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It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over
It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over
John Mad Dog Churan
Published by John C.
01-22-2008
Smile It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over

PALM SPRINGS (CA) -- When you are a fan of a perennial power such as Duke or North Carolina, the thought of being in the Top 25 is commonplace. So commonplace that when either of these teams is not in the Top 25, it is news. However, when you are a fan of a non-BCS school (I won’t use the M-M words) you truly get excited when your team is listed at the bottom of the ESPN screen every few minutes showing score updates. It is easy to get giddy after a couple of wins in a week that will almost certainly move you even higher on the way to the promise land of the Top 10.

Another advantage of professing your love for one of the perennial powers is the knowledge that the loss of one of your players for a while during the season will probably be overcome by simply sticking another McDonald’s All-American from somewhere on your bench into his spot. That is another big difference between the national power and the national power wanna be. Lose a player and your sparkling season may be on a parallel path with the dodo.

Even if your non-McDonald’s All American steps in to take the star’s spot in the line-up, there will be a disruption in substitution patterns with perceived lesser players gaining more playing time. The big whammy is when that player then goes down. If you thought that your season was spiraling out of control before, you now begin to get the same feeling an unwanted gold fish gets when he hears a flushing sound.

You probably get the direction I’m heading. For most teams, the loss of two of your most athletic players in a little over a week to broken bones would signify the end of whatever had been accomplished in the preceding weeks.

The University of Dayton had accomplished a great deal in the first half of their season going 14-1 and reaching #14 in the AP Top 25. They had won 13 in a row against all levels of competition. They had already won more road games than many teams ahead of them in the polls. They had grown before our very eyes to be a team that believed in itself and it’s ability to win against good teams no matter where they played them.

However, after 13 games, the second best player on the team, Chris Wright, went down with a broken bone in his ankle. Certainly not a good thing, but if there was one thing that this team showed was its ability to pick one another up when one or two players were having a bad night. They continued to do that the next two games as Charles Little, last year’s A-10 Sixth Man of the Year stepped up his game and helped pick up for Wright’s loss. He was flashing back to the abilities that he had shown the previous year when he could literally take over a game.

Then Murphy’s Law stepped in and Little also broke a bone, this time in his foot. The Flyers had been able to gut out the two previous wins without Wright, but a semi-efficient Little could not play to his normal level after suffering the broken bone against UMass and when no one else stepped up the 13 game winning streak was history.

Games that most fans had slotted in as wins were now becoming losses. Before the injuries, it would have been possible to think that Dayton would have made it through the rest of the season with just three additional losses. Premature talk of a four seed or better in the NCAA Tournament was running rampant. This was going to be UD’s year.

It is now more realistic to see three or four additional losses in addition to the UMass loss creep into the record. The real question is if the Brian Gregory brain trust can come up with a plan that can keep the boat afloat until Wright and Little are healthy. What had been a 9-10 player rotation was quickly becoming 7 or 8.

If there is one strength of this Dayton team it is the ability to bring someone off the bench and see little drop in execution. However, losing two players from the same position will certainly press that strength. It is highly likely that the minute that Gregory saw the swelling on Little’s foot, he called his staff together and began to brainstorm options. If we are going to ever find out if he has grown into this job, it is now.

Without the opportunity to add another player, there will have to be some thought given to making some changes to the offensive scheme. Between Little and Wright, UD is losing nearly 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. This is not easy to pick up in the short term. Sandoval is not going to give that kind of production. He certainly brings some other things to the table but points and rebounds are not his strengths.

It’s a pretty simple conclusion that Devin Searcy or Thiago Cordeiro need to step up. Both have shown flashes when it made you wonder how good they could be with additional time. Cordeiro has one of the better shooting percentages on the team and his rebounding numbers per minute are very close to what Little has accomplished. Searcy has seen very limited time, but the time he has seen has been in the middle of games and not just at mop up time. His rebounding is as good as anyone’s on the team.

Certainly, both will have the opportunity to show what they can do, yet it is unlikely that they will get all of the minutes. Of all the likely contributors, the guy that will get the most scrutiny will be Marcus Johnson. Although undersized, he will probably get the call to play more on the inside. Mickey Perry will spend more time on the floor and hopefully show the form that made him an all-state player in high school.

Yes, the Flyers will lose more games than they would have if everyone would have remained healthy, but I think they can keep their head above water long enough for Little to come back and hopefully, have Wright back with a few games remaining. They will probably lose at Xavier although that shouldn’t be a surprise. You would have to be a coach on the team to actually be alive since the last time UD won down there. However, they will bounce back to win at Richmond.

The schedule looks pretty favorable after that and the team should be able to adjust to their new structure and opportunities in the next two weeks. This team is going to the dance, bank on it.
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By San Diego Flyer on 01-23-2008, 10:21 AM
I agree with your analysis and conclusion John. Our collective goal of getting to the NCAA's and winning some games there is still achieveable.

What has suffered is the edge we had against ranked teams, the odds of winning, and the point spreads we enjoyed. Those are all things the bettors and bookies worry about, not the players.

We still have a lot of talent---- enough to win. Last year we did not have this much talent even without CW and CL. Searcy, Thiago, and Perry can take up the slack.

The pressure is not on our players, it's on our coaches. I think we caught a break (bad joke) when the schedule gave us X at Cintas first. We have a better chance of the new rotation clicking on Feb 24 at home than on Jan 24 at Cintas. Also we could benefit by an early return of Charles.

I will be curious to see the depth of BG's rotation with two key players out.
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