Dayton

Saturday, December 16th, 2023
7:00 PM
Heritage Bank Center
ESPN+

The Bearcats (8-1, KenPom #26, NET #25) will take on Dayton (7-2, KenPom #57, NET #44) this weekend in Downtown Cincinnati as part of the "Hoops Classic presented by altafiber and CareSource".

The Flyers were preseason A-10 favorites and are aiming to make their first NCAA tournament under 7th-year head coach Anthony Grant although they were poised to make a run with a 29-2 record before the start of the pandemic ended the 19/20 season.

Dayton has tested themselves with a non-conference schedule that ranks 72nd on KenPom so far (compared to our 292nd ranked schedule) and has already produced a 2-2 record in Q1/Q2 games (wins over St. John's and @SMU; losses @Northwestern and to Houston).

The Flyers are led by 3rd-year 6'10 center DaRon Holmes II (16.3 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 3.0 apg) who already has scored 1200+ points over his short career. Their frontcourt is also bolstered by 3rd-year 6'7 forward Nate Santos (12.8 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 60.1% 3FG). They bring another dangerous 3-point shooter off the bench in 4th-year 6'6 wing Koby Brea (11.8 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 49.1% 3FG).

The Flyers are one of the slowest teams in D1 (357th in KenPon Adjusted Tempo), but are a relatively efficient offensive team due to taking 45% of their FG attempts from 3 where they are currently one of the NCAA's best as they hit these shots at a 40.9% clip.

They also do a stellar job of not fouling and keeping their opponents off the FT line.

These two programs are meeting for the first time since 2010 with UC leading the all-time series 60-31.

Great preview. Dayton comes in blazing hot from beyond the arc, where they have made 50% in three straight games. They also made over 50% at Northwestern earlier this year. They have a top 20 assist rate, so threes are coming off of ball movement. But despite being a top 10 three point shooting team, their offense sits just outside the top 50 because they turn it over a lot and don't rebound very well.

Dayton is terrible on the defensive glass, allowing opponents to rebound nearly a third of their misses. They defend the paint well though, with top 50 rankings in blocks, 2pt defense, and free throw rate. Defensive rebounding is so bad that their defense is outside the top 100 overall.

There isn't one guy to key on. Four guys shoot 35% plus from 3, and three guys have assist rates over 21. Koby Brea is exclusively a shooter. He only has 4 rim attempts on the season but has made 49% of his 55 threes. We should have someone glued to him playing tight whenever he is on the floor. Santos, who leads the team in minutes, will be the toughest cover. He attempts more than 3 shots per game from the rim (at 70%), three (at 60%), and the stripe. I'd put Newman on him. Their bigs are lethal at the rim, where they convert 70% as a team. Holmes converts 77% of 5 rim attempts per game, including more than 2 dunks per game. He also draws a ton of fouls, going to the stripe more than 8 times a game (and making 6 of them).

I think this is a game to try a big lineup and crash the boards hard. Their guards don't get to the rim a lot and three pointers are spread out among the team. I think we should play guards straight up and use our size to defend the paint while guards stay out on shooters. That would also work well on offense, where offensive rebounding will be key.

If Reynolds is indeed playing after the temporary court order, this is an ideal time. We need to maximize our rim protection and rebounding in this one.

I wonder how John Brennan's return will be met by fans. Personally, I was really confused about what happened between him and fan, as I checked out from watching that year due to family issues. It never made sense to me how this guy, who was really in a rebuilding movement, could fall from grace to so many in the program.

sirthought said:

I wonder how John Brennan's return will be met by fans. Personally, I was really confused about what happened between him and fan, as I checked out from watching that year due to family issues. It never made sense to me how this guy, who was really in a rebuilding movement, could fall from grace to so many in the program.

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I'm honestly not sure if Brannen's current role with their program even calls for him to be on the UD bench during games.

I went back and watched the first few minutes of one of their recent home games and couldn't immediately pick him out on the broadcast.

His time in Clifton wasn't all bad, but he left the program in a much worse condition than he found it after 2 seasons.

He was a poor culture fit and the university did right to force him out as they did.

His tenure is water under the bridge at this point though.

We've already been burned by backing off Brea. A couple early offensive boards, but can't convert the putbacks.

And another. Why do we have bigs on Brea?

This is so frustrating. Put a guard on Brea and stay on his hip! Don't retreat if he gets a step.

Other than Berea, our defense has been pretty good. We aren't doubling the post, and forcing them to create off the dribble. Take Brea away and they are only 36% from the field.

On offense, Dayton is trying to prevent our PG from running the offense. Honestly, the PG should stand in the corner and we'll play 4 on 4. We should be able to score like that. Otherwise, we need a halftime adjustment to initiate our sets through a wing.

This team crumbles against the two decent teams we play. Wes can’t get ‘‘em up once again.

The team runs no offense! Can’t use their athletes against decent defenses, they only over power the cupcakes.

As I've said from day one, Miller can't coach. Effing ridiculous.

