A field goal drought of 11:27 and more than four minutes without scoring a single point led to the end of  Dayton  basketball season Wednesday as the Flyers fell to St. Joseph's 67-55 in the opening round of the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament.

Abdulai Jalloh led all scorers with 24 points, 18 in the second half, and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds for the Hawks. Monty Scott led the Flyers with 13 points, and Warren Williams chipped in 12.

“It’s been a tough year,” UD head coach Brian Gregory said. “It’s been tough more so because of the fact that we’ve shown flashes and we’ve done some good things… That’s frustrating for the players and it’s frustrating for the coaches.”

The turning point came with 7:27 to play in the game. Guard Brian Roberts hit a free throw to cut the St. Joseph’s lead to two, but back-to-back UD turnovers led to easy lay-ups for Dwayne Lee and Jalloh, and the Hawks extended their lead to 52-46.

“We got two steals out of our match-up zone,” said St. Joseph’s head coach Phil Martelli. “That put us up six. Up until then, it was tenuous, and that kind of got our feet back underneath us.”

“Those two possessions there where you have a chance to take the lead, but you turn it over and they scored,” Gregory said. “[The Hawks] don’t tend to make those types of mistakes.”

St. Joseph’s continued on a 9-0 run to grab an 11-point lead.

UD would not score again until Brian Roberts hit two free throws with 3:17 left to play. Those points ended a UD scoring drought of 4:10, but the Hawks still led comfortably at 57-48.

Scott buried a 3-pointer with a 1:20 remaining, UD’s first field goal since a Charles Little lay-in at the 12:47 mark. St. Joseph’s, though, converted 19 of 24 second half free throw attempts and shot 79.2 percent from the line in the game to seal the victory.

Jalloh alone made more free throws than the entire Flyers team going 13-14 from the charity stripe. Rob Ferguson scored 16 points and recorded seven boards.

Roberts scored 11 points but made just two of his 14 field goal attempts in the game. UD shot just 32 percent from the floor, and the Hawks scored 15 points off turnovers to just five for the Flyers.

Norman Plummer hit a long jumper four minutes into the game to put the Flyers on top 5-4, but after that point, UD would never see the lead again.

St. Joseph’s outscored the Flyers 22-8 over the next eight minutes of play. A 3-pointer from Ferguson and an open jumper from Dave Mallon put the Hawks up 26-12.

Down 14, UD scored the last seven points of the first half. Plummer scored in the lane, Roberts hit a pull-up three and Scott scored in transition to cut the deficit to 31-24 at halftime.

Ferguson led the Hawks with 10 points and three assists in the first half, and St. Josseph’s made six of its 11 3-point attempts. Roberts and Williams co-led UD with six points at the break.

Early in the second half, Chet Stachitis hit a jumper to extend the Hawks lead to nine, but the Flyers answered. Scott and Williams hit back-to-back treys to leave the score at 35-32 with 17:30 remaining.

A Stachitis 3-pointer and a bucket by Ferguson extended St. Joseph’s lead to 40-32. Warren Williams converted a 3-point play, and with 15:16 remaining, Little rocked a two-handed dunk to cut the deficit to three.

But the Flyers could never tie the game or re-take the lead.

“We had some opportunities and again,” said Gregory, “not able to get over the hump and not able to make the plays on a consistent basis.”

For seniors Williams, Marques Bennett and Logan White, it was their last game in a Flyer uniform. Bennett and White combined to play just nine minutes and did not score in the game.

UD finishes the season at 14-17, its worst record since going 11-17 in the 1998-99 campaign.