By Dustin Dow
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FIRST ROUND

No. 7 DePaul (21-9) vs. No. 10 Dayton (24-8) Time: 9:50 p.m. Thursday Place: Buffalo, N.Y. TV: 12, 7 Radio: WHIO-AM (1290)

First-year Dayton coach Brian Gregory grew tired of the constant NCAA Tournament talk last week at University of Dayton Arena.

After all three of Dayton's games in last week's Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament, reporters fired questions at Gregory, asking him if he thought UD had done enough yet to get into the NCAA Tournament.

By Saturday's championship game loss to Xavier, Gregory was sick of addressing the topic, but he knew it was important that he was in position to be doing so. The Flyers (24-8) need Tournament success to build up a program that is extremely well-supported locally but not that visible nationally.

Dayton received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, making the field of 65 for the second straight year.

It gave the Flyers their first back-to-back trips to the event since 1985.

The Flyers, who haven't won a game in the Tournament since 1990, enter this year's as a No. 10 seed in the Phoenix regional.

"It means a ton," Gregory said of getting a win. "It's the one piece of the puzzle that's missing in terms of establishing ourselves as one of the top 25, 30 teams."

Dayton will play No. 7 seed DePaul in the first round at about 9:50 p.m. today in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite everything UD has achieved in the last two seasons - an Atlantic 10 championship and division title - senior standouts Keith Waleskowski, Ramod Marshall and Sean Finn have not won an NCAA Tournament game.

"It's not enough to get in anymore," Waleskowski said. "We want to get in and advance."

Gregory has not set a specific round that UD has to reach. He just wants to get past the first game, something he was able to do regularly as an assistant coach at Michigan State from 1999-2003. The Spartans went to the NCAA Tournament in all four of those seasons, winning a championship in 2000 and returning to the Final Four in 2001.

"The pressure increases greatly," Gregory said of winning in the NCAA Tournament. "There's more and more at stake in terms of making a stamp on your college basketball program."

If Dayton is going to make its mark this year, it will have to be against a team that Gregory favors. Growing up in Chicago, he was a fan of DePaul and regularly attended Blue Demons games at the Rosemont Horizon arena.

"I went to a lot of games because 15 minutes away from where I grew up was the Horizon," Gregory said. "Sometimes my parents dropped us off. It had an impact on me as I was growing up."

Today Gregory said he sees DePaul as just another opponent, one the Flyers must beat if they want to capitalize on their consecutive NCAA appearances.

"It's starting to put us in position where our program is growing," Gregory said. "We're getting to a point where just making the Tournament is no longer the goal."

E-mail ddow@enquirer.com