Darion Clark scored a season-high 17 points in Charlotte’s loss to Dayton on Wednesday night. Photo by Chris Crews
The Dayton Flyers (15-12, 5-8), with help from five double-digit scorers, earned their first Atlantic 10 (A-10) Conference road win of the season and defeated the Charlotte 49ers (18-9, 6-7) on Wednesday night in Halton Arena, 88-67.
In a tale of two halves, the 49ers came out hot at the beginning of the game and had built up an eight point lead before The Flyers quickly stormed back.
The game was closely contested for the remainder of the half, including five ties and five lead changes.
Both teams went into the locker room shooting over 50 percent and the 49ers held a five-point advantage.
In the second half, Charlotte went cold while Dayton got hotter.
Just over six minutes into the half, the Flyers had outscored the 49ers, 21-11. Once Dayton took the lead, they never looked back. The visitors would end up out-scoring Charlotte 59-33 in the final 20 minutes of play.
“Good win for us,” Dayton Head Coach Archie Miller said. “We’ve really had some struggles, to say the least, finishing games. We’ve learned a lot of hard lessons. Just a good team win, this time of year that’s really hard.”
For the game, Dayton made 61.7 percent of their field goal attempts (29-47) against a Charlotte team that holds opponents to just 40 percent shooting on average.
Charlotte shot 43.1 percent from the field, just below their season average. The 49ers also struggled from behind the arc (22.2 percent) compared to the Flyers, who shot 40 percent from three-point range.
Dayton not only shot better, but won the battle in the paint at well. The Flyers out-rebounded the 49ers 31-27 and had a 40-30 advantage in points in the paint.
Charlotte was able to capitalize on 10 offensive rebounds and racked up 17 second chance points.
“They set a tone in terms of execution and got the shots they were comfortable with. A lot of credit to those guys, they were very hungry,” said Charlotte Head Coach Alan Major. ”I felt like we didn’t come out and set the same defensive tone as we did in the first half.”
Josh Benson, Dyshawn Pierre, Kevin Dillard, Vee Sanford and Devin Oliver all scored in double figures for the Flyers.
Oliver led the way for Dayton with 16 points on six of nine shooting. The junior also pulled down 11 rebounds for his sixth double-double of the season.
Darion Clark, Chris Braswell and Terrance Williams were the only three 49ers to score in double figures.
Clark led Charlotte with a season-high 17 points. The freshman also grabbed a team-high eight rebounds.
Williams scored 15 points on five of eight shooting and grabbed six rebounds of his own. Braswell finished with 10 points.
After two straight road games, the Dayton Flyers will return home to face Richmond on Saturday.
Charlotte will hit the road again for a Saturday night A-10 game at St. Bonaventure. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.
“We just need to push forward, we’ve been through this the past two years and we just need to fight and get back to what we do best,” Braswell said.