Dayton

[Jason94]

Dayton visits tomorrow, and while it is a home game, they are one of the best teams in the field, and possibly the most talented. Anthony Grant landed at Dayton following his firing from Bama, and has had a pretty good run so far, though Dayton has had very good coaching over the last 20+ seasons, though none of the former coaches has been able to transfer success with the Flyers to their next stops.

Dayton has the youngest roster/rotation in all of college basketball - 358th of 358 teams, and it isn't that close to #357. They start a single non-freshman in Camara, a sophomore, and besides him every other starter and bench player who gets more than mop-up minutes is a freshman. They did have a junior forward coming off the bench in Weaver, but he hasn't played in several games. I'm not sure i've seen any team with this many freshmen at one time (there are at least 10), much less have any success without their being a huge number of 1 and dones (which this doesn't appear to be the case).

The aforementioned Camara leads the team in possessions used, but doesn't himself carry a particularly heavy load, and only averaged about 27 mpg. The shots and possessions are really spread out amongst the other players with the starters averaging between 16.7% and 23.6% of the shots taken. Holmes, a 6'-10" center leads the team in minutes played at around 30 mpg, with Smith, the PG right behind. Smith didn't play in the game against Toledo, with an ankle injury, but when healthy had a really impressive freshman season for a PG, doing a good job at limiting turnovers, hitting his shots overall, getting to the line and handing out assists. Holmes had a very impressive freshman season, blocking shots, hitting his shots, getting to the line, limiting turnovers, and most importantly avoiding fouls, which is truly rare for a freshman post player. Their two other starters Elvis and Blakney were both very solid and efficient with Elvis showing the ability to run the point as well.

With Weaver apparently out, the two main bench players have been Brea and Amzil, the former a bit of a three point specialist and the latter the primary post backup. Sissoko will spell Holmes for the short period that he requires rest, but that hasn't been that often, but he isn't a bad backup.

Dayton is talented IMO, and has certainly played better as the season has gone along. They were at 8-6 (0-1) following a 1 point loss at home to VCU (with losses to Lipscomb, APSU and UMass Lowell), but finished out 15-4 in league play, including a 30 point trouncing of VCU on the road as revenge. They are prone to playing like freshmen from time to time, as a loss to a bad La Salle in late February shows, but has jumped up and beaten teams like Kansas, Va Tech and Davidson.

As a team they are very solid defensively, limiting offensive rebounds and foul shots and limiting shooting percentages both inside and outside the arc. They are a pretty good offensive team, as they shoot the ball well both inside and outside the arc, but do tend to turn the ball over moreso than they create on defense.

This will be a tough matchup - they have a similar adjusted defensive efficiency to ours but have a bit better adjusted offensive efficiency. While their schedule was objectively easier than ours was, they definitely have proven than can beat a team like us, even on the road. I didn't notice any particular pattern in their losses - sometimes their opponent shot well, sometimes not. Other times their opponent really limited turnovers, but not always. I'd guess we'll just have to play a good all-around game and hope we are able to exploit matchups that are favorable to us, which is likely to be Wright and Pippen. If we can at all get Holmes in foul trouble then we will have a good chance, but more likely the combination of Robbins and QMB will have to make things difficult for him and not let him go crazy for us to have a good chance at a victory.

We are likely slight favorites tomorrow due to it being a home game for us, but Dayton is a similar team in terms of overall adjusted efficiency to a MSU or BYU of teams we've already played. We can win, but it will be much more difficult than Belmont if we don't shoot well.

[dotcommie]

Wonderful analysis. We are only a two point favorite at this point.

[charlestonalum]

Jason, again thanks for the scouting report. We need to keep turnovers down below 10 and outrebound them and we will win. Hope students and fans turnout. Stack says we feed off the crowd. Go Dores.

[EagleDore]

Thanks for the analysis. Great stuff. Hope the home crowd shows up and makes it loud and energetic for our team.