Dayton’s seniors made only one big mistake Wednesday. They led their team to a 79-72 victory over Virginia Commonwealth, clinching the outright Atlantic 10 championship for the first time, but then wasted time posing for photos with family and friends — at least in the mind of their coach.
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“Those guys took too much time,” Miller said. “I wasn’t going to stand down there all night and wait for those guys to cut it. When you win a championship, you climb the ladder. You cut it. You give it to a teammate. He cuts it. He gives it to the next guy. He cuts it. Then when you get to the seniors and they aren’t going to climb the ladder, the coach says, ‘All right, it’s time to go.’ But they know what they’re doing. They were enjoying themselves out there. For me, I felt great humility. We talked a lot about that when we first got the job, what it would be like to win a championship here. Outright for the first time is a little more special than last year.”
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Dayton (24-5, 15-2) leads VCU (23-7, 13-4) by two games with one game to play. UD had won West Division titles before and shared the regular-season title this season, but never in its history had it won an outright A-10 title until this season.
The Flyers do have one more regular-season game at 8 p.m. Saturday at George Washington. Then they play in the A-10 tournament as the No. 1 seed, starting with a quarterfinal game at noon March 10 at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
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“We talked about that after the game,” Miller said. “The season’s not over. The challenge right now will be how far do they want to go. They have a collectiveness about them. They have a toughness about them. They believe in one another. They’ve done things the right way for a long time. But you’ve got to go to GW and win that one, too. You’re playing for more right now. What we’re playing for is the opportunity to get that momentum where you can create some magic at this time of year. This group can do it. It’s going to be up to them how far they want to take it.”
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