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Dayton holds off Akron in two overtimes

Jan 3, 2008 - 4:10 AM DAYTON, Ohio (Ticker) -- London Warren scored all six of his points in the second overtime to lead No. 23 Dayton to an 83-81 victory over intrastate rival Akron on Wednesday night.

Kurt Huelsman had 19 points and Brian Roberts added 17 as the Flyers, who are in the rankings for the first time since 2003, extending their winning streak to 11 games.

Dayton (12-1) got all it wanted from Akron (10-3), which squandered an eight-point second-half lead in having its five-game winning streak snapped.

"We found a way to win the game," Flyers coach Brian Gregory said. "Sometimes when you are not playing well and you're playing a very good team like Akron and come away with the win, you have to look at some positives. Hats off to Akron; that is a very talented, hard-working team."

A three-point play by Warren gave the Flyers a 78-76 lead, but Steve McNees answered with a 3-pointer to give the Zips their last lead at 79-78 with 1:54 left in the second OT.

Marcus Johnson, who had eight points in the two extra sessions, put Dayton ahead for good on a layup with 51 seconds to play, and the Flyers got single free throws from Roberts, Warren and Huelsman to hold off Akron.

"(Akron) is a great team," Johnson said. "I thought we came out sluggish and they out-scrapped us, but we had to fight back and keep fighting."

Jeremiah Wood and Nick Dials scored 19 points apiece for the Zips, who forced the first overtime on Wood's layup with 4.6 seconds to play that knotted it at 64-64.

Johnson buried a shot from the arc and converted a three-point play to give the Flyers a 69-65 lead in the first OT, but McNees and Dials nailed 3-pointers to reclaim the lead for the Zips, 71-69.

Roberts, the leading scorer for Dayton, hit a tying jumper with 1:35 left in overtime to force a second extra session.

The Flyers have beaten Akron nine straight times and extended their non-conference home winning streak to 18 games.

"I'm extremely excited at the end of the night that at the end of the non-conference we are 12-1," Gregory said. "We didn't play very well in the first 20 minutes and give Akron credit. They were the ones who kind of scrapped and clawed and played the way we play. But in the second half our defense got us back into it."

In the rankings for the first time since 2003, the Flyers appeared primed for a letdown after routing then-No. 6 Pittsburgh, 80-55, on Saturday.

Instead, Dayton jumped out to an 8-2 lead and built its biggest lead at 24-17 on a layup by Stephen Thomas with 7:40 left in the half.

Akron responded by closing the opening 20 minutes with a 16-3 run, holding the Flyers to just a 3-pointer by Jimmy Binnie over the final 7 1/2 minutes. Binnie was 4-of-4 from the arc in the first half.

Quade Milum buried a hook shot with one second to play to cap a closing 10-0 burst that gave Akron a 33-27 lead at the break.

"One of the things we wanted to do was stay positive and stay calm because this is the classic trap-type game," Gregory said. "You just beat Pittsburgh, you're ranked for the first time in four years, the highest ranking for the school this time of the year in 40 years. The guys have never been through that before."