The University of Dayton Flyers will play more basketball after finishing off a pesky UNC-Wilmington Seahawk squad 68-59 before 9,638 fans at the UD Arena — the second highest attendance of any NIT 1st Rd game (10,201 McNeese St vs. UTEP) so far. Dayton will play the winner of the Richmond/West Virginia game sometime early next week.

While the Flyers got the job done, it was one of most frustrating outings of the year for Flyer fans. One one hand, Dayton showcased one of their best defensive performances of the season, but it was counterweighted by the sloppiest mental aptitude all year.

Dayton fell behind 5-0 to start the game after UNCW stole the first Flyer possession for a layup, then buried a trey from the outside. But Dayton responded well by going on a 10-0 run to retake the lead. The Seahawks closed the gap a bit thereafter, but the Flyers made the most of their early trips to the foul line by sinking free throws and eventually widening the lead to 31-19 with just 3:00 left in the half — the largest lead of the game thus far. Much like the contest at Temple where the Flyers held a 29-21 lead only to finish 31-31 at halftime, Dayton loosened up in the final three minutes and let the Seahawks bury a series of shots from the perimeter to close the lead to 33-31 at the half. Clearly, what could have been a controlling arm on the game fell through the cracks and it was anybody’s game.

UNCW scored the first bucket of the second half to tie things at 33 apiece, but Dayton responded once again to retake the lead and open up a 6-8pt cushion for the next 10 minutes of the contest. The Flyers wore down the Seahawks inside and cashed in at the foul line to the tune of 27 makes in 30 attempts from the stripe. That said, UNCW refused to go easily and Dayton’s miserable mental sharpness helped make things more interesting than it needed to be. Give some of the credit to UNCW however; they came into the contest as the third-best defensive scoring team in the country.

Dayton opened a 60-47 lead with 1:53 remaining — the largest lead of the game — but UNCW buried two straight treys to cut the lead to seven. Thankfully, UD stayed hot at the foul line and salted the game away when things could have gotten hairy.

Dayton’s defense was surprisingly stingy, forcing the basketball away from UNCW’s sharpshooter Brett Blizzard. Blizzard finished with 18pts on 6-12 shooting — including 5-10 from behind the arc — but Blizzard needed 16-18 shots for UNCW to have a real chance at winning as other players had matchup problems with the Flyers.

On the other hand, Dayton made enough mental mistakes to make your calculator start smoking. With just eight fouls whistled on the Flyers for the game, Dayton failed to use their remaining “fouls to give” at opportune times that would have slowed down the Seahawks. Even more, Dayton’s ball handling was suspect all night as players dribbled the ball off their leg, threw it to out-of-bounds to teammates who didn’t cut, and put the ball in the wrong hands at the wrong time throughout much of the game. Guards mysteriously ran away from the ball on in-bounds plays, Nate Green was forced to break the 10-second call, and players took questionable shots when patience and halfcourt offense were paramount. Fortunately, UNCW fell victim to the same mental mistakes and were it not for this, UD could have found themselves in serious trouble against a more disciplined squad.

For the game, UD committed just eight fouls while UNCW committed a healthy 22. While the Flyers did take the ball to the rim more often, the officials were — everything else being equal — quite kind to the home team for most of the night. Only a questionable technical on Keith Waleskowski for slapping the glass after a dunk brought out the boo birds. UNCW was a solid club however and Dayton earned a quality win. The Seahawks up-ended Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse and Miami (OH) at Millett Hall earlier in the season.

Dayton stands a good chance of hosting their 2nd Rd NIT game if the attendance figures hold true. In fact, the NIT will have a hard time moving the NIT out of Dayton as long as the Flyers keep winning. With UConn beating South Carolina tonight, the Flyers are just one win away from a possible matchup with the venerable Huskies.