Sports

Dayton feeding off doubters en route to possible Final Four

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — With Dayton, the last university without a BCS football team still in the Big Dance, bracing to play Florida in Saturday’s Elite Eight, the Flyers insist there’s nothing Cinderella about them or their school. But keep overlooking and underestimating us, the Flyers say, and we’ll fly under the radar and right into the Final Four.

Dayton (26-10) stunned Ohio State in its NCAA Tournament opener, survived Syracuse in its next game and stormed past Stanford in Thursday’s Sweet 16 — yet the Flyers still have to hear words like mid-major and Cinderella and glass slipper. They hear them, and they’ll feed off them when they try to add top-ranked Florida to their list of upset victims when they tipoff at 6:09 p.m. at FedEx Forum.

“All I can say is we hear it. We’ve got our foot in the door, and it’s going to be tough to get us out,’’ senior guard Vee Sanford told The Post. “That’s what we came here for. Guys came to Dayton to be the best and compete against the best. We want to beat the best, and [Saturday] is a great opportunity to go out and show the world we can compete with these guys.’’

It was Sanford that eliminated Ohio State with his last-second winner, and junior guard Jordan Sibert who had 18 points Thursday to lead the Flyers into their first Elite Eight since 1984. And even though they get the David and Goliath storylines, and know Florida (35-2) is the biggest giant of them all, they want to be seen as winners, not one-shot wonders.

“For me personally it’s starting to get funny. It’s like, what else do you need to do to get some respect? “Sibert told The Post. “But if people don’t want to respect us, that’s fine. That’s on them. At the end of the day, we still have to play the game.

“A lot of people are counting us out again against Florida. But they have to put on their shoes the same way we do. We’re going to go out and compete.’’

Though Sanford insisted “the whole Cinderella thing is out the door,’’ and “the seeding is irrelevant,’’ it certainly won’t be ignored. Just two double-digit seeds have reached the Final Four since 1986 — George Mason in 2006 and VCU in 2011, both No. 11 seeds, like Dayton.

Florida actually beat that George Mason team en route to coach Billy Donovan’s first NCAA title, and now the Rockville Center native has a team capable of winning the Gators’ third national championship.

The Gators, who have won 29 straight games, start four seniors and have talked openly all season about “chasing greatness” after being eliminated in the Elite Eight the past three years. They’re determined not to make it four straight.

“The lesson from the first two games was we didn’t finish the game because we had leads going into the downhill part of the game, and other teams were just able to make better plays,” senior center Patric Young said. “Then the third game, I don’t know what it was, [we] didn’t come out playing the right way.

“We’re going to do the best we can and make sure we go out there leaving no regrets.’’

Florida’s withering defense — third in the nation, allowing 57.8 points per game — will try to disrupt Dayton’s selfless ball movement. In crunch time the Gators rely on senior guard Scottie Wilbekin (13.1 points per game, 3.7 assists per game), who went through ups and downs at Florida but won SEC Player of the Year.

“Sometimes [being an underdog] fuels the group,’’ Dayton coach Archie Miller’s father, John, told The Post. “It fuels you. You start to develop a little chip on your shoulder: ‘OK, we’ll show you.’ ”