DAYTON, Ohio — It was supposed to be over before it started.

Here was the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team, minus its most important player, against the seventh-ranked team in the country in the kind of rabid environment that almost none of the Bonnies had faced before.

Here was a Bona group, undermanned, taking on a Dayton team that was not only unbeaten in the Atlantic 10, but had yet to lose in regulation this season.

Surprisingly or not, however, the Bonnies were able to give the mighty Flyers a legitimate scare … for about 15 minutes. But from there on, Dayton provided a firsthand look at why it’s one of the best teams in the nation.

Trailing 25-24 with 6:54 remaining in the first half, and giving its fanbase a reason to believe that maybe — just maybe — this could be a game, Bona did exactly what it couldn’t do against a high-flying Dayton team that thrives on opponents’ mistakes, giving up a 22-5 run to end the period.

It was never again a game as the Bonnies fell, 86-60, before a crowd of 13,407 inside UD Arena on Wednesday night.

“We hung in there … we weren’t playing great, but we were doing enough,” coach Mark Schmidt assessed of those first 15 minutes. “And then we turned the ball over, and against these guys, once they get into the open court …

“You’ve got to be able to handle their runs, and we didn’t do a good job.”

Without Osun Osunniyi, who missed his second-straight game with a concussion, Bona (12-7, 4-2) did what it could against All-American candidate and projected NBA lottery pick Obi Toppin, but the 6-foot-9 forward still finished with 18 points on 9-of-11 shooting, nine rebounds and an array of powerful two-handed slams.

As it already knew, though, the Flyers (17-2, 6-0) are much more than just Toppin.

Jalen Crutcher tied a career-high with 23 points while Ibi Watson had 12 points and Ryan Mikesell and Trey Landers added 10 apiece. Crutcher started Dayton’s big run with a 3 and Toppin followed with a slam. Mikesell highlighted that stretch with an impressive alley-oop dunk off a long pass from Crutcher and Toppin finished it with a high floater at the halftime buzzer.

The national leader in field goal percentage, the Flyers put on a clinic Wednesday, shooting a red-hot 65 percent with 25 assists on 35 baskets. It was the first time since 2011 that Bona allowed an opponent to shoot over 60 percent from the floor.

And though this was born largely out of circumstance — Bona happened to be playing arguably the two best teams in the league, in the two most imposing venues, without its star center, it couldn’t avoid the following reality:

The Bonnies have lost back-to-back games by 20-plus points for the first time in the Schmidt era — the first time since dropping the final two games of the 2006-07 campaign under Anthony Solomon, now a UD assistant. And it has plenty from which to learn, and improve upon, heading into the final contest of this three-game buzzsaw: Saturday’s home matchup with Rhode Island.

“They just hit a lot of shots; we didn’t do certain things that we were supposed to do principle-wise,” junior guard Jaren English acknowledged. “They’ve got great players over there, they hit some tough shots … it was just one of those days for those guys. They’re No. 1 in the league for a reason.

“Overall, I thought we played good; we’re still learning. In this environment, we didn’t give up, we didn’t let the crowd really rattle us. They just hit some big shots, some tough shots and didn’t miss much.

Assessed Schmidt of Dayton’s well-oiled offense: “They got the ball going downhill. We had a hard time guarding them, keeping the ball in front of us. It’s easy to shoot the ball when you’re stepping into shots, and that’s what we allowed them to do.”

Kyle Lofton totaled 10 points and he and freshmen Alejandro Vasquez and Justin Winston hit enough shots to keep Bona in contention until late in the first half. English was spectacular in the second half, collecting 15 points en route to tying his career-high of 17, and almost single-handedly whittling the UD lead from 27 to 17 with 9:57 left.

Dayton, however, was able to get it back to 20 before winning comfortably.

In the end, Bona was no match for the more formidable Flyers and VCU Rams — though those games could have conceivably gone at least slightly differently with Osunniyi — a fact it’ll have to confront before heading into Brooklyn for the A-10 Tournament.

Its hope heading into Saturday’s game with Rhode Island? To take the positives from its first 15 minutes against the Flyers and apply those things with the Rams.

“If we play and we do what we’re supposed to do, we can be in the game,” said Schmidt, who fell to 2-15 against Dayton while at Bona, and whose teams are now 5-15 against nationally ranked opponents. “It’s not like we started off and they knocked us out early (as with the VCU game). We’re hanging in there …

“But, as a coach and as a player, you don’t want to just hang in there. You can’t (settle for) moral victories. We came here to win the game, we didn’t come here to give them a game. For those guys, I think it gives them confidence that if they play well, they have a chance.”

Said English, who scored 13 of his team’s first 20 after halftime: “We’ll get in the gym tomorrow, work on some things, watch the film, we’ll get better. We’re fine. I think we’re in a great spot.”