By Hal McCoy
St. Louis, MO. — Robby Avila, a bespectacled 6-foot-10 center for Saint Louis, buried a three-pointer ten seconds into the game. . .and this game was over.
From there, Saint Louis rained threes on the University of Dayton Flyers as if taking target practice from 23 feet.
The Billikens hit 17 of 28 from three-point territory as Saint Louis buried the Flyers, 102-71.
And it wasn’t that close. When the opponent has runs of 16-4, 10-0, 12-0 and 10-0 there is nothing but defeat written on the wind.
A Xavier transfer’s first name is Trey and he wears No. 3, so it’s not surprising that Trey Green made 7 of 10 three-pointers en route to 23 points. And Ishan Sharma came off the bench to hit six of eight threes and scored 18.
So it was Dayton’s fourth straight defeat, the first time the Flyers lost four in a row since January, 2014.
What was this game? A thoroughbred against a plow horse, a Bentley against a Ford Focus, fine wine against stale beer, a work of art against a finger-painting, filet mignon against chopped liver.
Are the Billikens as advertised. They are a full-page advertisement for greatness. They are 21-1 with a 15-game winning streak. They lead the Atlantic 10 with a 9-0 record.
They have scored 100 or more points seven times and their average margin of victory is 23 points. Their only loss was to Stanford, 78-77, when Stanford deliberately missed a free throw, grabbed the rebound and hit a game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer.
SLU scores outside, they score inside, they take missed shots and sprint down the court like championshp greyhounds, they play half-court defense as if protecting the castle gate.
They scored 25 points on fast breaks and their bench scored 32 points.
They are totally unselfish.
They got open shots at will, uncontested. The Flyers had to work, work, work to get off a shot. De’Shayne Montomger worked the hardest and scored 23.
Saint Louis constructed an 22-point lead in the first half, 46-24, and led 46-29 at intermission.
The Flyers showed the resuscitator was working after halftime and crawled back to within 10 at 51-41. Montgomery tried to go one-on-one and missed a driving lay-up that would have cut it to eight.
That got Saint Louis’ attention and it was bye-bye, farewell, so long. The Billikens went on a 12-0 run for a 63-41 lead and the threes kept raining down and the lead mounted.
Protecting the three-point line should have been Priority One for the Flyers. Avila leads the A-10 in three point shooting (47.1%) and Green is second (46.6).
Avila hit the game-oponing three and a three to open the second half, but no more. Green and Sharma more than made up for it with seven and six threes.
And the Billikens didn’t just blind the Flyers with threes. They hit 35 of 56 shots for 62.5%.
Meanwhile, the Flyers shot 45.5% on 35 for 56 and 7 of 20 from three. Javon Bennett continued his shooting miseries — 3 for 12 and 1 for 6 from three for nine points, a rare dip below double figures for the 5-foot-10 poinr guard.
As usual, UD coach Anthony Grant piled praise on the oppositon by saying, “I have to give them credit. They were oustanding today.”
Outstanding is a low-key word for what transpired on the Chaivetz Arena floor with the seats fully populated with howling Billikens fans.
More apropos was what TV broadcaster Tom McCarthy said at one point: “Man oh man is this overwhelming.”
Said Grant, “They have a really, really good team and they played really well. A great environment in here and they responded.
“I thought the story of the game on our end was an inconsistent ability to stay within what we talked about to be able to give us a chance,” he added.
That has been a stuck record over the course of UD’s four straight defeats to LaSalle, St. Joseph’s, Rhode Island and Saint Louis.
“It is like I told the team, if we were able to do that it wouldn’t have guaranteed a win,” said Grant. “They’re really good, but us not doing it would guarantee failure.”
And that’s what happened, in spades and diamonds and clubs and hearts.
“I thought at times we were inconsistent with that, the way we started the game we didn’t understand the things that we talked about we needed to be able to do in terms of the three-point line, in terms of how we needed to attack them offensively, the importance of how we didn’t let our offense bleed our defense.”
For most of the season, defense has been UD’s best offense but the defense was AWOL on this night.
“The last four minutes of the first half we settled down and we started to do the things we talked about that we needed to do,” Grant added. “The first four or five minutes of the second half we did the same.”
That’s when the Flyers scrambled to within 10, 51-41, before Saint Louis became Galloping Ghosts and disappeared over the horizon.
“Within two minutes, we reverted back to some bad habits on the offensive end and that bled our defensive end and they held us accountable,” said Grant. “Within two minutes it went back to a 20-point lead and from there we were never able to recover. A tough lesson.”
Actually, the Flyers fourth straight tough lesson.