Flyers Survive Hawks 77-72

The UD men's basketball team hosted St. Joseph's (PA) on Friday evening at UD Arena, grinding out a 77-72 result for their third consecutive victory after suffering a trio of conference losses.  Dayton improves to 14-6 (4-3) while SJU falls to 13-8 (3-4).
Dayton won last season's only meeting in a 94-79 victory on Hawk Hill. The Flyers entered tonight's match winners of six of the last seven games in the series including 3-1 at Hagan Arena -- for the longest time a Bermuda Triangle of suffering and defeat going back to Oliver Purnell's teams.  The Hawks were 1-10 in games played at UD Arena going back to 2005, the lone victory a 60-57 win over the Flyers on Jan. 29, 2014, when Langston Galloway banked in a three-pointer with 1.8 seconds left on the clock. The loss put Dayton at 1-5 in the A10, spawning an incredible turnaround that led to an NCAA at-large bid and magical run to the Elite Eight.
Dayton jumped out to an early 12-2 lead on Friday, helped by treys from Amael L'Etang and Nate Santos, along with a steal-and-dunk by Enoch Cheeks.  It looked like a rout was cooking when UD stretched the lead to 25-6 with 10:39 left in the half as Anthony Grant's team found scoring inside on dribble-drives courtesy of some transition basketball on the heels of several Hawk turnovers.  UD maintained a 30-11 lead until SJU responded with a 10-2 run to cut the deficit to 32-21 with 4:38 left. UD built the gap back up to 16 points on a Santos triple with 15 seconds left, but SJU countered...