Draftexpress
Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:40 pm
Has Rhode Island, Dayton, UMass and Xavier all in the tournament at this point. But they had this to say about Dayton:
"OUCH!!!
-Dayton was driving at a rapid pace in a high performance sports car, and the wheels have suddenly [fallen] off. They are currently without two major contributing players in Chris Wright and Charles Little. In addition to that Brian Roberts, who is playing, has been sick and not at 100%. The Flyers haven’t been at 100% either, or for that matter at 40%, since those guys went down. Dayton has lost three straight games and none of them were really all that close. Losing to UMass and Xavier isn’t all that damaging by itself, but Xavier blew them out and UMass beat them convincingly. The biggest problem is that they followed up those back-to-back losses with a blowout loss to Richmond. RICHMOND!!! When you’re blown out by Richmond, it’s a sure sign that things aren’t good.
Dayton fans are some of the most devoted fans in all of college sports, and that’s not an exaggeration. They live and die (mostly die. They haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 1990) with that basketball team and fill the arena even when they aren’t winning. No one wants it and deserves it more than Flyer fans, and it’s so unfortunate that this happened to a team that was starving and was on the guest list to the greatest banquet in town, but then fell and broke their leg while walking across the parking lot on their way into the banquet hall. They will be at full strength again before the season is over, and the committee will consider the injuries, but considering and dismissing are two completely different things. They need to win some games prior to being back at full strength or they aren’t going anywhere without the automatic bid. They’ve fallen to a #11 seed in this bracket."
"OUCH!!!
-Dayton was driving at a rapid pace in a high performance sports car, and the wheels have suddenly [fallen] off. They are currently without two major contributing players in Chris Wright and Charles Little. In addition to that Brian Roberts, who is playing, has been sick and not at 100%. The Flyers haven’t been at 100% either, or for that matter at 40%, since those guys went down. Dayton has lost three straight games and none of them were really all that close. Losing to UMass and Xavier isn’t all that damaging by itself, but Xavier blew them out and UMass beat them convincingly. The biggest problem is that they followed up those back-to-back losses with a blowout loss to Richmond. RICHMOND!!! When you’re blown out by Richmond, it’s a sure sign that things aren’t good.
Dayton fans are some of the most devoted fans in all of college sports, and that’s not an exaggeration. They live and die (mostly die. They haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 1990) with that basketball team and fill the arena even when they aren’t winning. No one wants it and deserves it more than Flyer fans, and it’s so unfortunate that this happened to a team that was starving and was on the guest list to the greatest banquet in town, but then fell and broke their leg while walking across the parking lot on their way into the banquet hall. They will be at full strength again before the season is over, and the committee will consider the injuries, but considering and dismissing are two completely different things. They need to win some games prior to being back at full strength or they aren’t going anywhere without the automatic bid. They’ve fallen to a #11 seed in this bracket."