DAYTON, Ohio – The Owls are riding a wave of confidence entering today’s Atlantic 10 Championship against the 21st ranked Dayton Flyers tonight.
After wins over Richmond and 10th ranked Xavier, the Owls (15-14) have now exacted revenge on two of the three A-10 playoff teams that beat them earlier in the season.
They hope to make the Flyers (24-5) the third tonight at 6:05 p.m. when the two teams meet for the A-10 championship and a NCAA tournament bid.
Back on January 25, Dayton came into the Liacouras Center and stole a 57-49 win from the Owls.
Unlike yesterday’s euphoric victory over Xavier, the Owls won’t be hearing cheers from the Flyers faithful. It is do-or-die time for both teams.
And the way the Owls have been performing, they won’t need it. They know that as sweet as last night’s win was, it won’t mean much if they come out flat tonight.
“These guys have reacted great as far as winning, but Coach [Chaney] won’t let them get too high,” assistant coach Bill Ellerbee said.
The venerable Chaney knows a thing or two about preparing for conference tournaments. He holds the record for the most wins in the A-10 tourney, with a record of 40-16. His six conference titles are also the most by any coach.
Tonight’s matchup is only the second meeting between the two schools in tournament play. The Owls eliminated the Flyers, 76-63, two years ago. In fact, the Flyers are appearing in the A-10 championship game for the first time and head coach Oliver Purnell is experiencing the best season of his nine-year career.
The Flyers are without an explosive scorer and use a balanced offensive attack, spreading the ball and defenses. All five Flyers starters are averaging double figures in the tournament, led by senior small forward Brooks Hall and junior power forward Keith Waleskowski.
The Owls have kept the tournament opposition off-kilter with constant ball pressure, forcing the teams to shoot 33 percent from beyond the arc. Yesterday’s win was their eighth in the last 10 games.
“They’re playing as well as anybody in the league,” Purnell said. “When they’re making shots, they’re awfully good because defensively they’re excellent. They’ve gotten better and better in their zone.”
The Owls play in the second half of the tournament has been a deciding factor. In both their wins, they have outscored their opponents by an average of 12.5 points in the second half, shooting 15-of-28 from the field.
“This part of the season we don’t play games no more; we play halves,” said Hawkins, who is averaging 18.5 points in the tournament.
“Our kids have a lot more poise. They can understand what I’m fussing at, they just look at me and they don’t fuss back. They just take what I give them and say in their own minds ‘This man is crazy,'” Chaney said.
The resilience the Owls have displayed is eerily similar to the 2001 team that had no shot at the NCAAs unless they ran the table. Three wins later they were crowned conference champs and streaked to the Elite Eight.
Both Hawkins and senior forward Alex Wesby played significant roles on that team.
Hawkins said that after the season-ending loss at Xavier, he went back to retrieve his NCAA ring he received two years ago. He said that after Chaney’s pep talk before the Richmond game, he went over to his locker and took out the ring and passed it around to all of his teammates.
He said to them,”We’ve (referring to he and Wesby) been in this situation before, we’ve played in this tight situation, and in order to get to the NCAAs we got to win.”
With two halves of basketball left, the Owls couldn’t have gotten a better interpretation of what tonight’s game means.
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