Dayton loses to a jet-lagged St. Louis team

On Friday, we wrote about the St. Louis Billikens.

Specifically, we gave fair warning to all A-10 tourney hopefuls that Chaifetz Arena is a tough place to play. Unfortunately, Dayton fans forgot to pass on the message as St. Louis upset the Flyers at home in a 2OT thriller.

The theme of the night for Dayton was blown chances. The Flyers were up 15 points in the first half and blew that lead. They were up eight points with two minutes left in regulation. They missed two front ends in the final 45 seconds. Up three in the final seconds of regulation, Dayton chose not to foul St. Louis, instead allowing Kwamain Mitchell to bank in a 28 footer. The Flyers had the ball with the game tied at the end of the first overtime, and turned it over by throwing the ball out of bounds.

After Cody Ellis hit a three with 37 seconds left in the second overtime to break a 63-all tie, St. Louis all but had this thing won.

While the loss is far from season-ending for the Flyers -- they still will have a shot to beat Temple, Richmond, and St. Louis again -- it definitely makes the tournament road that much more difficult for the Flyers. Dayton is just 4-5 against the RPI top 50, and now has two bad losses on the road in league play.

That said, the Flyers don't have much of a complaint about a difficult road after the trip that St. Louis just returned from.

You see, the Billikens had the Philly leg of their road season last week, playing La Salle on the 6th and St. Joe's on the 9th. The problem? That just so happened to coincide with the back-to-back blizzards that obliterated the east coast.

In order to ensure that they made it to Philly in time, the Billikens arrived early on February 5th, a Friday. They didn't get back to St. Louis until the morning of the 12th.

That's a week of class time that St. Louis' kids missed.

"I would rather have lost both games," said Majerus, who earlier this season said the Missouri Valley Conference would be a better fit for SLU. "Nothing means more to me than the academic success of our players. We have compromised our players' academic success and we have put them behind a big 8-ball. Even if it was the best of weather, we're missing an entire week of school."

You want to know how long they were in Philly?

"At the end, I didn't even want to see a hoagie," coach Rick Majerus said.

Yeah, that was a long time.