daily News reported Staten tweeted, "Just an 18 year old kid tryna make my dreams come true." What are Staten's dreams? I figured the biggest one was to play in the NBA. Now I'm not so sure, because the last player Penn State had drafted was Calvin Booth in 1999.

I'm not saying UD is a better place to forge an NBA career. But once Staten decided to transfer, I figured he would give himself a better chance at a pro career in the U.S. So why Penn State? Maybe Staten wants to be broadcast on the Big Ten Network instead of CBS College Sports. Maybe he would prefer to be at a school where football comes first way way way before basketball. Whatever his reasons, I'm scratching my head.

Mediocrity's Trick

I'll admit it: Butler and UConn had me fooled.

I listened to every ESPN pundit when they kept telling me Butler wasn't an underdog, and I ignored the fact that they had lost five games in the Horizon League (not a bad league by any stretch, but no team losing five games is national title worthy).

I also ignored the fact that UConn placed ninth in the Big East, going just 9-9 in everyone's favorite conference to overrate. Yeah, the Huskies caught fire and reeled off a great stretch of wins, but that team was still nowhere near as good as Ohio State or Kansas this year.

That Connecticut and Butler played each other in the title game is both the beauty and the curse of the NCAA Tournament. Any team can get hot and go on a run, especially if you have individual players that are on fire (Kemba Walker and Shelvin Mack). But college basketball took a huge step back rather than forward with UConn's 53-41 victory in the National Championship. Yes, UConn's 11 straight wins and Butler two straight trips to the title game are both incredible feats and should be lauded. But those aren't what will be remembered in this game. Instead, we'll remember how UConn was basically fortunate to run into Butler on one of it's coldest shooting nights in years. The Huskies played strong defense, but the Bulldogs' shooting was the bigger issue. Butler went 9-33 from beyond the arc, 8-14 from the foul line, and an astoundingly bad 3-31 on two point field goals. You read that correctly. No defense is that good.

We were all excited to watch these teams play so well en route to this game, but what happened Monday night was pitiful. We allowed ourselves to forget that these teams had been mediocre during the season. There was a reason Butler was an 8 seed, and a reason UConn needed to win the Big East Tourney to get a 3 seed in an off year. During Monday night's game, all those memories came rushing back.

In last year's tournament it almost felt as though Duke deserved an asterisk next to their win, because it seemed so easy going in. If that was the case then, it is all the more pronounced now. What's really sad is that winning the national championship almost takes away from UConn's incredible run, just because of the way that game was played. The Dayton Flyers could have won that game, with or without Juwan Staten and Brandon Spearman.

I used to think that 1 and 2 seeds filling up the Final Four was boring, because there were none of those major upsets. The tournament's unpredictability was always what made it so exciting to watch.

This year, the first four rounds were rife with upsets, each one seeming more stunning than the last. It was great at the time. But the end result? Anything but exciting.