Second Half Surge Tops Rhode Island 85-77

After a disappointing loss at Loyola on Friday evening, the Dayton Flyers traveled to Kington, RI, on Wednesday night in a matchup against Archie Miller's Rhode Island Rams. UD extended a 33-30 halftime advantage into a 20-point second-half cushion and withstood a late Ram rally for the 85-77 road win.  Dayton improves to 19-9 (9-6) while Rhody slips to 17-10 (6-9).
Dayton topped URI 96-62 at UD Arena in last season's only conference meeting. Javon Bennett scored a team-high 22pts on 4-5 3PT, while DaRon Holmes II added 21pts and Koby Brea 15pts. The Flyers led 47-27 at the half and never looked back, sizzling the nets by sinking 16-27 from behind the arc. The Rams came into tonight's game winners of two of the prior three meetings at the Ryan Center against the Flyers, but losers of seven of the last nine games in the series -- a series favoring UD 26-19 overall.
The teams traded early baskets as the Rams went inside for easy layups while the Flyers nailed a couple treys from Amael L'Etang and Nate Santos. URI scored an uncontested transition basket at 15:41 to put the Flyers down 13-10.  UD gave up two consecutive dunks to fall behind 17-10 but clawed it back to 17-15 after an Enoch Cheeks trey from the left corner.  The Rams opened the lead back up to nine points before UD trimmed it to 25-21 with a pair of Cheeks charity tosses at the under-8-minute media timeout. Santos hit a trey from the corner on the restart to cut the deficit to one point, then Posh Alexander respond...