DAYTON, Ohio — It looks like two different teams.
There’s Marquette, then there’s this weird, distant, almost unrecognizable opposite. There’s the Golden Eagles, but there’s also some ground dweller, who cannot get off the Earth let alone reach nearly as high. There’s the No. 6 team in the country bubbling with a free-flowing offense and suffocating with a free-flowing-killing defense, and there’s also the furthest thing from it.
There’s Kam Jones on the floor, and there’s Kam Jones watching from the sidelines.
When him and all his All-American-ness is playing on the court, life is good for the blue & gold. All is well, hope is abound. When him and all his All-American-ness is sitting on the bench, it’s dark and dreary and everything in between. Nearly hopeless.
It’s why Saturday was what it was.
Why Dayton (9-2) was able to bounce back from its 36-26 halftime deficit. Why the Golden Eagles (9-2) blinked and found their once 13-point advantage cut in half to six before being dwindled to three before being erased entirely. Why they gave up 34 points in the final 20 minutes and ended their non-conference schedule with a 71-63 loss. Why UD Flyer Arena was, as advertised, LOWD.
Picture this: You are Marquette. You have a stranglehold on the game. Your defense forced Dayton into shooting an unsightly 1-of-9 from deep in the first half. You’re well on your way to walking into Big East play with only one loss, having adeptly trampled most all in your long line of formidable early season opponents, the lone defeat coming on the road in a fabled building at the hands of the No. 3 team in the country.
Jones has extended your lead from 10 to 13 21 seconds into the second half thanks to first 3-pointer of the day. But then, tragedy strikes.
He, and all his All-American-ness is headed to the bench because he picked up his third foul way earlier than you’d like. After missing half of the first half because of foul trouble — after a 10-0 run which put the Golden Eagles ahead by double-digits — Jones has to sit some more.
“First of all, he needs to not foul,” head coach Shaka Smart said. “That’s the first one.”
It’s music to Dayton’s ears.
Immediately, your stranglehold loosens. The Flyers are flying. They start hitting shots. They go on a 7-0 run. They make it a six-point game, 39-33. They make it 41-38. On your bench, Smart makes the decision, not because he wants to, but because he has to. Kam Jones is going back in the game, three fouls be damned.
In those three minutes Jones spent as a spectator, you attempted only three shots. Worse, you made only one. Yet even worse, you gave up seven straight before calling timeout before conceding another five.
“As a team, we’ve got to be able to play with more poise when he’s out of the game,” Smart said. “And we need more guys that can create some action for us.”
Even though as soon as he came back in, he dished an assist and hit two free throws and it looked like the Golden Eagles were back, they weren’t.
Because by then, it was too late.
Marquette had started reeling, and Dayton wasn’t about to let that stop.
The Flyers scored eight straight to lead 57-53, a run which wasn’t started but extended by a Marquette-inbound-turnover-turned-Dayton-bucket, a play which happened three more times and added up to eight more points for the Flyers, but really felt like 80.
“Just a lack of poise,” Smart said about the four inbound and tied-season-high 13 overall turnovers. “It’s going to be a lot of plays like that that we’re going to look at and wish we had back.
“But, at the same time, the defensive end of the floor is where you have to grind out games like this. Certainly turnovers didn’t help, missed shots. But we got to guard better than that. We did in the first half, showed we could do it. But we weren’t able to sustain it.”
Like Smart, Chase Ross — despite scoring the most he’s had since the season opener with 19 — was hampering on the defense. How it forced zero turnovers in the second half, how it let Dayton shoot 55.6% out of the break and how, on God’s green earth, it ceded 46 paint points.
“They ran the same play, I think, probably 20 times straight,” Ross said. “We had no answer for it.
“Just got to get better. Got to guard the ball, and then we got have help side and back side if we do get beat. We always preach five guys guarding the ball and we didn’t do that.”
In the first half, it was defense that made up for the eight-plus minutes it spent with Jones on the bench. In the second, it was defense that was sorely missed.
Jones ended up playing for 17 of the final 20 minutes, and all of the final 15. But the three he missed were the three Dayton needed. The three it used to cut the deficit to down-three and run away with it to up-eight, 71-63.
The first domino in the Flyers’ comeback was nothing they did, but rather what the Golden Eagles did.
Specifically, what Jones did.
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.
