Saint Joseph's lets one slip away at Dayton

DAYTON, Ohio - Moral victories aren't for proven coaches and programs.

But some observers might at least say struggling Saint Joseph's made progress in its 65-59 loss to Dayton last night at UD Arena.

Not Hawks coach Phil Martelli.

"No, I see another loss," he said. "We came here to win. We didn't come here to see progress."

The youngest team in Martelli's 16 seasons on Hawk Hill took a veteran, upper-echelon Atlantic 10 team, in one of the league's toughest venues, down to the wire. And the Hawks (5-11, 0-3 Atlantic 10) presumably weren't even well-rested, having bused 9 hours here on Tuesday after their afternoon flight was canceled at Philadelphia International. The team didn't arrive in Dayton until 11 p.m., assistant athletic director Marie Wozniak said.

But the grind of the trip, which included dinner at a Wendy's somewhere in West Virginia, didn't seem to slow St. Joe's.

"The bus ride was tough, but we wanted to make sure we used that [as motivation]," said sophomore guard Carl Jones, who scored a game-high 19 points. "We didn't want to use the bus ride as an excuse."

Down 62-59, the Hawks had a chance to tie the score in the closing seconds. But sophomore Justin Crosgile's long three-point attempt from the top of the key with 5 seconds left was an airball that sailed out of bounds.

That wasn't the designed play coming out of a timeout. Martelli had called for Jones to take the inbound pass and then get the ball to C.J. Aiken at the top of the key for a three-point shot.

"I guess it was my fault," Jones said. "I didn't pass it to [Aiken]."

The next mistake was on Martelli. St. Joe's came out of a timeout with 4.8 seconds remaining with six players, resulting in a technical foul.

"That was my fault," said Martelli, whose team is 0-3 in league play for the first time since 1997-98.

Until the waning seconds, however, the Hawks didn't look like a team that has three freshmen and a sophomore in its starting lineup. St. Joe's rallied from a 12-point deficit late in the first half to take a 35-31 lead at halftime. The Hawks closed out their best all-around half of the season on a 20-4 run over the final 7 minutes, with the last 3 seconds being the most impressive stretch of that flurry.

Freshman guard Langston Galloway drained a three-pointer from the corner, giving the Hawks a 33-31 lead. There were 3 seconds on the clock when Galloway released the ball, and the clock had expired before Dayton (14-4, 2-1) made the inbound pass.

Flyers coach Brian Gregory, however, had sneaked in a timeout call, and the officials put 1.9 seconds back on the clock after briefly reviewing a television monitor.

Out of the timeout, Devin Searcy threw a high-arcing inbound pass that sailed the length of the court, took one bounce and went out of bounds untouched. That gave St. Joe's the ball underneath its own basket, and Aiken caught the inbound pass on the left wing and made a fadeaway jump shot at the buzzer.

"That gave us confidence," Jones said of the run. "We never felt we were going to lose this game. We aren't walking out of here with our heads up. There are no moral victories."