Even injured, Dayton Basketball makes claim to be best in Atlantic 10

Dayton Basketball is down two key players but still managed to start off league play with a double-digit victory over Duquesne.

For a team that was in the preseason top 25, things haven’t gone as well as Dayton Basketball would’ve hoped. They went 8-5 in the non-conference, including getting swept in the three games of the Battle 4 Atlantis. Making matters worse, the Flyers lost a pair of starting guards and ball-handlers in Malachi Smith and Kobe Elvis, both of whom remain out indefinitely.

If there’s any good news for Dayton is that the A-10 as a whole has been just as bad. Preseason favorites such as Saint Louis, VCU, George Mason, and Davidson all have had their respective ups and downs and currently, no team has much of an at-large resume. That creates at least an even playing field for league play, which started Wednesday night with a pair of games.

While Davidson dominated Fordham on the road, Dayton took on a Duquesne squad that is much improved compared to a year ago, already winning four more games with a 10-3 record. And after getting three players back that missed the previous game, the depth advantage the Dukes had on paper could’ve been a real factor last night.

Instead, the Flyers rushed out to an 8-0 lead and essentially remained between 5-12 points ahead the entire game for a wire-to-wire, 69-57 victory. DaRon Holmes, whose been the best player on the team as expected, went for a game-high 22 points and 13 rebounds in 36 minutes. Another key contributor was RJ Blakney, who had 17 points on 7/11 shooting, including 3/4 from three-point range. The defense limited the Dukes to 5/21 from deep and had a rebounding advantage of 14.

Beating Duquesne won’t do anything for the Flyers’ resume but this game was important from the standpoint of confirming that they’re good enough to still win the conference. The defense remains the best in the A-10 and the Dukes’ frontcourt is one of the best in the league but still got dominated last night. The point guard play was admittedly sloppy at times but freshman Mike Sharavjamts still held his own and will continue to develop going forward.

The rest of the Atlantic 10 will debut against one another this week and some teams certainly will look impressive. But Dayton made the first statement on Wednesday, proving that even without a pair of key guards, still will be one of the teams to beat both now and in the conference tournament.