Dayton v.s. Goliath

Well, its the matchup everyone saw coming: Dayton v.s. Florida for a trip to the Final Four. Not exactly.  Florida was the favorite to bring home a National Championship coming into the tournament so for them to be playing tonight in the Elite Eight is no surprise.  Dayton on the other hand is a complete shocker to most.  The No. 11 seeded Flyers have had to claw their way just to get to this point.  Their first game in the tournament was a  60-59 upset of Ohio State followed by a 55-53 victory over the heavily favored Syracuse Orangemen.  These were two very impressive wins for a team that has gone unnoticed up until this week.  The last team to beat Dayton not named St. Joe's came back on January 25th against Rhode Island.  The Flyers added another tournament win this past Thursday when they took care of Stanford 82-72 in a game where they just dominated in all aspects offensively.  This run by Dayton is reminiscent of the great cinderella stories made by VCU, George Mason, and Davidson.  

Next up for Dayton is your number 1 team in the country: The Florida Gators.  On paper this is a complete mismatch against a team who has a lot more size and defends better than just about anyone in the country.  Beating the Gators will take a lot more than what it took to defeat the Buckeyes or the Orange.  The Gators will full court press for the entire game, they have great perimeter/interior defenders who are all athletic and can drive opposing coaches nuts.  It's also worth mentioning that Florida is a very deep team and very efficient offensively to go along with the teams incredible defense.  They are arguably the most complete team in the country, which is why they were deserving of the number one overall seed.  Dayton can certainly pull off the upset today but here is what they will have to do.  Since the Flyers lack the size to compete with the Gators inside, they will have to get big games from their guards Khari Price and Vee Sanford.  Dayton has a lot of depth as well since they play 11 players regularly in their rotation.  Athleticism is another huge strength for both teams and a big factor in this game will be who can control pace and get easy buckets in transition.  The longer Dayton can hang in the game, the more pressure it puts on a team that really hasn't dealt with that much pressure at all this season.  There are many interesting matchup's in this one, but I think the one everyone needs to take a serious look at is the battle of the bigs, Kavanaugh-Young.  Kavanaugh needs to stay out of foul trouble since the Flyers are thin on their front line.  Florida is expected to roll over Dayton, and they easily could do that, but if there is anything we can take away from this year's tournament it is to expect the unexpected.