Yet another No. 1 seed in a men’s college basketball conference tournament has fallen.
And the loss came about as dramatically as possible.
Dayton, the No. 4 seed in the Atlantic 10 tournament, continued its push for an unlikely NCAA Tournament berth with a 70-69 upset of Saint Louis, the league’s regular-season champion, on Saturday, March 14 in the tournament semifinals in Pittsburgh.
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The end result, notable as it was, couldn’t match the excitement of the sequence that produced it.
With his team trailing by one, 66-65, Dayton’s Jacob Conner buried a 3-pointer with 14 seconds remaining to give the Flyers a two-point advantage. It was short-lived, though, with the top-seeded Billikens responding on the other end with a 3 from the top of the key from Saint Louis star and college basketball folk hero Robbie Avila with 6.6 seconds to go to give his team a one-point edge.
Just when it looked like the Billikens might escape with a berth in the title game, Dayton had other ideas.
Flyers guard Jordan Derkack received the inbound pass and drove it the length of the court, but stumbled as he split a pair of Saint Louis defenders under the basket and threw up a high-arcing reverse layup. Though the ball failed to touch any part of the rim, it found the extended hand of Dayton big man Amaël L’Etang, who tipped it in with 0.3 seconds remaining, sending the crowd into pandemonium and even prompting one of his teammates to rush the floor from the bench to embrace him.
The Billikens were able to get a shot off before the buzzer, but it missed badly, sending Dayton to the conference title game.
In all, the game had five lead changes in the final 3:09.
The victory continued a recent hot streak for the Flyers, who have won eight of their past nine games after starting the season 15-9. They’ll need to win the tournament championship game against the winner of Saturday’s semifinal between No. 2 seed VCU and No. 3 seed Saint Joseph’s to make it to the NCAA tournament.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dayton upsets A-10 top seed Saint Louis in chaotic final 15 seconds
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