Guru's note: We double-teamed the Big Five Wednesday night. Your Guru was at La Salle and Kathleen Radebaugh in the post above this one handled the St. Joseph's-Fordam game. The Guru print version of La Salle for the sports section is in the Inquirer sports section of Philly.com.
By Mel Greenberg
PHILADELPHIA _ How far has Dayton come in coach Jim Jabir's fifth season with the Flyers?
Jabir said it best after his team escaped from La Salle's Tom Gola Arena with a 45-43 victory over the Explorers Wednesday night in an Atlantic Ten game decided with 3.3 seconds left when Nikki Oakland nailed two foul shots.
"A year ago, we don't win this game,'' he said.
Forget just one year. It could have been anytime in the last decade.
With conference-opening wins against Temple and La Salle, the Flyers (16-2, 2-0 A-10) have shown their nonconference performance had been no flue.
In fact, Dayton is on track for the best record in the program's history since becoming an NCAA Division I member in 1984-85. The Flyers began competing in the North Star Conference, which later evolved through name changes and membership shuffles to the Midwest Collegiate Conference, and then the Great Midwest. They joined the Atlantic Ten for the 1995-96 season.
``They should be doing well," St. Joseph's coach Cindy Griffin said recently of Dayton. "They have a bunch of seniors so if any year is going to be good, this should be it."
However, Wednesday night, with La Salle's ability to harness Dayton's 71.5 scoring average, Jabir had flashbacks to another time and another conference when he coached Providence against Villanova in the Big East.
``That's what this game was like,'' Jabir said. ``It was like going to the dentist.''
That's a line stolen from Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma, who used to always compare games against the Wildcats to root canal work.
Speaking of the Huskies, the Flyers, temporarily at least, jumped ahead of Connecticut with sole honors of the current longest Division I women's win streak at 16 games.
Connecticut's run got more imperiled Wednesday with news that senior Mel Thomas' collegiate career has ended after suffering an ACL injury in the closing minutes of Tuesday night's escape from Syracuse.
The Orange, incidentally, will be at Villanova on Saturday.
Back to the La Salle game, the best illustration of the lack of speed in the game was the points-in-transition statistical comparison 0 vs. 0.
``We're scoring more points than anyone in our league and we come in here and kill that,'' Jabir said. "But you have to credit La Salle and the style they play.''
"Primary for us was to be able to take away the transition game and we were able to do that," La Salle coach Tom Lochner said. "We wanted to shorten the game and spread the floor.
"It worked for a long portion of the game. Unfortunately at the end it broke down defensively in the last three minutes on some of the principles in the game and Dayton was finally able to get off the snide and make a few shots. The offensive rebounds hurt us and they beat us up on the glass."
Ashley Gale returned from the massive injury list to get La Salle (8-9, 0-2) started with a trey and the Explorers hed an eight-point lead near the mid-point of the second half.
Karah Cloxton had 11 points, while Oakland scored 10 points and grabbed 12 points for Dayton.
Carlene Hightower and Margaret Elderton each scored 11 points for the Explorers.
-- Mel
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