Nate Santos support role consisted of 15 points and eight rebounds. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie McMaken Wright)
After falling behind Duquesne, 20-9, early in the first half at UD Arena and trailing 57-53 with six minutes left, full-court pressure enabled the Flyer to sprint out on a 20-0 run and pull out a 75-59 victory, their 20th win this season.
Dayton, OH. — When festivities began, the University of Dayton basketball team performed as if they were at a dance recital — the ol’ soft shoe, the minuet, the cotillion.
Hall of famer Hal McCoy writes UD Flyer basketball exclusively for Press Pros Magazine.com.
The Flyers were giving lethargy a bad name with no energy, no fire, not even smoke against a motivated Duquesne University team Tuesday night in UD Arena.
Never mind the final score: Dayton 75, Duquesne 59.
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The Flyers trailed, 57-53, with 6 1/2 minutes left. UD coach Anthony Grant ordered his men to employ full-court pressure and Duquesne deflated like a balloon stuck with a hatpin.
UD blazed on a 20-0 eruption to take a 73-57 lead and make a tightly argued game resemble a blow-by.
The Dukes dashed to a 20-9 lead and it looked as if the residue of the awful way the Flyers played in Saturday’s loss at Virginia Commonwealth was clinging to UD’s uniforms like lint.
It forced Grant to call a timeout and when asked what he said, he smiled and said, “Bleep, bleepity, bleep, bleep.”
DaRon Holmes II was back on target with 24 points.
Then he added, “Duquesne set the tone to start the game and I wasn’t pleased with the energy standpoint and effort standpoint in the first eight to ten minutes. They took the fight to us.”
The finish, like Secretariat pulling away in the Belmont Stakes, enabled the 16th-ranked Flyers to push their record to 20-4, 10-2 in the Atlantic 10.
“In the last eight minutes or so of the game, it came down to our guys’ grit and toughness and determination,” said Grant. “They showed great poise.”
Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot brought a team that had won five of its last six games into UD Arena and left impressed with the Flyers.
“Hats off to Dayton. . .questions,” were Dambrot’s first words at a post-game media scrum. Then he warmed up when asked about the 20-0 Dayton burst-away.
“They made plays, they have the best player in the league (DaRon Holmes II, 24 points, six during the run, plus two passes to Koby Brea for a pair of three-pointers),” said Dambrot. “We didn’t do a very good job of getting to the free throw line and they did. They are very good at getting to the free throw line and we’re not very good at getting to the free throw line.”
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After losing at VCU because they shot free throws as if blindfolded, the Flyers were 16 for 23 from the foul line to 1 for 3 for Duquesne.
“But, they’re 16th in the country for a reason, but I don’t think this really was a 16-point game,” Dambrot added. “We were up two with five minutes to play, so hats off to them. A lot of respect for coach Grant. He does a really good job of getting the ball where it needs to go when it matters. They are a good team. They know how to win.”
Koby Brea’s hit two timely three-points during UD’s 20-point run.
Duquesne is perched in Pittsburgh, as are Robert Morris and the University of Pittsburgh.
UD’s Enoch Cheeks, a transfer from Robert Morris, scored eight points, but during the 20-0 run he stole the ball twice and made four straight free throws at the beginning of the run.
UD’s Nate Santos, a transfer from the University of Pittsburgh, backed up Holmes’ 24 with 15 points and eight rebounds.
With Cheeks and Santos transfers from Pittsburgh schools, Dambrot was asked if he tried to recruit the pair to Duquesne.
“I’m from Ohio and I’ve never beaten Dayton on a recruit in my whole life,” said Dambrot, who also coached at the University of Akron. “Never. When I was at Akron, when Dayton was involved, I put the white flag up. So there’s your answer.”
The least publicized, the least recognized, the least appreciated player by the Flyer Faithful is Cheeks. He rarely scores, the eight he scored Tuesday is uncharacteristically high for him.
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But he embraces defense, always guarding one of the other team’s most prolific scorer, he embraces rebounding and he embraces what it take to win basketball games.
And his teammates appreciate him and recognize what he contributes — the garnish on a filet mignon, the sugar and cream in the coffee, the chocolate syrup on a bowl of ice cream.
Holmes knows.
Kobe Elvis was instrumental on UD’s pressure defense.
“That’s a championship player and every team needs a player like that,” said Holmes of Cheeks. “Some of the stuff he does goes unnoticed, but I see it. And I always tell him, ‘That’s very important to this team.’
“What he does impacts the game and people don’t really understand it, but that’s a winning player right there.”
When the Flyers were down, 57-53, and playing as if somebody slipped a Mickey into their Gatorade, Grant recognized that he needed to speed up the action. Duquesne was having its way.
“It was needed to be more aggressive,” Grant said of the full-court pressure defense. “We had to take them out of their comfort zone. We had a tough time on the half-court getting stops on a consistent basis. So we decided, ‘Let’s change it up and make them do something else.’”
What they did was nothing. . .nearly six minutes without a point.
“Fortunately for us, that changed the course of the game,” added Grant after another highly competitive A10 game.
“This is a hard league to win in and I’ve been in a few,” said Grant. “This is a hard league. You have very talented players that we’re going against and really good coaches that come up with great game plans.”
Javon Bennett, the Little Man, runs the offensive show.
And Grant knows with his team’s record, reputation and ranking that the Flyers have an apple on their head that opponents want to split in half.
“There is a level of focus that opponents play with, whether it is at Dayton or Dayton coming to them that we should be used to by now,” said Grant. “We should understand it. That’s what it is. So I’m proud of the way our guys closed tonight and the defense carried the day.”
And there wa a level of dark humor late in the first half. With 41 seconds left until intermission, UD had three fouls to give before Duquesne would go to the foul line.
Grant sent walk-on Brady Uhl into the game to hack away. . .foul the ball handler before he could shoot. Incredibly, Uhl committed three fouls in 10 seconds.
And did it work? Nope. Jimmy Clark III hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to pull the Dukes to within three points, a 36-33 UD intermission lead.
Then, midway through the second half the Flyers turned those early-game slow dances into some belligerent break-dancing.
Enoch Cheeks does the little things that lead to wins.
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