Dayton and Butler were both lighting up the scoreboard to start their first-round game in the 2018 Bad Boy Mowers Battle 4 Atlantis. Then Butler suddenly came down to earth, while Dayton continued flying high.

The Flyers sank 58.3 percent of their shots in the first half on the way to a 69-64 victory. The game was tied 15-15 barely six minutes in before the Bulldogs lost their shooting bite, sinking only four of their next 21 attempts and going scoreless over the final 4:14 of the half.

This combo enabled Dayton (4-0) to take a 37-26 lead into halftime, and the Flyers maintained a double-digit advantage for much of the second half. A late rally enabled Butler (3-1) to close to within five points in the final 45 seconds, but the lead never got down to a single possession.

“Proud of our guys. We had great effort all the way through,” Dayton coach Anthony Grant said. “Give Butler credit. They fought hard, and at the end gave us some different looks in terms of the pressure. But our guys were able to handle it, weather the storm and come out with a big victory.”

Jalen Crutcher and Josh Cunningham led Dayton’s offense, combining to sink 13-of-19 shots from the field and score 38 points (while also grabbing 13 rebounds). But it was the Flyers’ defense that got the attention of Butler coach LaVall Jordan.

“They were really physical all the way around,” Jordan said. “Their physicality was something we didn’t match early on. … We were stuck on 26 (points) there in the first half for I don’t know how many minutes, but we had a drought there to end the half.”

Kamar Baldwin exemplified Butler’s struggles. Baldwin came in averaging 23.3 points per game this season and sinking 48 percent of his shots, but he went 1-for-7 in the first half against Dayton and scored only two points. He finished with 11 points on 5-of-17 shooting (0-for-5 from 3-point range), though he did have seven assists.

“Our guys did a great job following the scouting report,” Grant said. “Baldwin is a heck of a player and we knew he was going to be aggressive to score. We had a variety of different guys who defended him.”

Paul Jorgensen and Sean McDermott picked up some of the scoring slack for Butler with 18 points apiece. But as a team, the Bulldogs sank only 40 percent of their shots (24-of-60).

Click to view Official Basketball Box Score -- Game Totals -- Final Statistics Dayton vs Butler and Game 3 Quotes.