Cincinnati’s first trip to UD Arena in nearly 22 years ended the way its last one did — with the Bearcats walking out winners. Cincinnati routed Dayton 95-72 on Saturday night, handing the Flyers their third straight home loss in a week and turning a sellout crowd’s long-awaited rivalry night into a 23-point statement by the visitors.
The Bearcats had not played at UD Arena since December 4, 2004, when Cincinnati left with a 65-55 win, according to Sansom Sports Media’s game-night coverage. The last three meetings in the rivalry were all played in Cincinnati — Dayton won 82-68 in December 2023, before the Bearcats answered with victories of 66-59 in December 2024 and 74-62 last November. Saturday’s return to Dayton was supposed to be the Flyers’ night. Instead, Cincinnati controlled the game from the opening minutes, building a 14-4 lead in the first four minutes as Elijah Perryman hit two early three-pointers, according to Sansom Sports Media’s live updates from the arena.
A sellout crowd of 13,407 packed UD Arena, according to the Dayton Daily News as reported by Sansom Sports Media, but the paper reported that fans began heading for the exits with two minutes remaining. The 95-72 final, recorded by Sportradar’s results service, was Dayton’s most lopsided home defeat of a young season that has suddenly turned difficult.
The loss completed a brutal week at home for Dayton. Northern Illinois beat the Flyers 81-76 in overtime last Saturday, and Siena followed on Tuesday with a 99-89 victory — Siena’s first win at Dayton in 33 years, on a night the Saints scored 99 points, their highest total in a regulation game in 23 years, according to BVM Sports’ coverage of that game. Three home losses in eight days is not the start a program with Dayton’s expectations envisioned, and freshman guard Aiden Derkack did not hide his frustration after the Siena loss, telling the Dayton Daily News, “These two losses suck.”
Cincinnati arrived in Dayton at 2-1, with wins over American (79-53) and Green Bay (81-64) and a 63-61 loss to Minnesota on Monday in which the Bearcats led 61-54 with 2:37 remaining and did not score again, according to Sansom Sports Media. Saturday’s performance was the opposite of that collapse: a wire-to-wire road win, in a hostile building, against a rival that needed the game far more.
The rivalry itself explains the atmosphere. The two programs are separated by about 50 miles of I-75, and Dayton’s home court is regarded as one of the toughest early-season environments in the country — which is precisely why Cincinnati had not been back since 2004. The Bearcats’ win extends their run in the series’ recent campus meetings and gives them a quality road result for their NCAA Tournament resume in mid-November.
Context makes the margin sting more. Coming into the night, the analytical gap between the teams was real but not enormous — KenPom ranked Cincinnati No. 41 and Dayton No. 116, according to Sansom Sports Media — and a desperate home team in a sold-out arena was supposed to close the rest of that gap. Instead the Bearcats widened it, scoring 95 points in a building where visiting teams rarely dictate terms, and doing it four days after their own late collapse against Minnesota showed how quickly a lead can vanish.
For Dayton, the questions now are about response. A team that opened the season with Atlantic 10 ambitions has lost three straight at home, two of them to visiting teams it was expected to beat, and the third by 23 points to its biggest nonconference rival. The Flyers’ defense, which gave up 99 to Siena and 95 to Cincinnati in back-to-back home games, is the obvious place the repair work starts.
What happens next: Dayton will try to stop the skid in its next home date at UD Arena, while Cincinnati returns home carrying a 3-1 record and a rivalry win it waited 22 years to collect on Dayton’s floor. If Saturday night proved anything, it is that the Bearcats did not mind the wait.
Photo: Gump840, CC BY-SA 4.0