If you don’t win, you don’t advance.
Fresh off the program’s first-ever Atlantic 10 Conference regular season title, the University of Dayton women’s basketball team knows what it’s playing for: the chance to advance to its second straight A-10 tournament championship.
To get there, the nationally-ranked Flyers will have to win two games in Philadelphia this weekend.
For head coach Jim Jabir, the bigger goal — making it to Brooklyn, NY for the title game — isn’t what’s important right now. What is important, he said, is taking care of business over the weekend.
“It’s that simple,” Jabir said. “We just need to prepare for the next game … that’s all.”
Dayton will face either Richmond University or George Washington University in a quarterfinal game Saturday afternoon. Regardless of who they face, the Flyers will be tested.
UD hosted George Washington (13-15, 7-7) on Jan. 24, and were led in scoring by freshman forward Amber Deane with 22 points. Sophomore forward Ally Malott added 17 points, in the Flyers 80-52 win. In that game, Dayton held the Colonials to 35 percent shooting from the field.
George Washington, however, kept Dayton sophomore guard Andrea Hoover in check. Hoover finished with 4 points on 2-4 shooting in 25 minutes. The scoring output was one of just four games Hoover failed to score at least five points for UD.
Against Richmond, the Flyers faced just as big a problem: turnovers.
Though the Flyers held on for the 72-64 win, behind an 18 point effort by senior forward Olivia Applewhite, they turned the ball over 18 times.
The Flyers rank 110th in the nation in turnovers per game with 16.1.
According to senior guard Sam MacKay, this season has been successful because of the response the team gives to mistakes made. Aside from a Nov. 2, 2012, exhibition loss to Ashland at home, Dayton’s only loss of the regular season was a 65-40 defeat at Bowling Green State University.
Both of those games carried with them not just problems to fix but renewed drives to be successful, she said.
“Those games gave us some things to fix,” MacKay said. “They definitely propelled us.”
The team didn’t enter its last regular season game against Saint Joseph’s on Sunday, March 3, thinking about what the reward would be. Rather, the Flyers entered it like they do every other game: like it’s the only one that matters.
“All we were doing was focusing on what we needed to do,” she said. “And we knew that if we did what we needed to, Charlotte wouldn’t have a chance.”
Had Dayton lost to Saint Joseph’s, a win by UNC-Charlotte (24-4, 13-1) and a loss by Fordham University would have been necessary to keep the Flyers from taking the No. 1 seed in the tournament. The addition of two teams over the summer meant not every team would face each other in conference play.
“I think we would have liked to play them, but with our schedule we really couldn’t help that,” Hoover said. “They’re a great team, and we may play them in the tournament.”
“And we knew that if we did what we needed to, Charlotte wouldn’t have a chance.”
Had Dayton lost to Saint Joseph’s, a win by UNC-Charlotte (24-4, 13-1) and a loss by Fordham would have been necessary to keep the Flyers from taking the No. 1 seed in the tournament. The addition of two teams over the summer meant not every team would face each other in conference play.
“I think we would have liked to play them, but with our schedule we really couldn’t help that,” Hoover said. “They’re a great team and we may play them in the tournament.”
