Tomorrow marks the season's first meeting between I-75 rivals Dayton Flyers and Xavier Musketeers. The Flyers travel to the Cintas Center hoping to get their first win at Xavier since Jan 10, 1981. Yes, almost 30 years. If any streak is ready to be broken it is this one. This game will be aired on ESPN2 at 11am tomorrow morning giving the nation it's first chance to watch either of these teams play.
There is a long history between these two teams dating back to 1920. Dayton leads the all-time series 81-68, but in the last 15 years Xavier has 22 wins versus Dayton's 10.
Xavier enters the game sitting in 1st place in the A-10 (3-0 conf; 11-5 overall) with Dayton a 1/2 game behind (2-0 conf; 13-3 overall). Xavier's marquee win this year was in the Crosstown shoot-out thriller against #21 Cincinnati. Although you can almost count the debacle that happened against Butler as a win also. Dayton's big win came early in the year against #19 Georgia Tech with Dayton's 3 losses coming to #6 Villanova, #17 New Mexico, and Kansas State. A win on Saturday would give either team a resume builder come NCAA tournament seeding time.
The Flyers are led by junior Chris "Top Flight" Wright whose averaging 14 pts, 7 rbds, and 758757075 dunks per game. Supporting cast includes sophomore Chris Johnson (13 pts, 7.5 rbs) and Senior guard Rob Lowery who is looking for revenge after blowing out his knee against Xavier last year. Xavier is led by sensational sophomore transfer from Indiana Jordan Crawford whose dropping 19 pts/game and adding 5 rbds and 3 assists. Big man down low who will be key to Xavier winning is Jason Love who is average 11pts and grabbing 9 rbds/game.
Like most of the games between these two teams, this one will probably be neck and neck and come down to the final minutes. Key for the Flyers is pretty clear: put London Warren on Jordan Crawford until London picks up 5 fouls (should be in the first 10 minutes or so). In the meantime, that should create ~5 TO's for Dayton leading to five Chris Wright dunks. For Xavier to win, they need to take Chris Wright out of it early. Chris has very up and down games (season high of 25, season low of 2) so if Xavier can pickup some quick fouls on Wright that will go along way to keeping the crowd loud and the momentum with them.
For those who haven't heard of Chris Wright, simply youtube him. You won't forget. Here, I'll save you the time. What some consider as one of the best dunks in the history of College Basketball:
Go Flyers!
Greg "wish I was at Timothy's Bar & Grille right now on Brown Street" Richter
Actually Dayton won at Xavier in 1981. That was their last victory at X.
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