Their youth hurt in some ways but helped in others during a 24-11 season.
“I was 19, and I’m still 19 now,” Smith said earlier this month. “I think (opponents) underestimated me. I was just trying to lead the team. I took that as a challenge. I took that personally.”
Smith battled a preseason injury last season, and that’s one reason he came off the bench in the first three games. He played eight minutes in a season-opening 64-54 victory against Illinois-Chicago. By the fourth game against Austin Peay, he was starting, though he picked up two fouls in the first 10 minutes of that game and played only 17 minutes in an 87-81 loss.
By late November, when Smith was named MVP of the ESPN Events Invitational, he had the keys to the car — or the airplane since these are the Flyers. Dayton was a different team with Smith in charge, and it has basically the same team entering the 2022-23 season, which begins Nov. 7 against Lindenwood University.
“Last year, I think I really learned a lot so help me this year,” Smith said. “So I’m going to keep the same mindset. We’re going to keep the ball rolling.”
That ball rolls into the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Thursday for Atlantic 10 Conference Media Day, the first one held in person since 2019. The league will release the preseason poll in the morning before the interviews with the 15 A-10 coaches begin.
Dayton should be the preseason favorite for the first time since the 2016-17 season.The Flyers lived up to the hype that season, winning the regular-season championship outright with a 15-3 mark in the last of Archie Miller’s six seasons as head coach. Dayton also lived up to the preseason expectations the previous season when it was picked to win the championship and tied for the title with Virginia Commonwealth and St. Bonaventure with a 14-4 mark.
The preseason favorite hasn’t fared as well in recent years.
• St. Bonaventure returned its entire starting lineup last season and received all 28 first-place votes in the preseason poll but finished fourth at 12-5. It was the first unanimous preseason favorite since Virginia Commonwealth in the 2014-15 season. VCU finished fourth that season.
• Richmond returned all five starters in the 2020-21 season and received 19 first-place votes but finished eighth at 6-5 in a season disrupted at numerous points by the pandemic.
• In the 2019-20 season, VCU returned four of five starters and received 19 first-place votes but finished eighth at 8-10. Dayton dominated that season with an 18-0 mark.
• The preseason favorite in 2018-19 was Saint Louis, which had three all-conference preseason selections. It received 15 first-place votes but tied for sixth at 10-8.
• The last A-10 preseason favorite to win the regular-season championship was Rhode Island, which received 27 first-place votes in the 2017-18 season and won the title with a 15-3 record.
While Dayton likely will earn the most first-place votes from the A-10 coaches and select media members Thursday, it probably won’t be a unanimous pick. Saint Louis is getting almost as much preseason hype in coach Travis Ford’s seventh season.
Although Dayton returns seven of its top eight scorers, Saint Louis has the more experienced team with a sixth-year player in Javonte Perkins, who missed last season with a knee injury, plus four fifth-year seniors and three players in their fourth year. Dayton, by comparison, has one fourth-year player: forward Toumani Camara.
“We have some veteran guys who have been around for a while, whether it’s here or somewhere else,” Ford told the St. Louis Post Dispatch this week. “Especially the guys who have been here, what I’m concerned about in the middle of the night is I don’t want them to take anything for granted. ... They need to earn what they get.”
Dayton and Saint Louis are the two A-10 teams ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi expects to play in the NCAA tournament. In his latest projection, he has Dayton as a No. 5 seed and Saint Louis as a No. 8 seed.
The Almanac, a season preview publication by the Field of 68 podcast network, picked Dayton to receive a No. 8 seed and Saint Louis a No. 11 seed and also predicted VCU will make the tournament as a No. 10 seed.
The Almanac picked Dayton, VCU, Saint Louis and A-10 newcomer Loyola to top the league, while the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook’s top four were Dayton, Saint Louis, VCU and Davidson. The Lindy’s Sports College Basketball preview picked Dayton, Saint Louis, VCU and Richmond to round out the top four. That was the same top four the Dayton Daily News had in July in its offseason power ranking.
The teams that receive the most love in the preseason poll Thursday will get 25 more days to prepare for the 31-game regular-season schedule. For Dayton, that includes a scrimmage in front of fans Saturday at the Red & Blue Game at UD Arena, a closed-door “secret scrimmage” against West Virginia on Oct. 22 and an exhibition game against Capital University on Oct. 29 at UD Arena.
The Flyers have been practicing since Sept. 26.
“The experience is there,” guard Kobe Elvis said. “There’s been growth from a lot of the guys on the team, and we’re just ready to take that next step. We’ve all been around the game for a while now. We all know what it takes. We all know we need to bring on an every-day basis to get to that next level and make the tournament.”
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