Dayton Upsets #11 Ranked Louisville
The Dayton Flyers lead by Brian Roberts 28 points upset the #11 Louisville Cardinals 70-65 at Freedom Hall Saturday afternoon keeping Rick Pitino from reaching his milestone 500th career victory.
The last time the Flyers knocked off a nationally ranked team on its home court was back in 1985 when UD stopped the DePaul Blue Demons at the Rosemont Horizon.
Dayton came out hot from the very start of the game with a 7-0 lead and Louisville was scoreless, going 0-6 for the first 4 and a half minutes of the game and used its 3rd full timeout in 9 minutes of the game to settle down Dayton as it pulled to 14-4 lead after back to back 3 pointers from Brian Roberts.
Brian Roberts scored 14 of Dayton’s first 19 points. After having sub par games in the last two games with only 7 points, Roberts finished the game shooting 10-of-17 and 6-6 from the charity stripe for 28 points along with 5 boards.
Jimmy Binnie had 9 points and Chris Wright added 9 points and 7 rebounds. Also helping out the Flyers on the boards was Kurt Huelsman grabbing 7 rebounds and contributing 5 points. London Warren’s aggressiveness helped the Flyers with a career high 4 steals and 4 points.
Louisville was playing without injured starters David Pagett and Juan Palaciaos. Dayton was up by as many as 12 points in the first half. Dayton went into the half up 34-26.
In the 2nd half Louisville would go on a 13-0 run, as Dayton went on a drought not scoring a basket in 8 minutes as Louisville took the lead for the first time of the game at 41-39 with 11 minutes to go.
Dayton kept its composure and fought back going on a 14-5 run with 7:28 to go. Louisville would cut it to 3 points several times in the last few minutes of the game, but Dayton held them off and had great free throw shooting in the game shooting 16-20 from the foul line and 8 straight in the final minutes.
Dayton up 68-65 with 3 seconds to go, and after fouling Brian Roberts, Brian Roberts sealed the game by making both fouls shots for Dayton.
Derrick Caracter had 16 points and 7 rebounds and Earl Clark had 15 points, 12 rebounds and 4 blocks for Louisville, but the Cardinals shot 43 percent from the field and couldn’t get the stops when they needed to the most.
Dayton improved its winning streak to 6 consecutive wins on the season and improved its road record for its third straight road win for the season – one more road win than last years season total.
Louisville dropped to 5-2 on the season and its next game is against Purdue. Dayton improved its record to 7-1 and begins a 6 game home stand starting with Coppin State on December 15th.