Location: St. Bonaventure, N.Y.  |  Reilly Center

Box Score (PDF)  |  Statistics With Play-By-Play

St. Bonaventure Starters: #10 G Jaylen Adams, #2 G Matt Mobley, #1 G Idris Taqqee, #12 F Denzel Gregg, #33 F Josh Ayeni

The Short Story
St. Bonaventure fell to a hot-shooting Dayton club on Tuesday night, 90-74.

The Flyers made 14 three-pointers – seven in each half – on 23 attempts and shot 51 percent from the field overall. St. Bonaventure (9-5/1-1 Atlantic 10 Conference) trailed 35-31 at halftime but Dayton opened an 11-point lead early in the second half. The Bonnies could not pull any closer than six points the rest of the game as Dayton made timely shots each time it was threatened. The Flyers were 18-26 (69 percent) from the field in the second half.

Junior point guard and Wooden Award candidate Jaylen Adams led all scorers with 23 points. He added six rebounds, five assists and three steals. Junior guard Matt Mobley added 20 points. Freshman forward Josh Ayeni scored a season high 12 points and Denzel Gregg added 10 points, nine rebounds and s career best five blocked shots.

The Bonnies shot just 37 percent overall (25-66) and were 17-27 at the free throw line.

Kendall Pollard led Dayton (11-3/2-0) with 21 points. The Flyers, who were picked to win the A-10 in the conference's preseason poll, played without senior all-conference forward Charles Cooke, who sat out due to a back injury.

How It Happened: 

• The teams both started well defensively and scoring was tough to come by early in the game. It was a 14-14 tie at the 8:50 mark of the first half.
• St. Bonaventure went on an 11-2 run to open its largest lead of the game at 23-16 with 6:25 left in the opening half. Jaylen Adams capped the surge with a layup after a steal.
• Dayton came right back, however, using three straight three-pointers to grab the lead back at 27-26. 
• The Flyers made two more from long range and finished 7-12 from three-point range in the opening half to lead 35-31 at intermission.
• Dayton scored 12 of the first 17 points of the second half to open a 47-36 lead by the 17:39 mark.
• It was a 13-point Flyer lead when the Bonnies climbed back to within 62-56 with an 8-1 run. Mobley sparked the run with five points.
• Dayton answered with back-to-back field goals to push its lead back to 10 points with 9:13 remaining.
• After the 8:41 mark the Bonnies could not come within 10 points.

Coach Mark Schmidt:
"All the credit goes to Dayton. They outplayed us ... defensively, we went backwards a little today. We let down mentally and they outplayed us. Every time we broke down, they hit a three when they had the opportunity."
"We've got to be more connected and we weren't connected today ... you can't win in this league if you can't defend at the half court. To allow a team to shoot 69%, it's unacceptable ... it wasn't our offense ... we lost this game on the defensive end. It's pretty simple."

Beyond The Boxscore:

• Jaylen Adams topped the 20-point mark for the 10^th time this season, best among Atlantic 10 players.
• Matt Mobley recorded his ninth game of at least 20 points.
• Denzel Gregg's prior career high in blocks was four against Binghamton in 2015.

Up Next: St. Bonaventure will host George Mason, which entered this week at 10-4, on Saturday, Jan. 7, at the Reilly Center. Tipoff will be at 5 p.m.

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