UConn, the team expected to win this tournament, suffered its second straight loss to an unranked team on Tuesday, losing 73-72 to Colorado in the first game of the second day of the Maui Invitational. Eight seconds before the end, Andrej Jakimovski scored the game-winning shot.

“Coach trusted me to make the last play,” Jakimovski said, “and he made a good play for me and I knew I had to go down there and finish, and that’s basically it. “It’s a great team win, a great recovery after a bad game yesterday. We showed character and defended.”

UConn is probably one of the best offensive teams I have played against in my college career. It’s a great team win and a good finish.

For the second straight day, UConn coach Dan Hurley criticized the officiating.

“Yesterday the biggest play of the game was an over-the-back that was called against us,” Hurley said. “And today it was even more egregious because (Trevor) Baskin pulled Liam’s (McNeeley) arm down, I saw the replay of that. It’s ironic. But our defense was just so terrible, just so terrible.”

Colorado made 9 of 16 3-pointers (56.2%) a day after going 4 of 19 (21.1%) in a 72-56 loss to Michigan State.

I just arrived at the Lahaina Civic Center where Dayton is playing Iowa State at 3:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. in Ohio). Memphis leads Michigan State 34-31 at halftime in the first semifinal. No. 4 Auburn plays No. 12 North Carolina tonight in the second semifinal following the Dayton game.

8:22 a.m. (Maui time) – Jay Morrison, my former colleague at the Dayton Daily News and longtime Cincinnati Bengals beat writer, now at BengalsTalk.comn, sent me a photo he took of his television screen Monday night of a child sleeping in the front row of the Lahaina Civic Center to watch was Dayton’s game against North Carolina.

Anyone here on Maui could understand how someone could fall asleep, even in the noisy arena, because it’s difficult to adjust to the time difference here. By the time the Dayton Flyers and Tar Heels kicked off, it was close to midnight in Ohio. The game ended around 6:45 p.m. in Maui.

The biggest fans stayed awake until the bitter end – and it was a truly bitter end for Dayton.

“We are Dayton fans,” Dan Sulivan, founder of the Talking Out Lowd podcast, wrote on X after the game. “We are born with pain. We live in pain. We are pain. We didn’t choose this life, life chose us.”

The Flyers lost 92-90 to No. 12 North Carolina, blowing a 21-point lead. You have to go back to 2000 to find a non-overtime game in which Dayton scored 90 points and lost.

Dayton has lost a larger lead in recent years, 23 points two years ago against Brigham Young in the Battle 4 Atlantis, but it owned that lead early in the game. This time it had its largest lead two minutes into the second half. The Flyers played about as well as they could have hoped in many categories, but couldn’t get any defensive stops in the second half.

Dayton looked like a top-25 team in the first half. North Carolina looked like the No. 12 team, if not much better, in the second half.

Coach Anthony Grant was in no mood to talk about moral victories after the game. I asked if there was any hope of getting solid contributions from all ten players. Jaiun Simon, for example, made his most important contribution ever in a Dayton jersey, scoring a drive to the basket in the first half and grabbing an offensive rebound that led to a 3-pointer in the second half.

This is Grant’s response when I asked about the team performance that almost resulted in an upset:

“It’s a tough loss,” Grant said. “We felt like we had a chance to win the game. So we have to be able to be resilient and focus on the next game. That’s what I’m trying to do right now.

“We can’t really relive what happened tonight. We didn’t go our way. Our boys fought. We gave everything we had. Give Carolina credit. They were able to win the game. Now we have to prepare for another tough, really challenging game tomorrow.”

Dayton (5-1) plays Iowa State (3-1) today at 8:30 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. if you’re in Maui. The Cyclones had their own rough day on Monday, blowing an 18-point lead in an 83-81 loss to No. 5 Auburn.

Three of the first round games were thrillers. Only Michigan State’s 72-56 win over Colorado didn’t fit into this category. That was the only game I skipped. After watching No. 2 Memphis beat Connecticut 99-97 in overtime, I took a break and spent some time at the beach and pool. I needed my energy for a long night.

The Dayton fans didn’t get much sleep, probably tossing and turning and replaying the game in their minds. Some will take solace in a narrow win that showed what a team Dayton can be. I joked with Morrison that I always enjoy it when my team loses close games. That’s why I’m having so much fun watching the Bengals this season.