TheLongHaul said:

As I've said from day one, Miller can't coach. Effing ridiculous.

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Can’t wait to hear how mad he is…lol. I hope he uses the lack of scoring as an excuse again. Funny how they only lack scoring against the only two decent teams they played. Guy is a joke

We're shooting 14/67 (20.9%) from 3 in all non-home games so far.

This is starting to become a trend...

Queens_NYC said:

We're shooting 14/67 (20.9%) from 3 in all non-home games so far.

This is starting to become a trend...

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How many missed around the rim too?

and this is the best shooting team he has had. Problem is they don't get good looks. Their offense is shit.

sedziobs said:

Koby Brea is exclusively a shooter. He only has 4 rim attempts on the season but has made 49% of his 55 threes. We should have someone glued to him playing tight whenever he is on the floor. Santos, who leads the team in minutes, will be the toughest cover. He attempts more than 3 shots per game from the rim (at 70%), three (at 60%), and the stripe. I'd put Newman on him. Their bigs are lethal at the rim, where they convert 70% as a team. Holmes converts 77% of 5 rim attempts per game, including more than 2 dunks per game. He also draws a ton of fouls, going to the stripe more than 8 times a game (and making 6 of them).

I think this is a game to try a big lineup and crash the boards hard. Their guards don't get to the rim a lot and three pointers are spread out among the team. I think we should play guards straight up and use our size to defend the paint while guards stay out on shooters. That would also work well on offense, where offensive rebounding will be key.

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sedziobs said:

On offense, Dayton is trying to prevent our PG from running the offense. Honestly, the PG should stand in the corner and we'll play 4 on 4. We should be able to score like that. Otherwise, we need a halftime adjustment to initiate our sets through a wing.

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Dayton took us out of our offense in the first half, forcing us into a ton of late clock jumpers. We had 27 midrange attempts in this game (3x as many as Dayton). At the under 16 timeout in the second half we tried an adjustment ... by playing two PGs for the first time this season. And we didn't swap a wing for another PG, we went with one big. Essentially we swapped a PF for a PG. All I wanted was to run our normal offense through a wing, but instead we went small and tried to completely reinvent ourselves. On the one hand I'm glad we were able to identify a problem and change something, and it worked as we scored 39 second half points. But we needed size on defense and we voluntarily took it off the court.

A lot of negative posts here focus on offense, but we scored 1.04 points per possession. That's not great, but it should be good enough to win games, and at least be competitive. We grabbed 42% of our misses and only had 7 turnovers, making up for another bad three point shooting night and way too many midrange shots.

The biggest problem is that we gave up 1.25 points per possession. That's terrible. In the first half it was almost exclusively because we weren't treating Brea as a shooter. In the second half it's because we went small and couldn't defend the rim without fouling. Both are coaching mistakes.

We gave up 22 points at the rim and put Dayton on the line 30 times where they scored 28 points. 50 points at the two most efficient spots on the court. Can't win like that. Bigs were only responsible for 5 of our 19 fouls. Wings and guards were being asked to protect the rim and rebound. My main key to this game was to not do that. We gave up 47 second half points with a small lineup.

Bcatfollower said:

How many missed around the rim too?

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23/29 (79.3%) against Howard
21/33 (63.6%) against Xavier
14/21 (66.7%) against Dayton

Shooting 69.9% total over those games.

We've surprisingly only shot 55.2% at the rim over our 7 home games.

We've made up for it by hitting 39.3% of 3s and 47.2% of mid-range shots at home.

We've only made 30.3% of our mid-range shots away from home as well.

Skillings in particular has really struggled to find his shot over this last stretch of games.

Over the first four games of the season he was 7/20 from 3 (35%). Since then he has been 0-11.

Now he can't hit anything near or far from the bucket. He's shot 7/30 from the field (23.3%) over the last 4 games.

Queens_NYC said:

Skillings in particular has really struggled to find his shot over this last stretch of games.

Over the first four games of the season he was 7/20 from 3 (35%). Since then he has been 0-11.

Now he can't hit anything near or far from the bucket. He's shot 7/30 from the field (23.3%) over the last 4 games.

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He's not shooting a lot though. As you noted he's only attempted 11 threes over the last 6 games, fewer than two a game. Last night he didn't attempt any. While he's been bad from the field, he gets to the rim a lot where he picks up fouls, going 16 for 18 (89%) at the stripe in the same stretch.

Skillings is averaging 6 rebounds and only 1 turnover per game in that same stretch, which is where his value comes from. He's a tremendous rebounder, putting up numbers typical of a 5. I don't think Skillings is the reason we're losing. We're making boneheaded defensive strategy choices.

yep, the defensive strategy has to change. No reason for it to be this bad. Offense hasn't been great but if you don't ever get stops it's really tough to get out in transition.We're also a terrible passing team, which I was not expecting. It's as if they have a play to run and no matter what happens they are running that play. CJ was wide open multiple times and no one even attempted to pass it to him. If I'm the coach my players should pass to an open CJ no matter what.