By Jonathan Sawyer
Sports Editor
The Bonnies dropped their A10 home opener to the Dayton Flyers, 90-74. The Bonnies and Flyers had trouble finding the bottom of the net for the first 15 minutes of the game, with the score being 23-18 at that point .
Senior forward Denzel Gregg’s made lay-up extended the Bonnies lead to seven and that’s about as far as it would get. Senior guard Kyle Davis knocked down two consecutive threes to bring the Flyers within two, 26-24. Sophomore forward Ryan Mikesell pushed the Flyers ahead with a three as they went on a 9-1 run to take a 27-26 lead. The Flyers would eventually extend it to four going into the half.
Senior guard Scoochie Smith contributed with 17 points as the Flyers continued their hot shooting, going 7-11 (64%) from beyond the arc in the second half and 18-26 (69%) from the field to lead them to 55 second half points. The Flyers finished the game shooting 61 percent (14-23) from three and 52 percent (29-56) from the field.
“Its an extreme high today, it was an extreme low against La Salle. For whatever reason we are little looser on the road than we are at home,” Archie Miller, the head coach of the Flyers, said on his teams shooting against the Bonnies. “We have some guys that can shoot the ball. When our front court in particular can make them, I think it frees some things up for us.”
The Bonnies have given up 29 threes and 196 points in the past two home games .
The Bonnies shot a season low from beyond the arc, as they were 7-22. Junior guard Jaylen Adams netted 23 points, but was 6-10 from the line. The Bonnies continued to struggle getting players off the bench to contribute, only having seven points to the Flyers 20. The head coach of the Bonnies, Mark Schmidt, said defense was the reason they lost this game tonight.
Miller said it was a great win for his team against a good Bonnies team.
“It was a credit to our guys. I thought we really brought our hard hats. I think we have been working pretty hard here lately to become a team that can win, with togetherness and toughness,” Miller said.
The Flyers were without redshirt-senior guard Charles Cooke, who is the team leader in points with 18.7 per game.
“We have been able to do a lot this year with out a lot of people. I think that’s one thing that goes unnoticed a lot with us [the Flyers]. He’s not the only one over there sitting on the bench. The guys just show up,” Miller said.
Schmidt talked about how his team defended better in the A10 opener verse Massachusetts, but needs to keep working on it.
“All the credit goes to Dayton, they outplayed us in the second half. The UMASS game we defended much better, I thought we had figured that out a little bit,” Schmidt said. “We knew we needed to continue to improve in that area, but I thought we made strides, but we went backwards today.”
Schmidt said that you can’t, “win in this league if you can not defend the half court.”
The Bonnies will have a quick turnaround as the George Mason Patriots come to the Reilly Center on Saturday for a 5 p.m. tip off. The Bonnies fall to 1-1 in the A10 and 9-5 overall.
sawyerjp15@bonaventure.edu
