NewsTourney Central

Rhody, GW win NIT games as Dayton, Richmond prepare for action

The Dayton Flyers and Richmond Spiders will look to move the A-10 to 4-0 in postseason play after both Rhode Island and GW pulled off impressive wins Tuesday night.

George Washington dispatched the ACC’s Pitt Panthers, downing Jamie Dixon’s squad 60-54 in front of a virtually empty Oakland Zoo. The Colonials “wreaked havoc” as we say in the A-10, forcing 16 Pitt turnovers to hand the Panthers a stunning home loss despite their shooting 48.9% from the field and out-rebounding GW 41-35.

Kethan Savage posted a game-high 17 points off the bench including two clutch steals turned into fastbreak buckets late to help secure the win.

They’ll await the winner of tonight’s matchup between top-seeded Temple and 8-seed Bucknell. The Owls are a recent A-10 departure, having played their last bit of A-10 conference action during the 2012-13 season before departing for the American Athletic Conference.

Rhode Island made the A-10 2-0 last night after exploding for a season high (against D1 teams) 88 points against 6-seed Iona.

Five Rams posted double figures in URI’s balanced attack, including Jared Terrell and EC Matthews with 18 each.

Freshman Jarvis Garrett added 10 points himself and notched a double-double by adding a career-high 10 assists.

Rhode Island will fly across the country to take on a Stanford Cardinal squad that defeated UC Davis 77-64 last night.

Richmond will look to keep the A-10 flawless in NIT play tonight when the Spiders host St. Francis of Brooklyn. Richmond is a 10.5-point favorite and as the No.1 seed would host three games before advancing to Madison Square Garden for the semifinals. A win tonight brings either Arizona State or defending National Champ, UConn, to the Robins Center.

Dayton will look to get the A-10 off on the right foot in NCAA tournament play as the Flyers play Boise State in a strange NCAA tournament home game tonight.

Flyers and A-10 fans were stunned to hear UD would enter the tournament as one of the last four in, giving Dayton fans one last home game of the season as UD Arena is host to all NCAA First 4 games.

The Flyers are a 4-point favorite against Boise State who had won seven consecutive games in the Mountain West before being knocked out of the Mountain West conference tournament by eventual champ, Wyoming.

Mat Shelton-Eide has been involved in college athletics since 2007, starting as a co-founder of VCURamNation.com where he covered the Rams all the way...