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The men's basketball team played suffocating defense Tuesday night at UD Arena to hand Ball State its sixth loss of the season with a 59-35 win.

The game was Dayton's final non-conference contest of the 2009-10 season. The Flyers set the tone early with dominating defensive play, holding the Cardinals scoreless for the first three minutes of the game and limiting BSU to an abysmal 7-of-27 (25.9 percent) shooting in the first half.

Dayton also held the Cardinals scoreless for nearly an eight minute stretch in the first frame. Although the Flyers didn't come alive offensively until the last seven minutes of the half (scoring 17 points in that stretch) to give themselves a 30-17 lead at halftime, their defense was all they would need.

"[Ball State] is a tough team to play," Head Coach Brian Gregory said. "They like to grind it out, they don't mind taking 25 or 30 seconds off the shot clock with possessions."

After an alley-oop dunk by Marcus Johnson from London Warren to open the half, the Flyer offense sputtered again. Dayton had three scoring droughts of four minutes or longer in the second half. Luckily for the Flyers, their defense continued to be suffocating, holding Ball State to 31.3 percent shooting in the second frame and 27.9 percent shooting for the game. The defense also did an exceptional job containing Ball State forward Jarrod Jones who was the MAC's Freshman of the Year last season.

"They're always looking to get the ball inside and we have Kurt and with him that's hard to do," Gregory said. "[Jones] has a chance to be the Player of the Year in the MAC this year and he goes 1-of-8. Kurt and Devin did a great job on him. I thought our discipline and sticking to what we wanted to get done was as good as it has been all year."



Quick Shots

The senior class of Marcus Johnson, London Warren, Mickey Perry, Rob Lowery, Kurt Hueslman, Dan Fox and Luke Hendrick finished their careers undefeated (an astonishing 36-0) in non-conference, regular season home games.

The Flyers improved to 11-3 on the season while the loss dropped Ball State to 6-6.



A-10 Season Starts

The Flyers begin Atlantic 10 play Saturday against the Duquesne Dukes at 2 p.m. at UD Arena. The Dukes ended the Flyers' regular season last year in the semifinals of the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

"They're a high quality team and they haven't played with [Melquan] Bolding the entire year," Gregory said. "And he's coming back this week. They've had a good non-conference season without the guy that I think had 25 on us [in the A-10 Tournament]. They're going to improve dramatically in that short period of time with him getting back in the mix. We cannot forget that if you do not defend or rebound in this league, you have no chance."

Mickey Perry weighed in on starting A-10 play as well Tuesday night.

"As seniors this is the last go around for us. There is no coming back next year. This is it. We're looking forward to it and we're not looking over anyone and we're not scared of anybody. We're just going to go out there, play our game and see what happens."