The magic finally ran out for Fordham.
Toumani Camara scored 28 points and Dayton pulled away for a 78-68 victory over the Rams on Saturday in the Atlantic 10 Conference semifinals at the Barclays Center.
Fordham had achieved its first 20-win season since 1990-91 and the head-coaching debut of Keith Urgo couldn’t have gone much better.
After a 3-pointer by Will Richardson pulled the Rams within 59-58 with 6:13 left Saturday, however, a 9-0 run gave Dayton the breathing room it needed.
The Rams never got closer than seven after that.
Khalid Moore led No. 3-seed Fordham (25-8) with 24 points.
DaRon Holmes II scored 20 for second-seeded Dayton (21-11).
The Flyers will face VCU on Sunday in the championship game, for an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.
Fordham’s season, the first under Urgo yet the Rams’ most successful in decades, will likely end with an NIT bid.
The Rams still choreographed an unexpected run, finishing above .500 for the first time since 2016.
The team began to be compared to Fordham teams from past decades as the Rams kept stringing together wins.
One of their worst conference losses of the season, though, came against at the worst possible time.
For the first 15 minutes, Fordham’s magic appeared mortal.
The Rams fell behind 28-20 with 6:21 left in the first half.
The storybook season seemed to be ending.
This wasn’t a double-digit halftime lead the Rams had against La Salle on Thursday.
Instead, it was an eight-point deficit to Dayton.
Fordham’s early deficit was largely due to missed 3-pointers.
Dayton operated with a more balanced approach, with Camara serving as its focal point.
With the 3-pointers not falling, the Rams found their scoring from Moore and Rostyslav Novitskyi, who converted shots close to the basket from the left block and finished with 13 points.
Early on, Darius Quisenberry managed a steal for the Rams while twisting on the ground.
He popped up and finished a transition layup at the other end for an 8-7 Fordham lead with 16:38 left in the first half.
Then, everything flipped.
The 3-pointers started falling.
The defense kept causing disruption.
The Rams pulled within three by halftime — and the team with the NCAA’s most wins when trailing after 20 minutes, according to the Barclays Center scoreboard, eventually took the lead.
The Rams only went 3-for-13 on 3-pointers in the opening half, and two of those came in the final 5:30.
But their defense kept them in the game, kept Dayton — the program that made four consecutive NCAA Tournaments between 2013-14 and 2016-17 — from pulling away.
After only leading for 1:02 in the first half, Kyle Rose made a jumper in front of the Fordham bench to tie the score at 41 with 17:12 left.
On their next possession, Richardson hit a 3-pointer, spinning around and facing toward the Fordham fans on his way back down the court as the Rams took a 44-41 lead.
Just like that, there was magic again.
That’s what a 9-0 run will do.
But Fordham couldn’t hang on.
Quisenberry appeared to injure his shoulder early in the second half, forcing the Rams to operate without one of their key guards while he winced at the end of the bench — trainers examining his elbow — before he did shoulder shrugs and reentered a few minutes later.
Dayton used the 6-0 run entering the under-4 timeout to build a comfortable lead.
Then, on the first sequence following the break, the Flyers’ Mustapha Amzil connected on a 3-pointer from the right wing.
That was the dagger, capping off a 9-0 Dayton run. That was the end for Fordham.