If the Marquette alumni want to advance to the regional final, they’re going to have to beat the Dayton alumni in Dayton.

The Basketball Tournament 2022

Dayton Regional Second Round

#2 Golden Eagles vs #3 Red Scare

Date: Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Time: 8pm Central
Location: University of Dayton Arena, Dayton, Ohio
Television: ESPN2
Streaming: WatchESPN.com
Live Stats: Should be available at the top of thetournament.com
Twitter Updates: @thetournament & @GoldenEaglesTBT

The good news for Golden Eagles is that they played good basketball much longer than they played bad basketball on Sunday night and ultimately, that’s how they got the 77-72 victory in the first round of The Basketball Tournament. The first quarter was ugly, but they were only down two after nine minutes. Then, yeah, they fell behind by seven but then rattled off a 20-1 run, and that’s obviously very good for the Marquette alumni team. That had them leading by as many as 12 before the first half ended, and that lead extended to 17 during the second half. Even when the Elam Ending started, the Marquette guys had a sizeable lead, kind of thanks to that 20-1 run pushing them out in front.

So while #7 seed Ohio 1804 definitely had a chance to win during the Elam Ending, the length and breadth of that game had Golden Eagles in control for the majority of the time. I think that has to be the takeaway here. If head coach Joe Chapman can induce that kind of play for longer than 23 straight minutes on Tuesday night, I suspect things are going to go okay.

At the very least, we can definitely say that there will have to be a better performance from Golden Eagles to get the second round win. Facts are facts, and this game is being played 1) against a Dayton Flyers alumni team and 2) in Dayton and 3) in University of Dayton’s arena. As you can see from the highlight package from their first round 75-70 win over Cititeam, the Flyers faithful are going to be out en masse and turn this into a road game for the Marquette team. As always, you have to be just a little bit better than you think you do in order to win a road game.

Red Scare went 10 deep against Cititeam, and maybe it was that nice distribution of minutes — everyone played at least 11 — that kept their legs fresh for the end of the game. While the Dayton guys had a four point lead, 67-63, when the Elam Ending started, Cititeam would eventually close the gap to just one, 71-70. That’s made even worse by the fact that Red Scare led by as many as 16 at one point, and that point was at the start of the fourth quarter. That’s not exactly a convincing victory, but hey, you can’t say that Golden Eagles were looking like worldbeaters, either.

The Dayton crew had three guys score in double figures in their opener, led by 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting from Darrell Davis. Jordan Sibert, he of the Sling Shot to win it, added 10 points and Trevor Thompson tacked on 11 points in just under 19 minutes of action. As a team, they shot just 41% from the floor and an absolutely terrible 20% from long range. Needless to say, if Golden Eagles can trick them into continuing to fire off misses from behind the arc, things will probably go well for the good guys.

I don’t know if it’s a function of how Red Scare wants to play or if it has more to do with how TBT games go sometimes, but we have to point out that they had 39 fast break points against Cititeam. The Marquette squad is going to have to presume that’s a style choice more than anything else and prepare for Tuesday night’s opponent to get that ball moving up the court as fast as possible while on the attack.