By Don Owen
NKyTribune sports editor
DAYTON, Ohio — As a result of the ongoing pandemic, college basketball schedules have become extremely fluid this season. Upcoming games are added on an hourly basis.
That’s what happened Tuesday night, when Dayton welcomed Northern Kentucky into UD Arena. The game wasn’t scheduled until this past weekend. In fact, NKU was originally set to play Campbellsville-Harrodsburg at BB&T Arena on Tuesday until the virus erased that contest from the schedule.
“With the nature of the way things are now, with people losing games [to the virus], you schedule on the fly,” NKU head coach Darrin Horn said. “We told Dayton if they had another team cancel, we’d love to have a game that we could get to quickly against a quality opponent. We talked with the Dayton people on Friday, and on Saturday it became official.”
It made for an interesting matchup, too. The two programs had not met since Dec. 1, 1993, when Dayton posted a 99-82 win over then-NCAA Division II NKU.
Fast-forward 27 years, and NKU is an established program at the NCAA Division I level. The Norse have won three Horizon League championships during the past four years. They’ve earned three berths in the NCAA Tournament. They’ve played in the NIT. They’ve won at least 20 games the past four seasons.
NKU has accomplished a great deal since moving to Division I in 2012-13. The only thing missing is the so-called signature win over a big-time opponent. Dayton more than fit that description, given the fact the Flyers were ranked No. 3 nationally in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll last season. Many experts thought Dayton would win the NCAA Tournament. The pandemic, though, resulted in the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament.
A win over Dayton would have certainly qualified as a signature win for NKU. But, the search for that elusive victory over a high-profile opponent will have to wait.
Dayton made sure of it with a 66-60 win over NKU. The Flyers used a 9-0 spurt to end the first half to turn a 32-27 deficit into a 36-32 lead at the break. The Flyers then ran off 13 consecutive points early in the second half to build a 49-34 advantage and held off a late NKU rally to improve to 2-1.
NKU (2-2) led by as many as eight points midway through the first half, sparked by the play of freshmen Trey Robinson and David Böhm. But Dayton responded behind veterans Jalen Crutcher and Ibi Watson, who each netted 11 points in the first half.
Horn said he thought his youthful team competed hard, but the experience of Dayton — and the Flyers’ tradition of winning that goes back several decades — made claiming that signature victory difficult Tuesday night.
“We’re talking about a program that would have been a No. 1 seed last year in the NCAA Tournament, maybe even the overall No. 1,” Horn said. “You look at their (NCAA Tournament) history with Final Fours and multiple Elite Eights. There’s no question that a program like this is the kind we want to find a way to not only compete with, but beat. The reality of it right now is, we’re not ready. We’re not mature enough.”
“The exciting thing is, our young guys are really good, and our older guys continue to get better,” he added. “The talent is there, and the work ethic and character is there. We just need to keep getting better.”
Trailing by 10 points (63-53) with 3:38 remaining, NKU used an 7-1 run to cut the Dayton lead to 64-60 when Trevon Faulkner buried a 3-pointer with 43 seconds left. The Norse then forced a Dayton turnover, but Faulkner’s 3-point attempt was off the mark and the Flyers sealed the win with a pair of free throws.
“I felt like we competed at the highest that we could,” said Faulkner, who led NKU with 15 points. “I thought we also had stretches where we could have been better, and allowed them to go on a couple of big runs that probably cost us the game.”
Robinson finished with 13 points for NKU, which shot 37.5 percent from the field. The Norse were 5-for-24 from 3-point range and converted just 56.5 percent (13-for-23) of their free throws. Bryson Langdon added 11 points and four assists for NKU, while Böhm netted eight points.
NKU forced a season-high 22 turnovers, which it turned into 20 points.
Watson led Dayton with 19 points, and Crutcher finished with 17 points and eight assists. Chase Johnson added 16 points and 10 rebounds for the Flyers, who shot 52 percent from the field.
NKU plays at Kent State on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.
DAYTON 66, NORTHERN KENTUCKY 60
NORTHERN KENTUCKY (60)
Faulkner 4-6 5-10 15, Langdon 4-10 2-4 11, Eleeda 1-2 0-0 3, Nelson 2-3 0-0 4, Djoko 0-0 0-0 0, Warrick 2-4 1-2 6, Robinson 4-12 3-5 11, Harge 0-2 0-0 0, Böhm 3-7 2-2 8. Totals 21-56 13-23 60.
DAYTON (66)
Johnson 8-11 0-0 16, Crutcher 6-16 3-4 17, Watson 5-10 7-8 19, Tshimanga 2-3 0-0 4. Chatman 2-4 0-0 4, Blakney 3-6 0-0 6, Sissoko 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 26-50 10-12 66.
HALFTIME: UD 36-32. 3-POINTERS: (NKU 5-24, UD 4-13). REBOUNDS: NKU 30 (Faulkner, Langdon, Robinson 5), UD 37 (Johnson 10).
RECORDS: Dayton 2-1, NKU 2-2.
Don Owen is sports editor of the Northern Kentucky Tribune. Contact him at don@nkytrib.com and follow him on Twitter at @dontribunesport.