Landen Joseph drives for a layup, one of five lay-ups on a 19-point night. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Julie Wright-Daniel)
With a new coach and 14 transfers, mostly from Division II, the 19 1/2-point underdog Northern Illinois barged into UD Arena with bulging eyes and big dreams and did the near-impossible, knocking off the overconfident Dayton Flyers, 81-76, in overtime.
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Dayton, OH. — There are a myriad of reasons — or excuses — why the University of Dayton basketball team fell flat on their faces and were knocked to their posteriors Saturday night in UD Arena.
They were heavily favored, more like sledge hammer and ice pick favorites — 19 1/2 points — to mop the floor with Northern Illinois and send them back to DeKalb with a fat lip and a fat check.
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Didn’t happen. They took the appearance check but left all the fat lips on the Flyers.
Northern Illinois took UD apart in every facet of the game and beat the Flyers, 81-76, in overtime.
Maybe the Flyers ingested an overdose of overconfidence because NIU had lost its first two games to Grambling State (89-87) and Tulsa (94-75).
And the Huskies had a new coach, Mark Majkrzak, hired away from Division II Northern Michigan. And on his 16-man roster are 14 transfers, most of them from Division II or lower.
As Majkzrak said, “Our guys had never played in front of a crowd bigger than 200, so they were pretty excited to play in front of 13,000.”
Amaël L’Etang snags one of his six rebounds.
And play they did, fired up for the opportunity. Before the Flyers realized they were in for hand-to-hand combat, NIU owned a 17-point lead, 35-18, with 3:56 left in the first half.
The Flyers cut it to 40-29 by halftime. And when NIU went scoreless for the first eight minutes of the second half, UD pulled within 40-38.
They took their first lead at 46-45 with 10 minutes left and most expected NIU to fade into the 400 level seats.
They didn’t. They kept battling.
“To be honest, I knew that lead would slip away,” said Majkrzak. “I had no illusions going in at halftime of us winning this game. I figured they were going to make a run and what we had to do is get that counter punch at the right time. And we did.”
The game probably was determined at the end of regulation with the score 67-67. UD possessed the basketball with 10 seconds left and a timeout.
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Most expected Landen Joseph to dribble-drive to the hoop and score or get fouled. He was one of the few engaged and involved Flyer this night and continually drove for the basket with feints and cuts and spins on his way to 19 points.
Instead, he dribble, dribbled and dribbled out front then launched a 25-foot three-point try that clanked off the front of the rim.
A double technical was called on NIU’s Nino Carter-Smith and UD’s Landen Joseph.
Asked if he was thrilled to see Joseph heave a three, Majkrzak said, “Yeah, I was. I’m not going to lie.”
That wasn’t the way UD coach Anthony Grant drew it up.
“They were switching, so we were trying to get Frenchy (7-foot-1 Amaël L’Etang) involved in the action with a shooter coming out from behind him to see if we could turn a corner and get downhill.
“Their big guy switched , like we expected, but he was able to keep us in front and we ended up taking a contested three at the end. I was hoping we could get downhill, get to the rim, and get fouled.
Nino Carter-Smith is held back from a skirmish by an official.
So were 13,407 fans hoping for the same thing and the groans were palpable when Joseph cast his wing-and-no-prayer unanswered desperation heave.
NIU dominated the overtime period, outscoring the Flyers ,14-9. The dart to the heart a three-pointer from the right corner by Max Weisbrod to make it 79-74 with 29 seconds left.
Grant summed up the mess succinctly.
“We battled back, but in the overtime our defense failed us and our rebounding failed us,” he said.
“To say it is a disappointing outcome tonight is an understatement,” he added in a gross understatement of his own.
“This a case where the stat sheet tells the story,” he added. “You look and you see over 50% of their shots came from the three-point line.”
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The Huskies? They were 22 for 56 — 12 for 30 from three. The Flyers? On three-pointers, they couldn’t have hit a carpet with a rug-beater if they were standing next to the carpet —2 for 17. . .on their own floor.
“We got outrebounded by a smaller team,” Grant added. Indeed, there wasn’t a Huskie taller than 6-8, but they outboarded the Flyers, 43-29, with 13 offensive boards.
Grant Randall scores on a fast break slam dunk.
“They were aggressive going to the glass and held us accountable,” said Grant.
And they beat the Flyers despite three of their starters fouling out. The officials acted as if they were getting paid by how many times they blew their whistles.
They called 56 fouls, 33 on NIU and 23 on the Flyers. NIU was 25 for 31 from the foul line and UD was 30 for 41.
“We have to understand that when we are in a Dayton uniform in Dayton Arena, that you’re opponent is very, very excited to play at a level that film doesn’t show,” said Grant.
That’s exactly the way NIU’s Majkrzak saw it and relayed it to the media after the game like a kid making his first trip to Disney World.
To Majkrzak and his team, UD Arena was Disney World.
Coach Anthony Grant make his case to the officials.
“I told our guys before the game to shut this one out because we are going to have fun with it. When Dayton came out on the floor, I just looked around and smiled, like this is freakin’ awesome.
“An awesome opponent in front of 13,000,” he said. “I told them, ‘You have nothing to lose tonight. Just play together, we need to care and we need to be a little bit tougher. And we needed to get a little bit lucky.
“All of those things happened,” he added. But he was concerned when three players fouled out even before the overtime. “I was running out of guys to run our normal offense and our normal defense because they were all forwards.
“For us to pull this upset, I thought we’d have to go nuts on offense,” he said. “But we really didn’t. It was the rebounding and the defense that kept us in it.”
“A year ago I was coaching in D-II with 200 people in the stands. These kids all won alot but nobody ever watched it except family and friends. Now we put them on this stage and I said to them, ‘How do you want 13,000 people to remember you —as tough guys or soft guys?’
“They are not going to remember us winning or losing, we can’t control that, but we can control tough and that was the messaging and it feels better when you get it done. The kids we recruited are winners and they played like winners,” he added.. “If we had lost I would have said the same thing.”
He didn’t have to.
Aiden Derkack is fouled on a drive and finished with 20 points.
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