Dayton, OH - The La Salle University Explorers (5-11, 1-4) put forth another impressive battle on an opponent's home court but eventually dropped a 66-58 decision to the Dayton Flyers (11-5, 4-1) on Saturday night at the University of Dayton Arena.

 

The Explorer junior duo of Jermaine Thomas (Frederick, MD/Thomas Johnson) and Steven Smith (Philadelphia, PA/Northeast) led the way with 20 and 19 points respectively but were out dueled by a duo of Flyer underclassmen, Monty Ross (25 pts.) and Norman Plummer (24 pts.)

 

Plummer hit all of his first 10  shots en route to a 10-13 shooting night while Scott also went 10-13 including 507 from beyond the arc.

 

The Explorers had leads of 10-7 and 12-9 but a 10-0 run by the Flyers midway through the first half gave the hosts enough room to stay ahead the rest of the way.

 

The Explorers cut a 15-point first half deficit to four points when Smith hit a free throw to make it a 52-48 game with 7:12 to play but an ensuing series of Explorer turnovers put the Atlantic 10 West Division-leading Flyers on their way for good.

 

The four aforementioned scorers accounted for 98 of their teams' 124 (or 79%) total scoring.

 

The Explorers will return to play with an Atlantic 10 match-up vs. the University of Richmond Spiders (8-9, 203) on Wednesday at Tom Gola Arena with tip-off scheduled for 7:05 PM.  Live play-by-play of the game begins at 6:45 PM on ESPN 920, WHAT 1340 AM and on GoExplorers.com (through Yahoo1 Sports).